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Despite the emphasis on a “Year of Delivery.” the performance targets Bio expects MDAs to deliver this year are unknown to the public (and perhaps unknown to some members of the administration). Voters remain clueless about what results to expect from the Le9 Trillion investment this year, as well as the criteria for punishing and rewarding public servants across the delivery chain. In this brief, we suggest ways for government to move beyond the rhetoric of year of delivery, partnering with citizens for concrete results, and working to reduce our dependency on foreign aid. To do so, government must tell ordinary Sierra Leoneans what is meant by delivery, so they know what to look for, and how to measure it. Commitment to effective service delivery provides the opportunity for the government to reach beyond its base; an improvement in development outcomes will be a win-win for all.
To ground the abstract construct of delivery, this paper discusses two sectors (agriculture and sanitation) to illustrate what delivery means to ordinary Sierra Leoneans. We argue that for delivery to occur President Bio should be courageous enough to dismantle the rent seeking infrastructure in MDAs and publicly declare resources provided to institutions as well as their performance targets. Where performance targets and allocated resources are unclear, it will be difficult to rally citizens around the laudable goal to manage meagre resources to achieve better outcomes, moving citizens and parties out of a blame game mentality.