3.5 SIERRA LEONE
Mr Sulaiman F Kamara, Research and Community Officer at the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre & Mr Charles Wright, Associate, Architecture Sans Frontieres-UK Sierra Leone’s cities are growing at an inexorable rate each year. Freetown, the capital city, has grown in population by roughly 2.87% annually since 201535. This rapid urbanisation is now presenting Freetown and other cities with severe growing problems, including increased exposure to extreme environmental events, increased poverty, and decreasing public health. Like many Commonwealth countries, Sierra Leone has not developed strong professional institutions or a pool of qualified built environment professionals with the technical skills to address the country’s growing urban problems. There is an institute of architects and institute of engineers, but both are under resourced36. There is also a lack of well-paid job opportunities for Sierra Leoneans in the built environment sector to attract prospective students. Currently there is an over-reliance on short-term built environment professionals from more developed countries. Sierra Leone has not embraced the potential for built environment professions to unlock national improvement in the long-term. There are questions regarding accountability and transparency in government institutions, furthermore, Sierra Leone has not had the capacity to effectively legislate, regulate and thereby enforce procedures to ensure safe and equitable urban development. Lack of capacity in local authorities has meant that devolving planning powers from the central government has also not been prioritised resulting in development which is reactive over pragmatic. There is also a lack of educational options, further training and continued professional development. There have been attempts to establish a School of Architecture in the past and recently, there have been some strong initiatives including the establishment of the Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, new built environment courses in higher education institutions, technical support for councils, and the Transform Freetown Agenda. These initiatives have brought renewed energy to the built environment professions, but more is needed. The findings in this survey highlight a need for Sierra Leone to be supported in strengthening its built environment institutions and professionals to avoid unmitigated and uncontrolled, therefore potentially damaging urban development.
35 UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Dynamics
The observations contained in this chapter illustrate that while the challenges being experienced in different countries always need to be understood in their local context, they share a number of similarities thereby offering the potential for cross-learning and mutual support.
(2018) ‘World Urbanization Prospects 2018’, [03/01/2020], https:// population.un.org/wup/Country-Profiles/ 36 Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is no planning institute Sierra
Leone (pop >7.5m, >3% urban growth), and only 16 architects.
Survey of the Built Environment Professions in the Commonwealth
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