Namati stories – part one

A series of stories from the field offices of Namati.

Dead trees tell the story

The vast expanse of water just outside Rotonka Village in Tonkolili District, Sierra Leone used to be an important resource for the community.

Today it is littered with dried up trees whose withered branches bear no fruit. Upon approach to the community centre, more dead trees stand as testament to the corruption that plagues this land. The arrival of the Addax Bioenergy Project in 2010 may have been an answer to prayer for the country’s struggling economy. But to this community of people, it was the beginning of an unending nightmare.

“When the company first arrived, we had no issues with them,” explains village elder Brima Forna. “It was when they started processing their sugarcane that the problems began.”

The factory, whose function is to generate ethanol using sugarcane juice, was built on community-owned land. The process releases volatile organic compounds which produce a foul-smelling odour. While unpleasant, the real trouble began when wastewater containing chemicals and other pollutants began seeping into the water sources on which the community had relied for decades.

“We couldn’t dig wells because their water would be contaminated as well,” Brima recalls, “and we noticed that our crops were dying, so we made a report to Namati.”

Thus began Namati’s years-long engagement with the company to come up with lasting solutions to the water crisis. In 2019, the company, now called Sunbird Bioenergy, announced its plans to relocate all Rotonka inhabitants.

“They gave us three days to leave our land,” Brima says. “If it were not for Namati, they would have uprooted us.”

The topic of relocation due to company activity has always been a thorny one.

“The law indicates that when a community is relocated, it should be put up in a more convenient location than the one they are leaving behind,” notes paralegal Richard Sesay, who works for Namati in Sierra Leone. “In the past, communities have been moved to locations with substandard housing, no water facilities, nowhere to do their farming. People should be able to continue their livelihood where they go.”
Once Namati had outlined the realities of relocating Rotonka according to the law, the idea was abandoned. However, the water problems remain. Namati was instrumental in getting the company to provide the community with water, but the supply has not been consistent.

“I can confirm today that we have not been supplied water in two months,” says Rotonka chair Adamse Turay. “They don’t supply enough water. There was a time when the company sent people to the community to ask us what our problems were but that doesn’t happen anymore.”

In the times when there is no water, the community members have to travel by boat in search of drinking water.

Namati’s engagement with the company continues, even as getting an audience with them becomes increasingly difficult.

Fighting for Dambala

The team from Namati’s Kenema regional office in Sierra Leone’s Eastern Province covered over 40 miles of rough terrain to reach its target destination.

Sometime ago, the Dambala community contacted Namati claiming that Gold Tree, a commercial palm oil plantation and milling company, which they had leased a portion of land to, was reneging on its promises.

Namati’s programme officer Baindu Koroma and her team soon discovered there was no official lease agreement between the company and Dambala. The community said Gold Tree had promised them schools, roads, drinking water, hospitals and even a monthly cash payment. But without a lease agreement, the company could not be held to any of those promises.
The Namati team visited the Dambala community to draft an agreement, and met first with the landowners to get the process underway.

“We asked them to tell us what they wanted to see in the new agreement,” Baindu says. “We were there to offer guidance as to what was feasible under the law.”

Once the team had compiled the community’s terms, they sent them to Gold Tree which then communicated their reactions and counter offers. The team then communicated what the company was offering and the discussions begin in earnest.

Abu Junisa Mannah is a diamond miner who serves as a community mobiliser; an intermediary of sorts who relays information between the Namati team and Dambala community. He describes the community as “isolated” from the rest of the country in terms of development.

“This community is seriously lacking,” he says. “We don’t have access to good drinking water and the nearest hospital is nine miles away.”

Such conditions mean landowners in remote areas often request high levels of compensation for land so they can address the issues their community faces.

“When there is too large a gap between what the community is asking for and what the company is offering, it can prolong the negotiation process,” explains Mustapha Kanu, Namati’s monitoring and evaluation officer. “The company is saying they can pay 17 dollars per hectare. The community people are asking for the equivalent of 62.5 dollars per hectare. This could cause a major delay.”

After hours of deliberation, community head Chief Bockarie Tiah confirmed that the Dambala would only agree to two of the company’s counter offers.

“We are happy that Namati is involved in this matter,” he says. “We were being paid for 541 acres of land, but the land was actually much bigger than that. With Namati’s help, we were able to confirm [through participatory mapping] that the total acreage was actually over 1,200.”

The next step in negotiations will be to bring the company and the landowners together so they can negotiate the areas where there is still disagreement. The team is confident they will land on a win-win situation.

“In my experience, the parties end up meeting somewhere in the middle,” Mustapha says. “That’s what is likely to happen.”