A nation “once again… gripped by grief”. This was how Ernest Bai Koroma, president of Sierra Leone, described the effects of the mudslide that devastated Regent, on the outskirts of the country’s capital, Freetown in the early hours of August 14 2017. At least 400 people were killed, hundreds more are still missing, and thousands have been rendered homeless. The vice president, Victor Foh, said that: “The disaster is so serious that I myself feel broken.” Few countries can have exceeded Sierra Leone’s share of recent misfortune. In its brutal 11-year civil war, beginning in 1991, tens of thousands of people lost their lives, countless more suffered mutilation or rape and more than a third of...
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