By Mahmud Tim Kargbo
Sunday, 2 August 2026
We crossed a river, waded through about half a dozen streams, some waist deep, and walked for nearly an hour before reaching the rice fields of Torma Bum. President Julius Maada Bio had said he wanted to see the farms himself, rain or shine, and he did. Soldiers and community members were cultivating rice, private operators were working the land, and drones were moving above the fields. There was no conference room here, no presentation screen and no distance between policy and the ground it was meant to change. There was water, mud, machinery, labour and rice, and a question that mattered more than any speech: could they be made to work as one system?
The Government’s account begins with Feed Salone, a strategy intended to raise agricultural productivity, strengthen food security and build value around domestic production. Its second year report says irrigation works in the Tormabum and Gbondapi rice producing zones are being developed across 5,000 hectares, with water control structures, drainage channels and pumping systems intended to support year round cultivation. http//: www.feedsalone.gov.sl That investment gives the Torma Bum operation a significance beyond the fields themselves. The Government is not simply trying to produce more rice. It is attempting to create the physical conditions in which farmers, processors and investors can operate around a dependable agricultural economy.
Water, however, is only the beginning. The Office of the President reported in March that irrigation works in Tormabum and Gbondapi were nearing completion and identified storage facilities, roads, markets and milling plants as essential to the next phase of Feed Salone. http//: www.statehouse.gov.sl The logic is straightforward. A farmer may produce more rice because irrigation reduces dependence on rainfall, but that production means little if the harvest cannot be stored, processed and transported to a market. The investment therefore has to be judged as a chain. A canal that works in isolation is useful; a canal connected to roads, storage, milling and buyers is transformative.
The journey into the fields made that distinction tangible. We did not simply step from a vehicle into a completed agricultural estate. We crossed water, negotiated difficult terrain and walked for nearly an hour before seeing the rice fields. That experience did not negate the Government’s infrastructure programme; it showed why the programme matters. The distance between a productive farm and a functioning market is measured not only in kilometres but in roads, bridges, drainage, storage and reliable access. Until those obstacles become less consequential, agricultural production remains more vulnerable than the statistics alone suggest.
That is why the emerging cluster around Torma Bum matters. Feed Salone’s reporting places irrigation, mechanisation, storage and processing within a wider effort to build rice producing zones rather than isolated farms. Its earlier report also records plans for an integrated Rice Industrial Complex in Tormabum, with development intended to increase local rice production, create jobs and transform the rice sector. http//: www.feedsalone.gov.sl The economic idea is simple enough. Farmers need machinery and services close to production, processors need reliable volumes of rice, and investors need an ecosystem rather than a single promising field. The cluster becomes valuable when those needs reinforce one another.
The machinery on the ground provided another part of the story. Private operators, soldiers and community members were cultivating rice with mechanised equipment, bringing different forms of labour and capacity into the same production effort. The presence of the military is notable because it shows how a national food security programme can draw on institutions beyond conventional agricultural actors, although no country can build a lasting commercial agricultural system on military participation alone. Private investment is ultimately indispensable because businesses must commit capital, absorb risk and find a commercial return. Government can create the conditions for that investment, but it cannot substitute indefinitely for the market. The durability of Torma Bum will therefore depend partly on whether businesses decide that the opportunity is worth returning to.
Then there were the drones. During the visit, I was told that DJI Agras technology being used in the fields represented the first commercial use of the technology in Sub Saharan Africa. I have not independently verified that distinction, so it should remain a reported claim rather than an established fact. What could be seen was the use of agricultural drones in an effort to make cultivation more precise, with data intended to inform decisions about yields, fertiliser use and land development. Sierra Leone is separately developing its first National Drone Policy and Strategy, a process launched in February to identify and prioritise practical drone applications across fourteen sectors, including agriculture. http//: www.mocti.gov.sl The significance is therefore not that a drone can fly above a rice field. It is whether information gathered in the air can produce a better decision on the ground.
That same test applies to artificial intelligence. The Ministry of Communication, Technology and Innovation, working with the World Bank, is developing Sierra Leone’s first National AI Strategy and has begun by assessing the country’s readiness for responsible and inclusive adoption. http//: www.mocti.gov.sl The policy ambition is substantial, but agriculture will demand evidence rather than terminology. An algorithm is useful only if it improves a decision, reduces waste, raises productivity or protects income. A rice field offers little room for technological theatre because the results eventually appear in measurable things: yields, costs, production and earnings. The technology will have to prove itself in the same place as the seed.
Private enterprise provides the next test. When President Bio invited businesses to participate in the rice transformation programme, some hesitated, while Fambul Rice entered the opportunity. During the visit, the company was described as having the country’s biggest rice harvester, biggest rice mill and largest mechanised rice farms, with further ambitions for expansion. Those comparisons remain part of the account of the visit and are not presented here as independently verified rankings. What matters more is the decision to invest. The World Bank’s $40 million Sustainable Agricultural Value Chains Intensification for Growth project, approved in June, is designed to improve productivity, encourage private investment, strengthen processing and market connections and create jobs. http//: www.worldbank.org The Bank identifies low productivity, limited private participation and weak access to inputs and markets as structural constraints, which makes private investment not a side issue but a central measure of whether agricultural transformation is working.
This is where the two narratives meet. The Government sees Torma Bum as part of a national strategy for food security, domestic production, value addition and economic transformation. Those working the fields encounter something more immediate: water that must reach the crop, machines that must operate, roads that must carry the harvest, mills that must buy it and markets that must pay enough to justify planting again. Neither narrative is sufficient alone. Policy provides direction, investment provides capacity and technology offers new tools, but the field provides the evidence. The eventual verdict will be found in yields, costs, incomes, jobs, processing volumes and whether farmers and investors return for another season.
President Bio’s decision to make the journey into the fields brought that distinction into sharp relief. As a retired Brigadier General, he wanted to see the frontline for himself, and on this occasion the frontline was a rice field reached only after difficult terrain. It was a useful reminder that implementation is where every development promise becomes vulnerable to reality. Irrigation either carries water or it does not. Machinery either works or it does not. Roads either move the harvest or they do not. The field has no interest in the elegance of a strategy document; it responds to whether the system works.
The seed is in the soil.
We travelled through water and difficult terrain to reach a place where Sierra Leone’s agricultural ambitions were being tested by actual production. What we saw was encouraging, but it was not yet the final verdict. The Government has assembled a case around irrigation, mechanisation, infrastructure, technology and private investment, while the people working the land are left with the more demanding task of making those pieces function together. If the water keeps flowing, the machines keep working, the harvest reaches the mill, the mill reaches the market and farmers earn enough to plant again, Torma Bum will have demonstrated more than the potential of one rice producing area. It will have shown that a development promise can make the difficult journey from the capital, across the river and finally into the soil.