Country Managing Director (Bolloré Transport & Logistics)

Sierra Leone has a wonderful heritage of many firsts in Africa. The country has been experiencing growth for over a decade being the fastest growing economy in the world in 2013. What are the main comparative advantages of Sierra Leone within the West Africa Region?

The main advantages of Sierra Leone compare to other West Africa Regions are its natural harbour, which allows big modern ships in the port. Also, there is political and social stability in the country that allows us to invest here and we appreciate that very much.


The Ebola tragedy has had a big impact on the country and has put the economy stalling for over two years - How did this tragedy affect the transport sector and do you feel that the economy is recovering?

During the Ebola, some international companies left for security reason, which was not the case with us because we stayed with the people of Sierra Leone. We signed a long-term agreement and whenever we do that we commit ourselves to be with the country both in good times and in bad times. The economy was impacted badly and we were affected as well, but the situation is improving and as time goes by it will improve more. Our main target is to help the government of Sierra Leone improve the growth of the economy.


One of the main objectives of the president was the agenda for change and currently the agenda for prosperity in order to attract and diversify the foreign direct investment that comes to the country and boosts the private sector. Mining is really important in this country – What other sectors apart from transport do you consider as big potential?

There is a huge potential here, the tourism sector, agricultural sector, energy sector are all big potential areas. We do hope that our investment will assure and motivate potential investors and that Sierra Leone is going to be more attractive for investors. Our target is to show investors that Sierra Leone is safe and that the people are hospitable. There is religious tolerance and the different religions live peacefully as inter-marriages also take place. The country is stable both politically and socially and we do believe in the future of Sierra Leone.


Transport is one of the main sectors and can become the backbone of this growing economy because Sierra Leone has a huge potential for becoming a transhipment hub for several world regions – However there is still some remaining challenges, could you tell us about these challenges?

One challenge, we are facing today is the fact that we cannot accommodate big containers ships at the port but once we finish the expansion of the Freetown port, we are going to be able to accommodate ships of 6000 containers. We will have big ships coming from North America, South America, Europe, etc. These big ships have deep drafts and they need modern equipment for fast discharging. On the 1st September 2018, we will start operations on the Freetown terminal with new modern equipment and Sierra Leoneans will operate it as we are doing now. We have three cranes in the port and they are operated by Sierra Leoneans, which is one of our targets to create job opportunities as a way of helping the government to improve the economic growth of the country. Directly and indirectly, we are currently paying over 1,000 people, 99% of our suppliers are Sierra Leoneans; whatever we can find here locally we buy, unless we are obliged to go abroad.


What Infrastructure Sierra Leone needs to support Bolloré’s operations?

Yes, infrastructure is one of the Acts of Developments in the country particularly roads. If you want to have a successful port, then you need roads to deliver all containers to land locating countries like Guinea, Mali and Liberia. These are the countries we should be able to deliver containers and goods to that are discharged in the Freetown port.


Bolloré has been operating for years in Sierra Leone and the port extension seems to be a continuity of your previous operations. Would you give us a little bit of details about that port extension and how is it going to impact the country positively for the long-term period?

We signed with the government of Sierra Leone an agreement of extension of the Freetown port and what we intend to do is to expand it to about 270 meters and we are going to reclaim about 3.5 hectares of the storage area. We are going to create job opportunities for many Sierra Leoneans. We also buy materials that are available here for the project such as sand, cement, among many. Again, the houses our contractors are staying, the cars they rent, the drivers they employ, insurance company, taxes that we are paying, restaurants, hotels, all these are being affected positively because of our investment.


What are the other companies you are currently working with here in Sierra Leone?

We work with CMA-CGA, GRIMALDI, MAERSK, MSC and PIL. They are major players in the maritime transport worldwide.


What sort of commodities comes to the port?

Commodities such as flour, sugar and rice are the main commodities that come to the port.


What about the commodities that are exported? 

Besides the minerals exported, we also export small amount of coffee, cocoa and frozen fish. These are the main commodities that are exported from Sierra Leone.


Regarding the geography, you have other major ports that other ships can go to like Guinea or Abidjan that are already performing better – How do you plan to compete and what are your needs to be able to sustain your operations here?

We plan to perform our duties very well; we will focus on the time of discharging and loading in the port, which is the main target for many ship owners. When we took over the Freetown Port, eight (8) containers used to take an hour discharging where as today we have an average of 27 to 29 containers per hour. So we tripled the number of containers discharged per hour, which is very important for ship owners. Ships used to stay three days in the port but now they stay for just the day. In time to come with new cranes, new equipment, trained people, we are targeting over 40 containers per hour. Today we have 50,000 containers imported to Sierra Leone. The terminal presently takes about 120,000 containers but with the expansion of the port and the yard, we will have about 750,000 containers to store in the Freetown port.


Do you think there will be a need for a dry port in the city?

I will say I do not see today’s necessity for a dry port. We are going to have sufficient capacity to handle all containers on the seaport. Dry port is the synonym of double manipulation which of cause we are trying to reduce as well as the cost. It is important to reduce the operations cost and all other costs in other to be very competitive.


Bollore tend to do a lot of corporate social responsibility projects as they built sport facilities, movie theatres for the locals. Are they any of these operations and activities here?

Whenever we go to any country, we take it as our human and co-operate social responsibility, so yes we are doing it here as well. We help build schools, churches, we also help the physically challenged, the community in which we operate. We have a yearly budget for this. One of our latest corporate social responsibilities was when we dredged the Government Wharf (tar green) because the ferry was regularly grounded, so we dredged it as corporate social responsibility. We have also dredged the port of Freetown, it is a huge sum of money but it is worth it.


Sierra Leone Port Authority will have shares and stakes in this extension - Is the government involve in your capital?

Bolloré is an International Transparent Company so yes we associated with the government in our projects and they have shares of 20% in our company, which is a good partnership for everybody, and they can have access to all our deeds.


You have been all over Africa and have extensive experience in port management; you have been with Bolloré for years - since you have been in Sierra Leone what do you think you have accomplished and what are you most proud of as Country Manager of Bolloré?

Besides our projects, our biggest achievement is that we educate and train all our staffs. They are regularly on different trainings from our human resource, operational people, drivers, security, and every other person involved was on different seminars and training. We cannot do without people; the people are one of our biggest investments since we have to stay here. Presently, we are running all our operations with six (6) expatriates that is not even 1% of our staffs; the 99% are all Sierra Leoneans. We believe that we are doing the right thing and we will continue to train and educate people and together we will make Sierra Leone an economically attractive country for all investors.

These guys are very good but what I brought to them was the fact that they have to work seriously respecting international standards because for me respect and motivation of all our staffs is vital.


One message for our readers to come and invest in Sierra Leone – What would you like to tell them?

They should come because the country has lots of potential. We are investing and they should also come and invest to help the people and government of Sierra Leone to achieve their main target, which is growth of the economy in the country.