Sierra Leone’s President Ernest Koroma said Friday his country has signed a $190 million (144 million euro) deal with the Chinese Railway International Company to build a new international airport.
Speaking in the first parliamentary session since he and his party swept November elections, Koroma said the deal for what is being billed as the country’s biggest-ever infrastructure development, was signed on Thursday.
“I am pleased to inform the nation that as recently as yesterday, Sierra Leone signed an agreement for the construction of a new mainland airport at Mamama” which is 60 kilometres (40 miles) from the capital Freetown, said Koroma.
Aviation Minister Vandi Minah told the local Cotton Tree Network radio station: “The four year project will be the biggest infrastructure development undertaken in the country.”
Finance Minister Samuel Kamura, also speaking on the radio, said “$190 million dollars was needed as a loan concession” from the global construction giant which is a subsidiary of China Railway Group Limited (CREC).
“The airport construction could be the largest and most significant milestone in the history of Sino-Sierra Leone bilateral relations,” said Chinese Ambassador Kuang Weilin.
Sierra Leone’s only international airport is based in Lungi, eight miles across a river to the north of downtown Freetown, a former British airbase during the first and second world wars which became a commercial airport.
Visitors have to choose between a four hour road journey to the capital, a crossing in an aged ferry or faster water taxi. Helicopter transfers stopped in 2011, four years after 22 people, including the Togolese sports minister, died as a chopper crashed and burst into flames.
Construction is booming in the mineral rich but war-scarred west African nation a decade after the end of a brutal 11-year civil conflict. Iron ore exports are expected to help the economy grow by a massive 21 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.
S.Leone signs deal with Chinese firm to build new airport
