Cross-Cutting Themes Throughout the Period in Sierra Leone and Beyond

Abstract

This chapter goes on to discuss the key themes that come out of the experience of UK involvement in Sierra Leone. In particular it raises a number of questions about the overall external coordination of reforms and the relative roles of donor and recipient in the process of security sector reform. The experience of Sierra Leone is a particularly good example of intervention over a long period of time and the lessons learned from the experience have broader implications for donor interventions in general and for the importance of institutional memory and knowledge transfer. Much recent literature on state-building in Afghanistan,1 for example, emphasises the importance of more technical knowledge in carrying out reform, whereas the experience of Sierra Leone over a period of time, we believe, shows that whilst technical knowledge is important, ‘reading more management textbooks’ is no substitute for experience on the ground or a full political engagement in the processes that are being affected. In other words, technical and managerial expertise is a necessary but not sufficient condition for effecting actual change.