Sewa News Stream

Can Rapaport's vision of "Tikkun Olam" truly stand up against China's Belt and Road Initiative or the influence of a Dutch drug lord in Sierra Leone?  In 2017, artisanal miners from a small hamlet discovered a 709-carat diamond, later dubbed the Sierra Leone Peace Diamond. This village and the surrounding area lacked clean water, electricity, schools, health facilities, roads, or bridges. The Rapaport Group announced that for the first time, millions of dollars from the sale of the Peace Diamond will go toward providing vital infrastructure and improving the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. On March 12, 2025, the Rapaport Group announced its sixth trade mission to Sierra Leone . Serving more than 20,000 clients in over 121 countries, the Rapaport Group will lead an international delegation of diamond dealers, jewelers, and industry leaders on an immersive journey from May 4 to May 9, 2025. This trip aims to provide firsthand exposure to artisanal dia...

Sierra Leone's capital Freetown has tripled the number of safe burials of Ebola victims in the past week and the challenge now is to expand that coordination across the country, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told Reuters on Monday. Power is visiting to see how the world is failing in its response to the epidemic, Reuters said, "Seeing them turn a 30 percent safe burial rate in Freetown into a 98 percent safe burial rate is a tribute to a combination of top down presidential leadership, finally the kind of coordination that's been needed throughout and a willingness on the part of Sierra Leoneans, notwithstanding the stigma, to step forward and be part of burial teams," Power told Reuters. According to the report, Britain has so far committed several hundred million dollars, some of which is being used to build treatment beds, community care centers, train health care workers and burial teams. About £10 million ($18.2m) of the latest £80m ...

There’s an old legend about a mayor of Freetown who paid a visit to Gambia to meet with the mayor of Banjul. Two days into his stay, Freetown’s mayor thought that most people in Banjul knew somebody's name in his city 500 miles away. Everywhere he went, he ran into someone who had family or friends in Freetown. Historical, trade, and cultural ties go back centuries between the two African countries. So it came as a bit of a shock when the Gambia announced in April that all flights from Sierra Leone (as well as Guinea and Liberia) to Banjul had been cancelled to prevent the spread of Ebola. The decision left passengers, mainly traders travelling to Banjul, stranded, while Sierra Leone’s government was still in talks with Banjul. “Given the severity of the Ebola virus disease, I support the decision,” said Felice Oluremi Lawrence. They were “safety measures taken by the government of Gambia to prevent the virus from entering its borders,” she said. Sierra Leonean born Felic...