Daily News  :: West Africa

Freetown - The World Bank will give $10mn to aid development in Sierra Leone and help the desperately poor post-war nation reform the way it is governed, the bank said on Monday.

"The grant will provide critical resources to support elements of the Government's Poverty Reduction Strategy," the bank said in the statement released in the capital of the west African nation, which in 2001 emerged from one of the most brutal civil wars in modern history.

It also aims to help the country's leaders boost progress in "governance, decentralisation of government, management of public resources and private sector-led economic growth", the statement said.

The World Bank's President Paul Wolfowitz said on a visit to Sierra Leone in July that its post-war recovery had been managed more successfully than in any other African nation, particularly in governance and use of donor funds.

But the former British colony is still desperately poor, ranking nearly bottom in the United Nations' 2006 human development index.

On Saturday a top European Union official in Sierra Leone said the EU would provide 165 million euros ($218mn) in development aid to the country over the next two years.-Sapa-AFP