Mariama Jalloh grasped the full extent of the crisis facing Sierra Leone in October 2022, when a woman came to speak to her in her organization’s offices in the northern Koinadugu district. Jalloh, a 30-year-old mother of two, is the head of Forward Women with Disability, an organization that advocates for women with a variety of conditions – blindness, leprosy, epilepsy, polio, amputations. It also provides literacy and basic business training, and employs about 25 women, making soap and processing cloth.
‘My children and I didn’t eat yesterday,’ the woman said. ‘We couldn’t afford it.’ Jalloh suggested the woman asked at her local shop to get some rice – Sierra Leone’s staple food – on credit. But she had already tried that, and the shop owner refused because she was also struggling as sales were dropping. Soon, other women came to Jalloh with similar stories.
