Sierra Leone: Could youth unemployment derail stability?
FREETOWN: In Koidu, the capital of Sierra Leone's easternmost Kono province, 26-year-old Sam heads to the town-centre each morning seeking daily contract work building roads or digging ditches for the local authorities.
The most he can hope to earn is US$2 a day. But most days no jobs are available so he hangs out with friends smoking marijuana.
“There's nothing to do here. If I could, I'd trade diamonds” he said, referring to the youths who get cash by illegally smuggling diamonds across the border with Guinea.
