In 2023 I hosted a webinar for a friend. About 70 Sierra Leoneans joined, and all 70 of them stayed for two and a half hours. When we finally had to end the call, they still had more questions than answers.

That call is the reason the Sierra Leone Diaspora Investment Conference exists. Four editions later, from New Carrollton to London, with Freetown next, here is what it has taught me about the diaspora, about trust and about what it takes to move money home.

A gap no one was filling

The friend was Dr. Fouad Sheriff, founder of Cotton Tree Medical Group and a past VR&C client. He opened a string of pharmacies in Sierra Leone while still living in the United States, and friends kept asking him how he had done it. So he invited them, and others doing business at home, to a conversation, and asked me to host it.

What surprised me was not the turnout. It was how little these smart, successful professionals knew about doing business in Sierra Leone and the opportunities there. I live in the diaspora and work in Sierra Leone, so I see both sides every day. Someone needed to give people this information. I decided that someone would be us.

I was not sure anyone would come. In the early and mid-2000s there had been plenty of diaspora gatherings about investing at home, led mostly by a generation about a decade older than me. They kept asking the same questions, and eventually people got tired. By 2023 the diaspora calendar was full of parties and cultural events, but business and investment events had gone quiet for about a decade.

In October 2023, 216 people filled the room in New Carrollton, Maryland. They came from Texas, from Canada, and some flew in from the UK. It told me this was not only needed. It had to continue.

What I got wrong in year one

I did not publish a post-conference report. I still kick myself about it. A room of 216 people shared a year’s worth of questions, answers and leads, and we did not capture it.

Worse, I deleted the recording of the livestream. We have a highlight video and some B-roll, but nothing I can go back to in full.

We have fixed both. Every edition now has a report, all published on makesierraleonefamous.com, and this year we rebuilt the 2023 story from the program book, blog posts and press coverage into a retrospective. The lesson for anyone running a convening: the event lasts a day, but the record is what builds credibility for the next one.

From Maryland to London

After three editions in Maryland, in New Carrollton, Gaithersburg and Silver Spring, we took the conference to London in June 2026. More than 400 people came over two days.

London was never a gamble. Before the first conference, we surveyed the diaspora about where they wanted to meet. 708 people answered from around the world. Freetown came first and London second, so London was always on the map.

What made the jump work was partnership. The Office of the Vice President, which oversees Sierra Leone’s National Investment Board, co-presented the London conference with us through the National Investment Board. Their leadership rallied government leaders and gave them the resources to travel, so the diaspora could hear the pitch for Sierra Leone directly from the people responsible for it, and ask them questions face to face. I do not think London would have succeeded the way it did without them.

What diaspora investors actually need

This year we surveyed the diaspora again and asked why they do not invest, or do not invest more. The number one answer was trust. People do not trust the institutions, they do not think it is easy, and they expect that all that will happen is they will lose their money.

Part of that comes from the headlines. Every bad story out of Sierra Leone makes the diaspora pause. Part of it comes from how stories travel. When someone goes home and loses money, through a bad partner, corruption or their own mistakes in hiring, setup or product fit, they rarely say “these were the risks.” They say “I lost money in Sierra Leone,” and everyone hears it. When someone succeeds, the news does not travel at all.

It is not easy. I know that first-hand. I started my business in Sierra Leone in 2016, and a year later the company was effectively bankrupt. We went from three clients to none, with one client who refused to pay. One of my mistakes was hiring foreign staff I had to pay in dollars. Bringing in outside talent is fine in the short term, but unless you are a multinational, the only sustainable path is training a Sierra Leonean team to run your business. I changed the approach and stayed.

That is the real difference I see between those who succeed in Sierra Leone and those who do not. It is not luck or connections. It is tenacity. They stay the course. What investors need from us is the trusted information, partners and success stories that make staying the course feel possible.

Proof that it is working

The clearest sign is one conversation. At the London conference, Mariama Kamara, founder of Smiling Through Light, a past VR&C client and one of our speakers, met PaOusman Njie, Managing Director and CEO of Vista Bank Sierra Leone. They exchanged numbers. When Mariama was next in Freetown visiting her team, she went to see PaOusman at Vista. They are now working on access to credit for her business.

That is exactly what the conference is for: a room where networks turn into deals, capital and partnerships.

The second sign is bigger than us. Before 2023, almost no one was hosting business or investment conferences in Sierra Leone. Government held a business event in London from time to time, but very little happened at home. Since we started, the number of business conferences in and about Sierra Leone has grown sharply. People now understand this is needed.

Keeping it non-partisan with government in the room

We set the tone in how we curate the panels and how we ask the questions. We name the challenges, but we do not point fingers at the SLPP or the APC. The obstacles a diaspora business owner faces, the red tape, the bureaucracy, the administrative delays, exist no matter who is in power. They are economic, not political.

We are not there to score points for any party. We are there to solve the problems the diaspora faces in doing business at home and bringing capital to Sierra Leone. Because that is the agenda, we simply do not need to go there.

Why we are bringing it home in December

On 28 and 29 December 2026, the conference comes home to Freetown, at the Radisson Blu Mammy Yoko. Freetown topped that first survey in 2023, and December is the grand convening. Wherever Sierra Leoneans live, most of us come home in December. If you want to talk to the diaspora, talk to them when they are home.

Success starts with a packed room of 150 to 200 people, local business leaders and diaspora side by side. But the measure I care about comes after. I want the post-conference survey to tell us people discovered Sierra Leonean businesses they did not know existed, and are now reaching out to them as suppliers or partners, or planning site visits.

You cannot take someone from zero to a hundred in two days. Picture a spectrum. At one end: “I don’t trust Sierra Leone, nothing is possible.” In the middle: “I think I could start a business in Sierra Leone.” At the far end: “I’m bringing my money home.” If we move people along that line, wherever they start, that is success.

What I would tell another country

Think of your diaspora as a constituency. I call ours Sierra Leone’s 17th district. We have 16 districts today, and whatever redistricting brings, the diaspora deserves to be served like one of them. Ask what any good representative asks: What are their concerns? What do they care about? What do they need?

For the Sierra Leonean diaspora, the answer is clear. Most care deeply about home and want to invest. They do not know how, and they do not trust that they can. They are looking for partners, for capital and for a fair shot at government contracts, as they should be.

You do not need to be government to start this work, but you do need government as a partner. The diaspora wants to see and talk to its government. This year our partnership with the Office of the Vice President and the National Investment Board made that possible. Build those relationships with ministries and agencies early, and keep the diaspora’s needs at the center.

Four years in, I am more convinced than ever that the diaspora is not a crowd to be entertained. It is a constituency ready to build, if we give it the information, the partners and the trust to do it.