BISHOP PETERSON DEBUNKED A PROMINENT JOURNALIST ON THE TOPIC: ACADEMIC FIELD MASTERY IS A MEANS OF FINANCIAL SOPHISTICATION.
I laughed. Not because it didn’t sting a little, but because it exposed something I see all the time in conversations about education and income across Sierra Leone and Africa. We tend to equate a person’s financial outcome with the piece of paper we believe they should have. If you’re not earning the way we think you should, it must be because you’re missing a credential. It’s mythical, that belief. People lack credentials in our minds simply because they fail to fit the version of them we know. But life, especially here, doesn’t work that neatly.
I’ve spent enough time talking to graduates in Freetown, to traders in Kenema, to young agronomists trying to make agribusiness work in Port Loko, to know that mastering your area of study matters. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. If you can’t read a balance sheet, you won’t last long as a financial analyst. If you don’t understand epidemiology, no NGO will hand you a public health program to manage. In Sierra Leone, the degrees that consistently open doors to salaried work are the ones tied to real demand: Business Administration and Accounting, Nursing and Public Health, Agriculture and Agribusiness. Accounting graduates who add ACCA or CMA to their name walk into roles that top local salary charts. Public health specialists with skills in epidemiology get paid premium rates by donor-funded projects because the work is urgent and the skills are scarce. Mastery gets you in the room.
But the room is small, and the key to the door isn’t just your transcript.
Here’s what Putka and I both know, even if we frame it differently. The job market here isn’t producing formal sector jobs at the same rate it’s producing graduates. You can have first-class honors in Business Admin and still spend two years chasing internships, sending CVs, and hearing nothing back. That’s the reality of educated unemployment. Public sector jobs are attractive because they offer stability and a pension, so everyone wants them, and the queue becomes ridiculous. Private companies are growing, but not fast enough to absorb the number of people leaving universities and polytechnics every year.
In that gap, two things decide who eats and who waits. The first is practical experience. In Sierra Leone, internships are currency. I’ve read the data and I’ve seen it in practice: graduates use short, paid internships in the public sector, NGOs, or private firms to get their foot in the door. There’s a measurable path dependency there. If you get a public sector internship, you’re more likely to end up aspiring to and securing public sector work later. Programs like the Public Service Fellowship exist for exactly this reason, to give graduates technical and soft skills that make them employable immediately. Mastery without exposure is like having a car with no fuel. The engine is fine, but you’re not going anywhere.
The second is the ability to create your own lane. This is where the discourse gets uncomfortable for people like Putka who believe in the linear path: school, degree, job, money. In reality, a huge number of people in Sierra Leone and across Africa make money not by waiting for a job that matches their degree, but by building something that uses their skill, even if imperfectly. Vocational training graduates in similar contexts have employment or self-employment rates of about 80% within three months of finishing. Why? Because they’re solving immediate problems people will pay for. A graduate in Agriculture who understands agribusiness can negotiate better deals for farmers, reduce post-harvest losses, and get paid for it, whether or not they have a formal job title. An accounting graduate can keep books for five small businesses and earn more than an entry-level clerk. The market pays for outcomes, not just credentials.
And then there are the intangibles that no lecture hall can give you. Soft skills. Communication. The ability to show up on time, write a clear email, lead a small team, handle conflict. I’ve seen job postings for the Public Service Fellowship list these as requirements right alongside the degree. Community involvement and a track record of leadership count. Networks count. In a place where information moves through relationships as much as it moves through job boards, who knows you matters as much as what you know.
This is where the bigger picture for Africa comes in. Data from urban West Africa shows that returns to education are steep in formal public and private sector jobs. If you get in, your degree pays. But in self-employment, the returns are flat. The problem is, once you’re locked into informal self-employment, it’s hard to break back into the formal sector later. So the combination that works is mastery plus access. Mastery without access leaves you frustrated. Access without mastery leaves you exposed when the opportunity comes.
When I told Putka I found his view mythical, I wasn’t dismissing the value of a degree. I was pushing back on the idea that it’s the only thing that counts. I’ve met people with degrees who are broke and bitter, and people without them who are building real businesses and employing others. I’ve also met people who combined both, and those are usually the ones who move fastest.
So what does this mean if you’re a young person in Sierra Leone reading this and wondering what to do? It means treat your academic work seriously, but don’t treat it as the finish line. If you’re studying Accounting, get the ACCA qualification. If you’re in Public Health, learn the software and tools NGOs actually use. If you’re in Agriculture, spend time on a farm, not just in a classroom. Build something small while you’re still in school. Tutor, keep books, run a small poultry project, manage social media for a local business. Make yourself useful now, so when the opportunity shows up, you’re not starting from zero.
And if you’re like me, someone who didn’t complete the degree in the way Putka expected, don’t let that define your ceiling. The degree opens some doors. But the work you do, the problems you solve, the reputation you build, that opens others. I’ve learned more about money and value in the last three years of trying, failing, and trying again than I did in the two years I spent in a lecture hall. That doesn’t make the lecture hall useless. It makes it incomplete.
Putka’s point comes from a place of care. He sees too many young people drift without direction, and he knows that academic excellence is one of the few things that still commands respect and opportunity here. I respect that. But I also know that the young person who masters a market-relevant skill, gets practical experience, builds a network, and is willing to create their own opportunity will out-earn the person who only has the certificate.
Mastery is necessary. It gives you the qualification to earn money. But in Sierra Leone and most of Africa, it’s not sufficient by itself. The money comes when you combine what you know with what you can do, who you know, and your willingness to build when the formal path is blocked.
That’s the conversation I wish we had more of on platforms like Putka’s Online Lectures. Not just “get your degree,” but “once you have it, or even while you’re getting it, here’s how you turn it into income in the world as it is, not the world as we wish it was.” Because the students listening don’t just need motivation. They need a map that works on the ground they’re actually walking on.
And if you tell me your field, I’ll tell you exactly where the money is hiding in it right now in Sierra Leone.
Yours truly,
© Bishop Sahr Isaac Peterson
- Sierra Leone.
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