30 Figure 11 Sierra Leone food prices, 2017-2022 Source: 4 Food Price Monitoring and Analysis, FAO; https://fpma.fao.org/giews/fpmat4/#/dashboard/tool/domestic; accessed 5th September 2022 Note: 4 Prices are per kg in Sierra Leonean leons(old denomination), and from Freetown. Fuel prices had reportedly doubled in the past year, and people also expected that food prices would increase further with rising energy costs. Political and policy response There was limited coverage of the 4 July protests, and the beatings and sexual assaults by police reported by protesters were not widely reported internationally. Police had not granted permission for either the July or the August protests, which were thus deemed‘illegal’. The 10 August protests were met with a large-scale response from the government, which had prepared for military back-up for the police in anticipation of large-scale protests. The police were filmed using apparently live ammunition on protesters, who in turn threw stones and beat police. No final or authoritative figures have been provided, but reports estimated that at least 27 people, including six or eight police officers, were killed and dozens were injured. The government imposed a nationwide curfew, arrested over a hundred protesters, and shut down the internet. 15 In the week after the August 10 riots, ‘police and army convoys patrolled the busy commercial streets in the districts of Rokupa, Makeni and Kamakwie where Freetown ’ s protests took place. A tense calm settled, with ordinary life gradually returning’(Akinwotu 2022). The government claimed the protests were orchestrated by diaspora Sierra Leoneans to unseat the democratically elected government. Protestors chanted and held up signs declaring‘Bio[Sierra Leonean president Julius Maada Bio] must go’, and protests combined grievances about the cost of living with criticism of the government in power. National security coordinator Abdulai Caulker reportedly said the military deployment against the protesters was in response to 15 (Al Jazeera 2022a; Deutsche Welle 2022; Fofana and Inveen 2022; Douglas 2022; CNN 2022).