Abstract

Sierra Leone occupies a distinctive position in West Africa as a state navigating multiple transitions: from civil war to fragile peace, from resource extraction to potential beneficiation, and from polarized politics to institutional consolidation. This paper examines the country’s contemporary economic and political status through analysis of official government documents, international financial institution assessments, and regional diplomatic engagements from 2024-2026. The research reveals a nation simultaneously demonstrating meaningful democratic consolidation—evidenced by voluntary adherence to term limits and constitutional reform—while confronting severe structural economic constraints including unsustainable debt, inadequate domestic revenue mobilization, and vulnerability to commodity price volatility. Under its chairmanship of ECOWAS, Sierra Leone has amplified its regional influence by framing security challenges through the interconnected lens of governance, climate adaptation, and economic integration. However, the persistent gap between the country’s abundant natural resource endowments and the limited developmental returns for its citizens remains the central contradiction of its political economy. This paper argues that Sierra Leone’s status in West Africa is defined by this fundamental paradox: a consolidating democracy and rising regional diplomatic actor whose economic foundation remains precariously dependent on extractive industries that have historically delivered insufficient benefits to the population.

Introduction

Sierra Leone, a nation of approximately 8.5 million people on the coast of West Africa, has long confounded observers with the striking incongruity between its natural wealth and human development outcomes. Endowed with the world’s highest-grade rutile deposits, alluvial diamonds of exceptional quality, significant iron ore reserves, gold, and bauxite—not to mention fertile agricultural land and abundant marine resources—the country nonetheless ranks 181st out of 191 countries on the Human Development Index. This contradiction is not merely statistical but existential, shaping both domestic politics and the country’s role within the West African subregion.

Since the end of a brutal eleven-year civil war in 2002, Sierra Leone has undertaken parallel projects of post-conflict reconstruction and democratic consolidation. The trajectory has been neither linear nor guaranteed; the country has weathered Ebola epidemics, severe macroeconomic shocks, and recurrent political tensions. Yet as of early 2026, Sierra Leone presents a complex tableau: a government pursuing ambitious constitutional reform while firmly rejecting third-term entrenchment; an economy showing signs of stabilization alongside persistent structural fragility; and a diplomatic profile elevated through its chairmanship of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

This paper examines the contemporary economic and political status of Sierra Leone through three analytical lenses: first, the state of democratic governance and institutional development; second, the structure and performance of the national economy; and third, the country’s regional role and diplomatic positioning. Drawing primarily on official government communications, World Bank assessments, and regional diplomatic records from 2024-2026, the analysis prioritizes verifiable institutional sources while critically engaging with civil society perspectives. The central argument advanced is that Sierra Leone’s status in West Africa is characterized by a fundamental paradox: political and institutional consolidation proceeds unevenly alongside economic arrangements that have yet to deliver equitable benefits from the country’s substantial resource endowments.

Part I: Political Status and Democratic Consolidation

The Third-Term Question and Constitutional Credibility

In January 2026, Minister of Information and Civic Education Chernor Bah made a noteworthy assertion: for the first time in Sierra Leone’s contemporary political history, the country was “not preoccupied with debates around a third presidential term”. This declaration, made during a government press conference on constitutional reform, invites examination not merely as political communication but as an indicator of institutional development.

The significance becomes apparent through regional comparison. In West Africa, where presidential term limit violations have triggered coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea, and where constitutional manipulation remains the primary mechanism for executive entrenchment, Sierra Leone’s position is genuinely distinctive. President Julius Maada Bio, who secured re-election in 2023 with 56 percent of the vote, has repeatedly and publicly foreclosed any possibility of seeking a third term. This commitment has been articulated not as personal preference but as institutional principle, encoded through the ongoing constitutional review process.

The Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Alpha Sesay, has carefully situated the current constitutional reform within a lineage extending back to the 1999 Lomé Peace Accord and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report. This framing is significant: it positions the 2025-2026 constitutional review not as the initiative of any single administration but as the fulfillment of a twenty-seven-year national obligation. By invoking the Peter Tucker Committee (established under President Kabbah) and the Justice Cowan Committee (established under President Koroma), the government constructs constitutional reform as trans-partisan inheritance rather than partisan instrument.

The technical content of the proposed reforms reinforces this interpretation. The recommended reduction of the presidential election threshold from 55 percent to 50 percent plus one, the introduction of independent candidacy, and the proposed adoption of Proportional Representation for parliamentary elections represent meaningful institutional changes rather than cosmetic adjustments. The Proportional Representation proposal is particularly notable; the Attorney General documented savings of approximately Nle20 million (approximately $840,000) between 2023 and 2025 through avoided by-elections, with these funds redirected to education, health, and agriculture. This transparency regarding fiscal implications of electoral system design represents an unusually explicit articulation of governance trade-offs.

However, sober assessment requires acknowledging what remains unresolved. The constitutional review process has been protracted, with the Justice Cowan Committee submitting its report in 2017 and the first government White Paper issued the same year. Modifications introduced under the current administration—incorporating justiciable rights to women’s rights, healthcare, and education—are substantively progressive but procedurally unilateral. Civil society organizations, represented at the January 2026 press conference by the Young Women in Governance Network, continue to advocate for clearly defined women’s rights provisions including a 30 percent quota and pay equity guarantees. The eventual referendum, when scheduled, will test whether the extensive consultation process—over 10,000 national consultations, 150 position papers, 80 expert engagements—has produced genuine consensus or merely documented participation.

Post-Election Stability and the Limits of Elite Bargains

The political settlement following the June 2023 general elections provides important context for understanding Sierra Leone’s current political status. The election results, which gave President Bio 56 percent of the vote and granted the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) 81 parliamentary seats against the All People’s Congress (APC)’s 54 seats, were contested by the opposition. Post-election tensions posed sufficient risk to national stability to require intervention by the African Union, ECOWAS, and the Commonwealth.

The resulting “Agreement for National Unity,” signed in October 2023, represents the latest iteration of Sierra Leone’s post-conflict tradition of elite accommodation. Such agreements occupy an ambiguous position in the country’s governance architecture: they have demonstrated efficacy in de-escalating immediate crises and preventing backsliding into widespread violence, yet they also risk institutionalizing extra-constitutional negotiation as the default mechanism for resolving political disputes. The 2023 agreement has, to date, maintained peace, but its existence alongside—rather than within—the formal constitutional order highlights the incomplete institutionalization of Sierra Leone’s democracy.

World Bank assessment notes that the current Parliament, unlike its predecessor which contained four political parties and independents, is now a two-party legislature. This consolidation may enhance legislative efficiency but raises questions about representation and the narrowing of political space. The government’s proposed adoption of Proportional Representation, should it survive the referendum process, would represent a structural response to this concern by lowering the effective threshold for minor party and independent representation.

Governance Indicators and Institutional Performance

Systematic assessment of Sierra Leone’s governance performance requires acknowledgement of mixed indicators. The Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) conducted by the World Bank notes that despite a stable aggregate score, “essential services must be strengthened for inclusive and sustainable growth”. This diplomatic phrasing masks substantial implementation deficits across multiple sectors.

The World Bank’s Country Partnership Framework for FY21-FY26, extended through Performance and Learning Review adjustments in 2024, identifies three focus areas: sustainable growth and accountable governance; human capital acceleration; and economic diversification. The inclusion of governance as a cross-cutting theme across all three pillars—alongside gender and technology—reflects donor consensus that institutional weakness constitutes the primary constraint on Sierra Leone’s development. The $1 billion portfolio of eighteen active projects, distributed across infrastructure (32 percent), agriculture and urban development (30 percent), financial inclusion and governance (23 percent), and social sectors (15 percent), represents substantial external investment in institutional capacity. Yet the persistence of governance indicators in the lower quintile of global rankings suggests the limitations of project-based approaches to systemic institutional reform.

Part II: Economic Structure and Development Constraints

The Mineral Economy: Endowment Without Entitlement

On February 10, 2026, at the Mining Indaba conference in Cape Town, Ecobank Sierra Leone announced two major financing transactions that illuminate both the possibilities and persistent limitations of Sierra Leone’s economic model. The first, concluded with Sierra Rutile Limited (SRL), finances the acquisition and relocation of the Kwale Mineral Sands Processing Plant from Kenya to Sierra Leone to support development of the Sembehun Project, one of the world’s largest and highest-grade rutile deposits. The second provides a US$25 million financing package to Meya Mining Limited for advanced diamond processing equipment and associated infrastructure.

These transactions are significant for several reasons. They demonstrate the maturation of Sierra Leone’s domestic financial sector, with Ecobank Sierra Leone leading complex, risk-sharing arrangements traditionally dominated by international lenders. They exemplify intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) framework, relocating existing industrial assets from Kenya rather than importing new equipment from outside the continent—reducing capital costs, carbon emissions, and project timelines. They are projected to create and sustain more than 400 direct jobs with majority local sourcing, and to stimulate domestic supply chains through local payment flows.

Yet these same transactions, for all their genuine achievement, operate within an extractive framework that Minister of Finance Sheku Ahmed Fantamadi Bangura publicly characterized in November 2025 as failing to deliver “equitable benefits for the people of Sierra Leone”. The Minister’s presentation to the FY2026 Budget National Policy Hearing included a devastating quantitative summary: over the past six years, mineral exports valued at $4 billion generated only $187 million in government revenue—4.6 percent. In 2023 alone, extractive exports reached $1.2 billion while government revenue stood at $48 million, or 4 percent.

This disconnect between export value and fiscal return constitutes the central political economy challenge facing Sierra Leone. The problem is not absence of resources but the terms and mechanisms of their extraction. Current arrangements, inherited from the post-confralict reconstruction period when attracting any foreign investment was prioritized over optimizing fiscal terms, have created a structure in which substantial wealth exits the country while leaving limited fiscal space for development expenditure. The Minister’s proposed remedies—state commercial participation in mining through a Mineral Wealth Fund, enhanced digitalization of tax administration, rationalization of tax exemptions—represent incremental rather than structural reform. Whether such measures can substantially alter the 4 percent revenue capture rate remains unproven.

Macroeconomic Trajectory: Stabilization Without Transformation

Sierra Leone’s macroeconomic performance in 2024-2026 presents a narrative of qualified stabilization against a challenging external backdrop. World Bank data indicates growth slowed to 4.4 percent in 2025 from 5.7 percent in 2023, primarily attributable to declining global iron ore prices and consequent mining sector underperformance. This vulnerability to single-commodity price fluctuations—reminiscent of the 2014-2016 iron ore price collapse that precipitated severe fiscal crisis—underscores the persistent lack of economic diversification.

More encouraging indicators exist beneath the aggregate figures. Agricultural growth recovered in 2025, buoyed by improved harvests supported by the government’s flagship “Feed Salone” program. Services sector rebounded as inflationary pressures moderated. The Ministry of Finance reported single-digit inflation of 6.45 percent in July 2025, attributing this to exchange rate stability, moderate global food and energy prices, improved domestic food production, and tightened monetary policy supported by fiscal consolidation. The fiscal deficit is projected to narrow to 4.2 percent in 2025 from 5.6 percent in 2024.

These improvements, while welcome, occur within a structural context that severely constrains developmental possibilities. Sierra Leone’s public debt-to-GDP ratio stood at 48.9 percent in 2024, with the total debt stock continuing to increase. The World Bank assessment is unambiguous: “debt remains at high risk of distress, requiring stronger and more credible expenditure measures”. The IMF’s approval in October 2024 of a 38-month arrangement with requested access of approximately $248.5 million, accompanied by an immediate disbursement of $46.6 million, provides programmatic support but also imposes fiscal consolidation conditionalities that limit counter-cyclical expenditure.

The external environment compounds domestic constraints. Minister of Planning and Economic Development Madam Kenyeh Ballay, addressing the FY2026 budget hearings, noted that “the international financing landscape is changing drastically” and that “efficient development systems are declining”. This is diplomatic language for a structural shift: traditional development assistance is contracting while private capital flows remain concentrated in extractive sectors. For the 2026 fiscal year, the government has announced there will be no funding for new capital projects, with all resources directed to completing existing commitments.

Domestic Revenue Mobilization: Necessity and Innovation

The conjunction of declining aid, constrained borrowing capacity, and persistent development needs has concentrated policy attention on domestic revenue mobilization to an unprecedented degree. Vice President Mohamed Juldeh Jalloh’s intervention at the FY2026 budget hearings emphasized digitalizing tax administration to “enhance compliance and reduce leakages,” broaden the tax base, rationalize exemptions, and “invest in technologies to reduce human interactions in revenue collection”.

The Ministry of Finance’s 2026 policy framework articulates a two-track strategy: enhancing traditional domestic revenue sources through technology-enabled tax administration, while exploring “innovative strategies on climate finance, carbon trading, debt swapping, and state commercial participation in mining of natural resources through the Mineral Wealth Fund”. This represents a significant expansion of the fiscal policy toolkit, though each component carries substantial implementation challenges.

Carbon trading and climate finance mechanisms remain nascent globally, with limited track record of delivering predictable, substantial revenue streams for developing countries. Debt swapping requires willing creditors and complex financial engineering. State commercial participation in mining requires both capital and technical expertise that Sierra Leone currently lacks. The policy direction is appropriate, but the gap between aspiration and operational capacity remains substantial.

Sectoral Performance: Agriculture and Fisheries

Agriculture and fisheries, sectors employing the majority of Sierra Leoneans, present both the clearest evidence of recent progress and the most sobering illustration of unrealized potential. The “Feed Salone” program, the government’s flagship agricultural initiative, contributed to improved crop harvests and agricultural growth recovery in 2025. The World Bank’s Smallholder Commercialization and Agribusiness Development Project exceeded its target, reaching 143,556 direct beneficiaries, 43 percent of whom are women.

The fisheries sector demonstrated tangible revenue improvement, with Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources Princess Dugba reporting revenues of Nle163 million in 2025, up from Nle150 million in 2024. The ministry also announced the February 2026 closed season for artisanal fisheries, an essential conservation measure for stock sustainability.

Yet these sectoral improvements occur within an economy where the majority of citizens remain engaged in subsistence agriculture, food insecurity persists despite agricultural potential, and the gap between sectoral employment and sectoral contribution to GDP reflects minimal value addition. The “Feed Salone Strategy for the Fisheries and Marine Resources Sectors,” a ten-year roadmap released in May 2025, aims to transform Sierra Leone into “a regional leader in sustainable fisheries and aquaculture”. This ambition is not unrealistic—Sierra Leone’s marine resources are substantial and its geographic position favorable—but it will require investment, regulatory capacity, and enforcement mechanisms that remain underdeveloped.

Part III: Regional Status and Diplomatic Positioning

ECOWAS Chairmanship: Opportunity and Burden

President Bio’s assumption of the chairmanship of the Economic Community of West African States places Sierra Leone in an unusual position of regional diplomatic leadership. For a small economy confronting substantial domestic challenges, the chairmanship offers both opportunity and burden: opportunity to shape regional agenda and elevate national profile; burden of substantial time, attention, and resource demands on a limited executive capacity.

The manner in which President Bio has exercised the chairmanship reveals deliberate strategic choices. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, he used the platform to critique African leaders for “guarding our sovereignty, using the boundaries to separate us instead of using them to unite us towards economic prosperity”. This framing—borders as obstacles rather than assets—directly challenges the mercantilist assumptions underlying much regional integration discourse. His announcement of planning for a West African economic summit focused on the private sector, aimed at “identifying practical steps to break down borders so businesses can operate freely,” moves from critique to proposed mechanism.

The Davos address also articulated a sophisticated diagnosis of Africa’s structural disadvantage in global capital markets. President Bio noted that mobilizing foreign capital is increasingly difficult due to concerns about Africa’s investment climate and profit repatriation, even as “foreign investors continued to seek access to the continent’s resources”. His prescription—strengthening continental institutions such as the Africa Finance Corporation and Afreximbank to provide alternatives to extra-continental capital—aligns with the African Continental Free Trade Area’s institutional development agenda.

Security Governance and Regional Stabilization

President Bio’s most substantive regional engagement has been in the security domain. Speaking at the ECOWAS High-Level Consultative Conference on Regional Cooperation and Security in Accra on January 30, 2026, he delivered a comprehensive analysis of West Africa’s deteriorating security situation that warrants careful examination as a statement of Sierra Leone’s regional doctrine.

The diagnosis is unsparing: terrorism and violent extremism “have outpaced existing responses,” armed groups operate across borders “with increasing coordination and brutality,” and “fragmented and reactive approaches have weakened the region’s collective capacity to respond effectively”. The prescription is equally clear: intelligence sharing, border management, logistics, and surveillance must be treated as “essential components of regional security, not optional measures.” Existing mechanisms—the Multinational Joint Task Force, the Accra Initiative, ECOWAS early warning frameworks—require “better alignment and resourcing”.

What distinguishes President Bio’s security discourse is its systematic integration of non-kinetic dimensions. His emphasis on “governance, inclusive development, and social cohesion” as essential to preventing radicalization, his explicit linkage of climate change—”desertification, food insecurity, and displacement”—to rising instability, and his invocation of Sierra Leone’s post-conflict experience in “rebuilding trust between citizens and the state through education, economic opportunities, especially for young people and women, and strong, accountable institutions” collectively articulate a security doctrine substantially more sophisticated than the prevailing militarized counter-terrorism paradigm.

The reference to United Nations Security Council Resolution 2719, and the call for its “full and timely implementation in a manner that reinforces, rather than duplicates, African-led security mechanisms,” indicates engagement with the technical dimensions of peacekeeping financing reform. This is not merely declaratory diplomacy but substantive participation in the institutional architecture of regional security governance.

The AfCFTA and Economic Integration

Sierra Leone’s engagement with the African Continental Free Trade Area, as evidenced by the Ecobank Sierra Rutile transaction, provides a concrete case study of the country’s approach to regional economic integration. The relocation of processing plant assets from Kenya to Sierra Leone under AfCFTA auspices exemplifies the “intra-African trade” that the agreement’s architects envisioned. It is notable that this transaction was structured and led by African financial institutions—Ecobank Sierra Leone with support from Ecobank Ghana—without traditional involvement of extra-continental lenders.

This model addresses two constraints simultaneously: it reduces capital costs and carbon emissions by utilizing existing continental assets rather than importing new equipment, and it demonstrates the capacity of African banks to “structure and lead complex, risk-sharing deals that have traditionally been dominated by international lenders”. For Sierra Leone, which seeks both to develop its mining sector and to capture greater value from its mineral endowments, this financing model offers a potential pathway that reduces dependence on extra-continental capital while building domestic financial sector capacity.

Wamkele Keabetswe Mene, AfCFTA Secretary-General, speaking alongside President Bio at Davos, warned that without accelerated market integration, Africa “will remain a continent of potential and may never realise it”. His characterization of Africa’s fragmentation—42 currencies, restricted movement of 1.4 billion people, a $3.4 trillion economy contributing less than 3 percent to global trade—captures both the scale of the challenge and the magnitude of opportunity. Sierra Leone’s role in advancing the AfCFTA implementation agenda, both through the Ecobank transaction and through President Bio’s regional advocacy, represents alignment between national economic interest and continental integration objectives.

Part IV: The Development Paradox

Critical Perspectives and the Accountability Gap

Any assessment of Sierra Leone’s status that relies exclusively on official government and international financial institution sources would be incomplete without engagement with critical civil society perspectives. The Pan Africa News Agency’s April 2025 assessment, published on the 64th anniversary of independence, articulates a counter-narrative of “unfulfilled promises and lost potential” that commands attention not because it is necessarily more accurate than official accounts, but because it reflects widespread citizen perception.

The critical assessment identifies “systemic failures” across multiple domains: unreliable electricity with “daily blackouts in Freetown,” limited access to clean water “despite abundant rainfall,” a “fragile healthcare system struggling with basic services,” persistent poverty affecting over 50 percent of the population, and “high youth unemployment driving migration”. The comparison with peer countries that gained independence at similar chronological moments—Botswana, Mauritius, Rwanda—is not developed in analytical depth but functions rhetorically to underscore perceived governance failures.

The characterization of President Bio’s tenure as facing “criticism over economic hardship” while the country endures “a legacy of unfulfilled promises” may underestimate the structural constraints inherited and the modest but genuine progress documented in previous sections. However, the gap between the government’s development narrative and citizens’ lived experience is real and consequential. The 4.6 percent revenue capture from mineral exports is not merely a fiscal statistic; it represents schools not built, roads not paved, clinics without medicines, and young people without employment opportunities. The disconnect between substantial resource extraction and minimal visible development infrastructure fuels the disillusionment that civil society voices articulate.

The Central Contradiction

Sierra Leone’s status in West Africa is defined by a central contradiction that this paper has traced across political, economic, and regional domains. In the political domain: a government that voluntarily adheres to term limits and pursues constitutional reform, yet presides over an institutional apparatus that consistently underdelivers basic services. In the economic domain: a nation whose financial sector can structure complex mining finance transactions and attract substantial investment, yet captures only 4 percent of the value of its exported minerals. In the regional domain: a small state exercising influential diplomatic leadership through ECOWAS chairmanship, yet unable to translate regional influence into accelerated domestic transformation.

This contradiction is not merely analytical—it is the central political fact around which Sierra Leone’s future will be determined. The question facing the country is whether the current trajectory of incremental institutional improvement and modest economic stabilization can eventually generate sufficient resources and capacity to address the substantial development deficits documented above, or whether structural transformation requires more fundamental reordering of the political economy.

Conclusion

Sierra Leone in early 2026 presents a picture of genuine but incomplete consolidation across multiple domains. The democratic political system has demonstrated institutional resilience, most notably through the unambiguous and repeated foreclosure of third-term presidential ambitions. Constitutional reform, though protracted, proceeds along a path anchored in long-standing national commitments rather than partisan expedience. Regional diplomatic leadership has been exercised with strategic coherence, articulating a security doctrine that integrates governance, development, and climate adaptation alongside kinetic responses.

Yet these political and diplomatic achievements rest on an economic foundation of persistent fragility. The mineral wealth that has attracted $4 billion in exports over six years has delivered only $187 million in government revenue—a 4.6 percent capture rate that cannot fund the educational systems, healthcare infrastructure, and economic diversification the country urgently requires. Public debt remains at high risk of distress. Traditional development assistance is declining. New capital projects have been suspended for fiscal year 2026. The government’s own policy pronouncements acknowledge that the current extractive model “has not delivered equitable benefits for the people of Sierra Leone.”

The paradox of Sierra Leone’s status in West Africa is that it has achieved meaningful democratic consolidation and elevated regional influence while the fundamental terms of its integration into global commodity markets remain essentially unreformed. The country exports rutile to aerospace manufacturers and diamonds to international markets, but cannot guarantee reliable electricity to its capital city. It chairs the Economic Community of West African States while half its population lives below the poverty line. Its financial sector demonstrates capacity to structure complex cross-border transactions while the national budget cannot fund new development projects.

Resolving this contradiction is the central challenge of the next political epoch. The policy instruments are increasingly well-articulated: state commercial participation in mining, digitalized tax administration, rationalized exemptions, innovative climate finance mechanisms, enhanced value retention through downstream processing. Whether these incremental measures can cumulatively achieve structural transformation, or whether more fundamental reordering of the extractive compact is required, remains the unsettled question at the heart of Sierra Leone’s development prospects. The country’s friends—regional partners, international financial institutions, bilateral donors—can support but cannot resolve this question. That work belongs to Sierra Leoneans themselves.

References

Government of Sierra Leone, Ministry of Information and Civic Education. (2026, January 28). “Government Reaffirms Commitment to Constitutional Reform, Rejects Third-Term Agenda.” https://moice.gov.sl/government-reaffirms-commitment-to-constitutional-reform-rejects-third-term-agenda/

Government of Sierra Leone, Ministry of Finance. (2025, November). “Minister of Finance Outlines Innovative Sources of Domestic Revenue Generation at the FY2026 Budget National Policy Hearing.” https://mof.gov.sl/minister-of-finance-fy2026-budget/

Government of Sierra Leone, Ministry of Information and Civic Education. (2026, January 27). “Government Weekly Press Conference, MoICE.” https://moice.gov.sl/government-weekly-press-conference-moice/

Government of Sierra Leone, State House. (2026, January 30). “Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio Calls For Strengthening Regional Cooperation And International Support To Enhance Peace And Security In West Africa.” https://statehouse.gov.sl/2026/01/30/sierra-leones-president-julius-maada-bio-calls-for-strengthening-regional-cooperation-and-international-support-to-enhance-peace-and-security-in-west-africa/

Pan Africa News Agency. (2025, April 27). “Sierra Leone at 64: A Legacy of Unfulfilled Promises and Lost Potential.” https://panafricanewsagency.com/sierra-leone-at-64-a-legacy-of-unfulfilled-promises-and-lost-potential/

Pulse of Africa. (2026, January 30). “Sierra Leone’s President Bio Calls for Stronger Regional Cooperation to Boost West Africa Security.” https://pulseofafrica.info/news/1857

Sierra Leone Ministry of Finance. (2026, February 10). “Ecobank backs Sierra Leone mining growth.” African Review. https://africanreview.com/mining/ecobank-backs-sierra-leone-mining-growth

World Bank. (2025, October 6). “Sierra Leone Overview.” https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/sierraleone/overview

World Economic Forum. (2026, January 22). “Sierra Leone’s President Urges Africans To Use Borders For Economic Prosperity At Davos.” Bernama. https://www.bernama.com/en/world/news.php?id=2514978