Sierra Leone Company & Beneficial Ownership Directory

Analysis

What this data actually tells you about Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is a low-income West African economy with a GDP of approximately $7.2 billion and GDP per capita of about $814.6 in 2025, among the lowest in the world (World Bank, Sierra Leone Macro Poverty Outlook, April 2026). The currency is the Leone (SLE), redenominated on July 1, 2022 at a rate of 1,000 old leones to 1 new leone, with old notes fully demonetized by April 2024. As of September 2026 the leone traded at roughly SLE 22-25 per US dollar on the open market, reflecting continued depreciation since the redenomination. Real GDP growth was an estimated 4.4% in 2024 and 4.5% in 2025, driven by agriculture (under the government’s “Feed Salone” food-sovereignty program) and a pickup in wholesale/retail trade services, which offset softer industrial output, notably reduced gold, rutile and diamond production, including the closure of the country’s largest diamond mine in May 2025. The World Bank’s April 2026 outlook projects growth slowing to 4.0% in 2026 before rebounding to 4.7% in 2027, as higher energy and fertilizer costs linked to the Middle East conflict weigh on the economy. Inflation fell to a multi-decade low of 4.3% year-on-year in December 2025 (full-year 2025 average: 7.6%) on a stabilizing currency and lower food/energy import costs, but rebounded to 8.1% in February 2026 after a 14% pump-price increase in January, and to 10.83% by April 2026, with the World Bank projecting a 2026 average of 10.4%. The economy remains structurally narrow: growth is concentrated in mining (iron ore, rutile, bauxite, diamonds, gold) and agriculture, with a large informal trade and services sector; extreme poverty (the $3.00/day, 2021-PPP international line) stood at an estimated 50.9% in 2025, projected to rise to 51.2% in 2026 as renewed inflation squeezes households.

Sierra Leone’s major exports are iron ore, diamonds, rutile/titanium ores, bauxite, cocoa and coffee; cocoa was the fastest-growing of the top-10 export categories, up 182.7% between 2023 and 2024. China is overwhelmingly the dominant trade partner: of Sierra Leone’s roughly $1.56 billion in total 2023 exports, about $1.03 billion (66%) went to China, followed by the EU-27 (15%) and India (6%); a 2024-focused analysis found China alone absorbed 88% of Sierra Leone’s mineral exports that year. China was also the largest import supplier in 2023 ($611 million, led by rice, packaged medicines, cement, cars and stone-processing machinery), ahead of India ($274 million), the UAE ($101 million), the US ($93.6 million) and Turkey ($85.4 million). Net FDI inflows have held fairly steady at 3.3-3.9% of GDP across 2023-2026. The current account deficit narrowed sharply to an estimated 7.7% of GDP in 2025 (from 14.1% in 2024) on slower import growth and fiscal consolidation, but is projected to widen again to 8.2% of GDP in 2026 as Middle East-related import costs rise; gross international reserves rose from $345 million (2024) to $412 million (2025), though import cover remains critically low at 1.7 months. Sierra Leone is on a 38-month, $253 million IMF Extended Credit Facility approved in October 2024; the IMF completed the first and second ECF reviews in December 2025 (releasing about $79.8 million) and the third review plus a new Resilience and Sustainability Facility arrangement in June 2026 (a further $31.72 million).

Sierra Leone’s population was estimated at 8.8 million in 2025, with life expectancy at birth of 61.8 years (2023 data). More than 80% of the labor force operates in the informal sector — traders, artisans, market women and transport operators — a figure cited by Sierra Leone’s National Social Security and Insurance Trust in its 2025 push to design an Informal Sector Pension Scheme, whose draft policy blueprint was unveiled to stakeholders on May 13, 2025. On the political front, incumbent President Julius Maada Bio and the Sierra Leone People’s Party won the June/July 2023 general election with 56% of the presidential vote and 81 of 135 parliamentary seats; the result was contested by the opposition All People’s Congress, and tensions were subsequently defused via a national unity agreement between the two parties. Bio is constitutionally barred from a third term, and as of 2025-2026 both major parties were already positioning for the 2028 election, including public speculation about Freetown Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr as a possible APC candidate. In gender policy, the Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment Act, signed by President Bio, established a 30% quota for women in both appointed and elected government positions. On public health, President Bio declared a national public-health emergency over “kush” — a synthetic drug mixing cannabis, opioids and other substances — on April 5, 2024, after the country’s sole psychiatric hospital saw a roughly 4,000% increase in drug-related admissions since 2020; by an October 2025 program evaluation, treatment-bed capacity had expanded from 50 to 212 beds (+324%) across six facilities, with 847 health workers trained under the national response.