The dangerous cost of weakening local government in Sierra Leone

John Baimba Sesay: Sierra Leone Telegraph: 5 July 2026:

Sierra Leone must align local government mandates with adequate funding to protect service delivery, accountability and democratic participation (Photo above: Mayors of local councils).

The figures are staggering. Freetown City Council alone spends approximately Le1 billion (old Leones), equivalent to Le1 million (new Leones), every month on waste management. Yet waste collection is only one of its many responsibilities.

Like every other local council across Sierra Leone, the Council must pay staff salaries, maintain generators because of the country’s unreliable and epileptic electricity supply, provide essential administrative services, and respond daily to the growing needs of its communities.

The potential of local councils extends far beyond these routine obligations. From constructing public toilets and community markets to managing district and city primary schools, supporting school administrations, installing solar-powered water kiosks, and strengthening primary healthcare, councils have the capacity to transform local communities.

Ironically, some of these responsibilities also expose the country’s incomplete decentralization agenda. Persistent challenges surrounding land-use planning and the issuance of building permits demonstrate that key functions remain inadequately devolved, limiting councils’ ability to plan and manage urban growth effectively.

Yet for the past 24 months, local councils across Sierra Leone have reportedly received no devolved funding from the central government. Twenty-four months! 720 days! All without the financial transfers that are fundamental to the country’s decentralization framework.

The consequences are predictable and severe: weakened service delivery, delayed or unpaid salaries, stalled development projects, strained institutions, and, ultimately, communities deprived of the very benefits decentralization was intended to deliver.

Decentralization is not merely an administrative arrangement; it is a cornerstone of democratic governance. It brings government closer to the people, enables citizens to participate in decisions that affect their daily lives, and ensures that development priorities are shaped by local needs rather than distant bureaucracies.

The experience of the Freetown City Council illustrates this well.

When the Council was developing its Transform Freetown-Transforming Lives development roadmap, it undertook extensive community consultations to identify residents’ priorities. Access to safe and reliable water emerged as one of the most pressing concerns.

Guided by those consultations, the Council is investing significantly in expanding access to water by installing solar-powered water kiosks across underserved communities. That is decentralization at work: communities identifying their priorities and local government responding directly to them.

This was precisely the vision behind the reintroduction of local government in 2004 under the leadership of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah. Following Sierra Leone’s brutal civil war, decentralization became a national priority because it was recognised that excessive centralization had contributed significantly to the country’s instability.

As Paul Lansana Koroma of the Network Movement for Justice and Development (NMJD) argued in his article Decentralisation and Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone, when the country emerged from eleven years of devastating conflict in 2002, it had become clear that “exclusion, marginalisation and the over-centralisation of resources had been a critical part of the country’s problem.”

The country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission echoed that conclusion in its 2004 report. It found that students, young people and citizens in the provinces had been marginalised by political elites, while political and economic power became heavily concentrated in Freetown. Local government structures had virtually collapsed, and traditional authorities often functioned as extensions of central authority.

This concentration of power fuelled resentment, deepened regional inequalities and became one of the underlying causes of the conflict.

The restoration of local councils therefore represented far more than an institutional reform. It was a deliberate peacebuilding strategy designed to rebuild trust between citizens and the state while ensuring that no community would again be excluded from governance and development.

Councils were organised into wards. Each Ward Committee comprised the elected councillor(s), the Paramount Chief where a chieftaincy existed, and up to ten additional residents elected at a public meeting, at least five of whom had to be women.

This arrangement was intended to strengthen community participation and ensure that women’s voices were represented in local decision-making.

The Ward Development Committees (WDCs) therefore became the engines of grassroots participation. Working alongside local councils, they identified development priorities, mobilised communities, monitored projects and strengthened accountability.

Roads, schools, health centres, water systems and community facilities were rebuilt with local people actively participating in both planning and implementation.

Although decentralization was never without challenges, it made significant progress. The central government gradually devolved functions, personnel and financial resources, enabling councils to deliver services that directly improved people’s lives. Governance became more responsive because decisions were made closer to the communities they affected.

Today, however, many of those gains risk being reversed.

During a 2013 interview in China, then Mayor of Makeni, Mrs. Sunkarie Kabba Kamara, told me that devolution was introduced with good intentions to improve service delivery. However, she criticised some Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) for transferring functions while retaining control over personnel and other key responsibilities.

Without authority over staff or payroll, she argued, councils could not effectively supervise employees or hold them accountable.

In a 2016 article titled Revenue Mobilisation: Imperative for Councils to Perform Efficiently, I discussed the three pillars of decentralization: political, fiscal and administrative. Those pillars remain as relevant as they were then.

The continued failure to transfer devolved funds fundamentally undermines the very foundation of decentralization. Local councils cannot effectively discharge responsibilities that have been legally assigned to them if the resources required to fulfil those responsibilities are withheld.

The challenge has been further compounded by the introduction of the Proportional Representation (PR) electoral system, which fundamentally altered the architecture of grassroots representation.

With Ward Development Committees no longer functioning as they once did, community participation, local oversight and accountability have weakened considerably. This departs from the original spirit of decentralization, which sought to place citizens at the centre of local decision-making.

No council can consistently deliver quality public services without adequate and predictable financing. Own-source revenue remains limited for most councils and is insufficient to sustain essential services.

While some councils have attracted donor support and development partnerships through strong leadership, proactive engagement and effective advocacy, many others lack the institutional capacity or opportunities to do so. For these councils, even meeting basic operational costs has become an enormous challenge.

Devolution cannot exist only on paper. It must be reflected in practice. Assigning responsibilities without transferring the financial resources required to fulfil them is not genuine decentralization; it is merely the decentralization of obligations without the decentralization of capacity.

Supporting local councils should never be viewed as discretionary spending. It is a constitutional obligation, a governance necessity and a development imperative. Strong local councils deliver cleaner cities, better public health, stronger local infrastructure, greater citizen participation, more responsive public services and more balanced national development.

If Sierra Leone is serious about strengthening democracy, promoting equitable development and safeguarding the gains made since the end of the civil war, then the decentralization agenda must be revitalised. That revitalisation begins with the timely, predictable and consistent transfer of devolved funds to local councils.

Anything less weakens local governance, erodes public confidence and undermines one of Sierra Leone’s most significant post-war reforms.