Country profile - SLE

Corruption in Sierra Leone

14 sub-national regions - 1995-2022. Latest country-level SCI: 42 (2022).

Grand: 35.9 Petty: 31.9 Latest observed: 2018

Sierra Leone: key corruption facts

The most corrupt region of Sierra Leone is Kambia (33.4/100), and the least corrupt is Kailahun (51/100), on a 0-100 scale where 0 is most corrupt and 100 is least. All 14 regions are ranked below.

  • In 2022, Sierra Leone's national Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) was 42/100, on a scale where 0 is the most corrupt and 100 the least corrupt.
  • Most corrupt region: Kambia (SCI 33.4/100, 2022).
  • Least corrupt region: Kailahun (SCI 51/100, 2022).
  • Grand corruption (SGCI): 35.9/100; petty corruption (SPCI): 31.9/100 (last directly observed in 2018).
  • Trend: Sierra Leone's SCI moved from 40/100 (1995) to 42/100 (2022).
  • Coverage: 14 regions, 1995–2022. Source: Subnational Corruption Database (Crombach & Smits, 2024, Nature Scientific Data), CC BY 4.0.

How Sierra Leone compares: SCD vs. the CPI and World Bank

The Subnational Corruption Index is scored 0–100 on the same orientation as Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (higher = cleaner). The difference: the CPI and the World Bank measure the perceptions of experts and business executives and report one national number, while the SCI is built from what ordinary households perceive and experience — and it breaks Sierra Leone into 14 regions.

Index Latest Scale Based on
Subnational Corruption Index (SCI) 42 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Households — perception & experience
Transparency International CPI 34 0–100 (100 = cleanest) Experts & business surveys
World Bank Control of Corruption -0.6 ≈ −2.5 to 2.5 Aggregated expert sources

Most recent year — SCI 2022, CPI 2022, CCI 2022. The SCD also publishes region-anchored SUB-CPI and SUB-CCI series so the CPI and World Bank measures can be read at the regional level.

SCI trajectory - 1995-2022

Country-level mean of the Subnational Corruption Index, averaged across all 14 regions. Higher values mean cleaner governance (0 = most corrupt, 100 = least corrupt).

45 36 1995 2022

Source: SCD v1.0 (Comprehensive Dataset). Years where the panel was filled by inter/extrapolation are included in the country mean.

Regions (14)

Each row is a sub-national region with its latest SCI score. Click into any row for the region's full time series.

# Region GDL code Years Latest SCI
1 Kambia SLEr102 1995-2022 33.4
2 Western Rural SLEr113 1995-2022 34.5
3 Bombali SLEr101 1995-2022 37.5
4 Port Loko SLEr104 1995-2022 37.6
5 Western Urban SLEr114 1995-2022 38.6
6 Koinadugu SLEr103 1995-2022 42.4
7 Moyamba SLEr111 1995-2022 42.5
8 Kenema SLEr107 1995-2022 42.7
9 Tonkolili SLEr105 1995-2022 43.1
10 Bonthe SLEr110 1995-2022 44
11 Kono SLEr108 1995-2022 45.9
12 Pujehun SLEr112 1995-2022 47.5
13 Bo SLEr109 1995-2022 47.8
14 Kailahun SLEr106 1995-2022 51

Download Sierra Leone

Per-country panel slice in CSV format. Columns: iso, country, gdl, region, year, sci. Direct dataset citations should reference the Figshare deposit (see How to cite).

Download SLE.csv