Although he enjoyed the posting as drugs adviser, Penfold was keen to go back to Africa. He applied for a post as high commissioner in Namibia, but the post was downgraded and the application fell through. Penfold was then offered a posting to Sierra Leone. Although it was a lower-ranking post than the British Virgin Islands, Penfold was assured that taking the position would not adversely affect his career, so he accepted and, in March 1997, was appointed High Commissioner to Sierra Leone. He later stated that he believed his previous experience in Africa, particularly in Uganda, stood him in good stead for the events of his posting to Sierra Leone. The country was in the middle of a bloody civil war in 1997, and on 25 May—six weeks into Penfold's tenure—President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah's government was overthrown in a military coup. Although the coup itself did not come as a surprise, the timing caught the international community off-guard. As in Uganda a decade earlier, Penfold gathered all the high commission staff and their families under one roof.