page_title: Sierra Leone
section_title: Geography and climate
hierarchical_section_title: Sierra Leone / Geography and climate
context_page_description: Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, informally Salone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea to the northeast. Sierra Leone has a tropical climate with a diverse environment ranging from savanna to rainforests, a total area of 71,740 km² and a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. The capital and largest city is Freetown. The country is divided into five administrative regions which are subdivided into sixteen districts.
  Sierra Leone achieved independence from Britain on 27 April 1961, led by Milton Margai, who became the country's first Prime Minister. Sierra Leone held its first general elections as an Independent nation in May 1962, and Margai's Sierra Leone People's Party and its allies won the vast majority of seats in Parliament. Under the leadership of Albert Margai, who was elected by parliament as Prime Minister in 1964 after the death of his brother Milton Margai, SLPP narrowly lost the 1967 Sierra Leone parliamentary election to the main opposition party the All People's Congress, led by Siaka Stevens, an outspoken critic of the SLPP government.
context_section_description: Sierra Leone is located on the southwest coast of West Africa, lying mostly between latitudes 7° and 10°N (a small area is south of 7°), and longitudes 10° and 14°W. The country is bordered by Guinea to the north and east, Liberia to the southeast, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west and southwest.
  Sierra Leone has a total area of 71,740 km² (27,699 sq mi), divided into a land area of 71,620 km² (27,653 sq mi) and water of 120 km² (46 sq mi). The country has four distinct geographical regions. In eastern Sierra Leone the plateau is interspersed with high mountains, where Mount Bintumani reaches 1,948 m (6,391 ft), the highest point in the country. The upper part of the drainage basin of the Moa River is located in the south of this region.
  The centre of the country is a region of lowland plains, containing forests, bush and farmland, that occupies about 43% of Sierra Leone's land area. The northern section of this has been categorised by the World Wildlife Fund as part of the Guinean forest-savanna mosaic ecoregion, while the south is rain-forested plains and farmland.
  In the west, Sierra Leone has some 400 km (249 mi) of Atlantic coastline, giving it both bountiful marine resources and attractive tourist potential. The coast has areas of low-lying Guinean mangroves swamp. The national capital Freetown sits on a coastal peninsula, situated next to the Sierra Leone Harbour, the world's third largest natural harbour.
  The climate is tropical, with two seasons determining the agricultural cycle: the rainy season from May to November, and a dry season from December to May, which includes harmattan, when cool, dry winds blow in off the Sahara Desert and the night-time temperature can be as low as 16 °C (60.8 °F). The average temperature is 26 °C (78.8 °F) and varies from around 26 to 36 °C (78.8 to 96.8 °F) during the year.
caption: Sierra Leone map of Köppen climate classification