page_title: Sierra Leone
section_title: Administrative divisions
hierarchical_section_title: Sierra Leone / Government and politics / Administrative divisions
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: The Republic of Sierra Leone is composed of four regions: the Northern Province, Southern Province, the Eastern Province, and the Western Area. Three provinces are further divided into 12 districts; and the Western Area is divided into two districts.
  The provincial districts are divided into 149 chiefdoms, which have traditionally been led by paramount chiefs, recognised by the British administration in 1896 at the time of organising the Protectorate of Sierra Leone. The Paramount Chiefs are very influential, particularly in villages and small rural towns. Each chiefdom has ruling families that were recognised at that time; the Tribal Authority, made up of local notables, elects the paramount chief from the ruling families. Typically, chiefs have the power to "raise taxes, control the judicial system, and allocate land, the most important resource in rural areas."
  Within the context of local governance, the districts are governed as localities. Each has a directly elected local district council to exercise authority and carry out functions at a local level. In total, there are 19 local councils: 13 district councils, one for each of the 12 districts and one for the Western Area Rural, and six municipalities also have elected local councils. The six municipalities include Freetown, which functions as the local government for the Western Area Urban District, and Bo, Bonthe, Kenema, Koidu, and Makeni.
  While the district councils are under the oversight of their respective provincial administrations, the municipalities are directly overseen by the Ministry of Local Government & Community Development and thus administratively independent of district and provincial administrations.
caption: The 12 districts and 2 areas of Sierra Leone
exif: {}