SIERRA LEONE‘S INFRASTRUCTURE: A CONTINENTAL PERSPECTIVE

# Financing Sierra Leone’s infrastructure

To meet its most pressing infrastructure needs and catch up with developing countries in other parts of the world, Sierra Leone needs to expand its infrastructure assets in key areas (table 11). The targets outlined below are purely illustrative, but they represent a reasonable level of aspiration. Developed in a standardized way across African countries, they allow for cross-country comparisons of the affordability of meeting the targets, which can be modified or delayed as needed to achieve financial balance.

**Table 11. Illustrative investment targets for infrastructure in Sierra Leone**

||**Economic target**|**Social target**|
|---|---|---|
|ICT|Install fiber optic links to neighboring capitals and<br>submarine cable|Provide universal access to GSM signal and public<br>broadband facilities|
|Power|Develop 1 MW of new generation capacity and 661 MW<br>inter-connectors.|Rise electrification to 50 percent (100 percent urban<br>and 6 percent rural)|
|Transport|Achieve regional (national) connectivity with good<br>quality 2-lane (1-lane) paved road.|Provide rural road access to 65 percent of the highest-<br>value agricultural land, and urban road access within<br>500 meters|
|WSS|N/A|Achieve Millennium Development Goals, clear sector<br>rehabilitation backlog|

Sources: Mayer and other 2008; Rosnes and Vennemo 2009; Carruthers and others 2009; You and others 2009.

Meeting these illustrative infrastructure targets for Sierra Leone would cost around $0.5 billion per year over a decade. Capital expenditure would account for three quarters of this requirement, and the split is similar across sectors. In turn, more than 70 percent of capital spending should be invested into building new infrastructure across the board, with the exception of the transport sector where rehabilitation of existing networks is the area of predominant concern.

The highest spending needs are found in water and sanitation: it will take $202 million per year to meet the Millennium Development Goals in this sector. The WSS sector in Sierra Leone is starved for new capital investments, which accounts for 60 percent of total needs, or $118 million per year. Rehabilitation of the existing water and sanitation infrastructures would require another 16 percent of the total needs, and the remaining 26 percent should be spent on maintaining the systems. Another $0.12 billion per year are needed in the transport sector annually, 74 percent of which for capital investments. In turn, most of the capital investments—around 76 percent—are needed for rehabilitation purposes. Meeting growing demand for power will require an estimated $117 million per year to install 1 megawatt of new generation capacity and 661 megawatts of inter-connectors. Most of the capital spending—as much as 98 percent—is needed to construct new power infrastructure. While less than the amounts needed for other infrastructures sectors, requirements for ICT are also high in absolute terms, amounting to around $39 million per year (table 12).

Overall, Sierra Leone‘s infrastructure-spending needs are comparatively high in absolute and GDP terms. Sierra Leone‘s burden of needs at 26 percent of GDP is quite high (2009 GDP was $1.888 billion), although other countries such as Liberia, DRC, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia have higher burdens (figure 20). Investment would absorb around 19 percent of GDP, which is even higher than the 15 percent of what China invested in its infrastructure during the mid-2000s.

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