Sierra Leone: How Tourism is Creating Jobs and Attracting Investment

Story by Liam Brown. Photos credited to Christian Morgan

A World Bank Group-supported project is turning Sierra Leone’s beaches, chimpanzee sanctuaries, and mountain viewpoints into engines of jobs and growth.

Across Sierra Leone, tourism is creating new opportunities for people to work, start businesses, and earn an income close to home.

From guides and drivers to artisans, restaurateurs, and guesthouse owners, the sector is demonstrating how investment in places can translate into jobs for people.

At the center of this shift is the Sierra Leone Economic Diversification Project (SLEDP), a World Bank Group-supported initiative launched by the government in 2020 to grow investment and enterprise in the tourism sector. Five years in, the impact is visible on mountainsides, beaches, and people’s livelihoods.

A Country Ready to Be Discovered

Sierra Leone’s tourism attractions — beautiful beaches, lush mountains, rich cultural traditions, and wildlife found nowhere else in the world — have long drawn attention from tourists and travel media.

What was missing was the combination of infrastructure, investment, and a stronger businesses environment needed to turn visitor interest into economic opportunity. The SLEDP set out to close that gap.

Tourism already contributed approximately 5 percent of Sierra Leone’s gross domestic product (GDP) before the project began and supported around 53,000 jobs, roughly 40 percent of service sector employment.

The sector’s economic impact extends well beyond hotel lobbies and beach bars: it generates demand for agriculture, construction, transport, retail, crafts, and finance, creating ripple effects across the economy.

The World Bank Group has identified tourism as one of five sectors with the greatest potential for large-scale employment creation.

In a country where youth unemployment remains high and economic opportunity has long been concentrated in extractive industries, that assessment carries particular weight.

Building the Destinations

The SLEDP’s tourism investment focused on three sites: Bureh Beach on the Western Peninsula, the Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary outside Freetown, and Leicester Peak, whose viewpoint offers a panorama of the city, the sea, and the hills beyond.

Each site was selected as part of an integrated destination approach, bringing together infrastructure upgrades, access improvements, environmental assessments, and marketing to create visitor experiences that can compete regionally and internationally.

The recent launch of the Leicester Peak Viewpoint Tourist Site in April 2026, presided over by Sierra Leone’s Vice President, marked a visible milestone in that effort.

At Tacugama, the project developed a Conservation Education and Innovation Centre alongside a botanical garden, giving the sanctuary a world-class educational dimension that complements its role as a wildlife refuge.

Improved access roads, parking, landscaping, and visitor amenities are enabling more people to experience the sanctuary while creating new opportunities for local entrepreneurs, guides, service providers, and small businesses that benefit from increased visitation.

The impact on visitor numbers has already registered.

Since the project began, international arrivals have doubled, bringing in foreign exchange and expanding demand for the local services and businesses that tourism depends on.

Reforming the Environment for Business

Tourism infrastructure alone is not enough if the businesses that support it cannot get off the ground or stay open. The SLEDP has invested heavily in the conditions that allow small enterprises to grow.

The project helped automate the building permit system at Sierra Leone’s Ministry of Lands, Housing, and Country Planning, cutting the time to obtain a construction permit from 182 days to just 14 working days on average.

For a business owner trying to open a guesthouse, a restaurant, or a retail space near a tourist site, that difference is transformative.

“There are a lot of opportunities for creatives. They can turn their creativity into a business,” says Isatu Harrison the CEO of Creative Hub Africa

The project has also upgraded the collateral registry, enabling small businesses with movable assets — equipment, inventory, receivables — to use them as collateral for loans.

As a result, over US$87 million in new loans were given to micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises.

Enterprises backed by the project reported an average 32 percent increase in gross sales, well above the 15 percent target set when the project began.

A new Business Solution Center was sponsored by the project at the National Investment Board of Sierra Leone, helping to facilitate the registration of over 13,000 new businesses.

More than 8,000 entrepreneurs, including more than 4,900 women, engaged in trainings, pitch nights, and other events organized by the institutions supported by the project.

Jobs That Reach Beyond the Beach

The SLEDP contributed to the creation of over 35,000 direct and indirect jobs through tourism development, public investment, and small and medium enterprise support, with more than 10,000 held by women.

Tourism creates jobs far beyond the point of arrival.

Every visitor supports a network of local enterprises, creating opportunities for transport operators, farmers, artisans, food vendors, creative entrepreneurs, and small businesses throughout the economy.

For young Sierra Leoneans, that ecosystem represents something concrete: a path from talent to income, and from idea to livelihood.

A Foundation for What Comes Next

Total private sector investment leveraged through project activities has reached over US$92 million — a figure that reflects not just the direct outputs of the SLEDP but the broader confidence it has helped build in Sierra Leone’s economy.

The work is not finished.

Sierra Leone continues to develop its tourism sites, embed private operators to manage them sustainably over the long term, and connect the communities around those sites to the benefits they generate.

But the direction is clear.

Sierra Leone is building a more diversified future, powered by its people’s talent and creativity, grounded in its remarkable natural and cultural wealth, and supported by its institutions.

Tourism is bringing visitors to Sierra Leone. More importantly, it is helping create the conditions for businesses to grow, private investment to flow, and jobs to take root.