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Sierra Leone is one of the world's poorest countries and recently emerged from civil war. This paper is a reference guide for gauging Sierra Leone’s economic, social and political performance as seen through international indices or other assessment processes.

The objectives of the paper are threefold:

• to raise awareness of the Government and the development community of the political, social and economic performance of Sierra Leone through indicators

   

• to guide the government and donor community on how to design interventions to improve the country’s international image

   

• to encourage the government and the international development community to improve data collection and dissemination for a more representative picture of the situation.
  

The paper reviews progress on the following seven international indices and two initiatives to gauge Sierra Leone’s economic, social and political performance:

• UNDP’s Human Development Index shows a only slight improvement in the global rankings over the last three years because of progress made in many other countries.

   

• The Economist Intelligent Unit’s Democracy Index led to the conclusion that the country’s improvements indicated a shift from autocracy to a hybrid democratic regime. 

   

• The Mo Ibrahim Index shows a net improvement in Sierra Leone’s rankings, suggesting it could do better if it enhanced its performance on the Human Development category.

   

• On the Fragility Index, Sierra Leone lags behind in meeting all but the sixth Goal Millennium Development Goal, making the debate on whether or not it is a fragile state inconclusive. 

   

• The Corruption Perception Index scores for Sierra Leone are poor but many anti-corruption initiatives taken by the new Government to rectify the state of affairs are materialising. 

   

• The Ease of Doing Business Index for Sierra Leone has shown a positive trend for the past two years, with starting a business becoming less cumbersome, owing to the Government's increased effort to address issues surrounding the business environment in the country including business climate reforms.  

   

• The World Bank Country Policy and Institutional Assessment show that Sierra Leone is strong in macroeconomic management, which has enabled it to weather the current financial crisis. 

   

• The Kimberley Process Certification Scheme which prevents illicit diamonds from entering the market has led to the increase of revenues for Sierra Leone. 

   

• Through the West Africa Resource Watch, development partners have continuously been engaged in policy dialogue with the Government on managing natural resources in a transparent and sustainable way but with limited progress.

   

   

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