Sierra Leone

• Our office: Freetown
• Our areas of focus: Health, empowering women and girls, media development, economic opportunity
• Our partners: UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office
  
• On social media:  Twitter and Facebook

About our work

Radio is still the most important source of information in Sierra Leone, but online access is growing quickly, particularly among young people. We’ve been working in Sierra Leone since 2007 on projects that span radio, mobile, social media and community discussion groups. We are proud to run Sierra Leone’s most popular Facebook page, which played an important role in dispelling misinformation during the country’s 2018 elections.

In 2019 we launched a bold new girls’ education and empowerment project – supporting radio stations across the country to create vibrant programming that challenges the discriminatory attitudes holding girls back from realising their dreams. Our Kokotu Barray (Open Secret) radio drama addresses the challenges which girls often face in Sierra Leone - including relationships and teen pregnancy - while discussion programmes feature girls' own success stories, to inspire others to return to education or training.

Sierra Leone is also one of three countries of focus for our flagship media development project, PRIMED (Protecting Independent Media for Effective Development) - through which we are strengthening independent media to produce trusted public-interest journalism and generating evidence around what works in strengthening media viability.

Previously, our Tawa Fo Welbodi (Determined For Health) project provided trusted information and busted harmful myths about malaria, a disease which accounts for 40% of deaths outside hospital, and - during the COVID-19 pandemic- information about the virus and when and how to seek treatment. This project built on the expertise and insight our team gained during the 2014-15 Ebola crisis, when we worked closely and swiftly with media and NGO partners to provide life-saving information through radio discussion and drama programming, public service announcements, digital content and capacity strengthening.