Inspector General of Police William Fayia Sellu stood before Local Unit Commanders at Police Headquarters in Kingtom on Thursday and handed each of them something the Sierra Leone Police Force has never offered its divisional commanders at scale before: a laptop computer.
Thirty-nine of them, distributed at the conclusion of a two-day Strategic Action Planning Workshop that ran from 23 to 24 July 2026 one for each Local Unit Commander (LUC) across the country. The ceremony was brief. The implications are not.
The distribution falls under Goal Four, Intervention Five of the Sierra Leone Police Strategic Development Plan (SDP) 2025–2029, a roadmap developed in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and officially launched in early 2025 as the foundational document for the SLP’s transition from a force-oriented to a service-oriented model of policing.
The SDP serves as a foundational roadmap, enabling commanders to efficiently fulfill their mandates as the SLP transitions from a force-oriented to a service-oriented model of policing. That shift from a command-and-control structure rooted in colonial-era practices to a responsive, community-facing service has been IGP Sellu’s defining ambition since his appointment by President Julius Maada Bio in July 2022.
IGP Sellu has stated that approximately 80% of the responsibilities outlined in the Strategic Development Plan rest with the Local Unit Commanders themselves which explains why the laptop distribution was tied to a strategic workshop rather than a simple supply exercise. The technology and the planning framework are being deployed together, not sequentially.
The immediate operational impact is administrative. With laptops in hand, Local Unit Commanders will increasingly conduct official correspondence electronically, allowing information to move more quickly between Police Headquarters in Freetown and divisions spread across the country’s districts and chiefdoms. The current dependence on physical paperwork slow, prone to loss, and impossible to archive digitally will be progressively replaced.
Plans are also in place to connect the laptops to the national fibre-optic network, providing commanders with internet access to facilitate communication, records management, and administrative coordination. Once that connectivity is established, the SLP will have the infrastructure for a genuinely networked police service one where a commander in Kenema or Kabala can communicate with headquarters in real time, access shared records, and submit reports without the delays that have historically characterised inter-divisional correspondence.
Stationery will not disappear entirely. Operational duties such as taking statements and maintaining records that require physical documentation will continue to use paper. The shift is targeted at the administrative layer removing paper from the processes where it slows things down without adding value.
IGP Sellu was direct about the purpose when he addressed the commanders at the handover. “The computers are intended to enhance your performance and improve the manner in which you discharge your responsibilities as Local Unit Commanders,” he said. “As you return to your divisions, much is expected from each one of you. You must add value to the Sierra Leone Police by applying the knowledge you have acquired and by embracing this new digital system to improve service delivery.”
He linked the technology to accountability, reminding the commanders that leadership carries responsibility for outcomes, not just compliance with process. “As the organisation approaches the end of the first quarter of 2025, commanders are reminded of their vital roles in achieving the SDP objectives,” he said. The successful implementation of the Strategic Development Plan, he added, will depend heavily on their commitment at divisional and community levels.
The laptop distribution is one node in a wider digitisation effort within the SLP. The SLP has identified digitalising the police registry to enhance the efficiency of records and staff management as a parallel priority — meaning the technology push is not limited to field commanders but is intended to restructure how the institution manages its own institutional memory and human resources.
This sits within President Bio’s Technology and Infrastructure Game Changer agenda — one of the flagship pillars of his administration’s national development strategy, which applies the technology lens across government institutions, from the education sector to public financial management to security services.
The SLP’s reform trajectory under IGP Sellu has moved on multiple fronts simultaneously. In May 2026, the Family Support Unit completed a five-day specialised training programme for 100 personnel from Bo, Freetown, and Makeni, with UNICEF support, enhancing investigative capacity for gender-based and family violence cases. The workshop for Local Unit Commanders that concluded this week reflects the same logic: structured capacity-building paired with tangible resource deployment.
The language the SLP now uses to describe itself is deliberate. The idea of the Strategic Development Plan is to serve as a roadmap to where the SLP wants to go, transitioning from a Force to a Service. That reorientation carries implications that go beyond branding. A force is defined by its coercive capacity. A service is defined by its responsiveness to the people it exists to protect.
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Digitising administrative processes is one of the least glamorous parts of that transition but arguably one of the most important. When a commander can retrieve a record, send a report, or receive an instruction in minutes rather than days, the institution’s capacity to respond to what is actually happening in communities improves in ways that no amount of additional personnel could replicate.
For the 39 Local Unit Commanders now carrying laptops back to their divisions, the shift is concrete and immediate. For the Sierra Leoneans in those divisions, the impact will be measured less in the equipment itself than in what the equipment eventually enables faster responses, better records, more accountable decision-making, and a police service that increasingly behaves like one.
