The agreement formalises a collaboration focused on macroeconomic research and policy analysis coming at a moment when Sierra Leone’s economy faces significant domestic and global pressures
The Bank of Sierra Leone and the International Growth Centre have signed a Memorandum of Understanding committing both institutions to a structured partnership in economic research, policy analysis, and evidence-based decision-making a deal that, in the context of Sierra Leone’s current economic moment, carries weight that goes beyond the formalities of institutional diplomacy.
The agreement is designed to deepen collaboration in areas identified as critical to the country’s long-term stability: macroeconomic management, financial sector development, and inclusive growth. Officials from both sides described the MoU as a meaningful step toward embedding research-driven thinking into the heart of the central bank’s policymaking processes and toward giving economic governance in Sierra Leone a stronger analytical spine.
The timing is not incidental. Sierra Leone’s inflation, which had fallen to a multi-decade low of 4.3% in December 2025 supported by a stable currency and moderating reserve money growth, rebounded to 8.1% in February 2026 following a 14% pump price increase in January, and is projected to average 10.4% in 2026 as Middle East conflict pushes up freight, fertiliser, and oil costs. These are precisely the kinds of pressures that demand rigorous analytical capacity at the central bank level and precisely the gaps this partnership is designed to narrow.
The International Growth Centre is an economic research centre based at the London School of Economics, operated in partnership with the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government. The centre was launched in December 2008 and is funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. It runs country offices across Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East, and directs a global network of over 1,000 researchers.
The IGC works with policymakers in developing countries to promote inclusive and sustainable growth through research, with a particular emphasis on translating academic rigour into practical policy recommendations that governments can act on. Its work spans taxation, governance, agriculture, energy, and state effectiveness with a consistent focus on what the data actually says, rather than what convention assumes.
IGC Sierra Leone was established in 2008 and has since worked with local and national government to confront Sierra Leone’s challenges to growth, covering trade, governance, and key sectors such as agriculture, energy, and mining. Its country programme maintains close working relationships with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Development, and other central government institutions. The IGC Sierra Leone programme is based at the Centre of Policy Studies at the University of Sierra Leone, and its main areas of research are state capabilities, agriculture, and governance.
In that sense, the Bank of Sierra Leone is not partnering with a distant external body. It is formalising a relationship with an institution that has spent nearly two decades embedded in Sierra Leone’s policy environment, already building the kind of institutional trust that makes research collaboration productive rather than performative.
Under the MoU, the two institutions are expected to work together on research initiatives that provide data-driven analysis of the economic challenges and opportunities facing the country. The collaboration covers macroeconomic stability, financial sector development, and the design of inclusive growth strategies areas in which the quality of the underlying evidence can determine whether a policy intervention works or fails.
For the Bank of Sierra Leone, the partnership represents an opportunity to sharpen the analytical tools available to its economists and policymakers, drawing on IGC’s network of researchers and its track record of producing work that is both technically rigorous and practically applicable. The IGC, in turn, gains deeper access to the Bank’s data and institutional knowledge the kind of granular, real-time information that academic research often struggles to obtain.
Officials involved in the agreement pointed to the need for stronger analytical support at a time when both global and domestic economic conditions are placing unusual demands on decision-makers. Real GDP in Sierra Leone grew an estimated 4.5% in 2025, supported by robust agriculture under the Feed Salone programme and stronger services, with growth projected to hold at 4.5% in 2026 before rising to 4.7% in 2027. That steady if modest trajectory needs to be protected and the decisions made at the central bank level will determine whether it holds.
The MoU sits within a wider pattern of Sierra Leone’s economic institutions seeking stronger analytical foundations. The IGC Sierra Leone programme has in recent years supported Freetown City Council in increasing own-source revenues through reforms to property tax and business licensing, and continues to work on tax policy, coordinating state agencies, agricultural firm productivity, and energy access. A partnership with the Bank of Sierra Leone extends that reach into the monetary and financial policy sphere territory where the quality of research has direct consequences for inflation, credit, and the financial security of ordinary Sierra Leoneans.
Under the Herbert P. McLeod Local Researchers Programme, the IGC has also made a deliberate investment in Sierra Leone’s next generation of economists and policymakers, connecting early-career researchers directly to government institutions to produce actionable insights that inform decision-making and drive sustainable development. Whether the new partnership with the Bank of Sierra Leone creates pathways for such researchers to contribute to central bank work will be one of the details worth watching as the collaboration takes shape.
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What the MoU signals most plainly is an institutional acknowledgement that good economic governance requires more than policy intention. It requires the kind of evidence that only sustained, rigorous research can produce and the institutional relationships that make that research relevant when it lands on a policymaker’s desk.
