By [email protected] (Economic Satire)
Freetown, 17th November 2025 — If debt were a sport, Sierra Leone would be sprinting toward the gold medal, not in repayment, mind you, but in the Olympic discipline of fiscal gymnastics. According to the latest World Bank–IMF Debt Sustainability Analysis, the country is now officially at high risk of debt distress. Translation: the national wallet is so thin, it’s practically translucent (you can see through it).
Let’s start with the basics. In 2024, Sierra Leone’s debt service to revenue ratio hit a jaw-dropping 125%. That’s right, for every Leone earned, the government owed 1.25 Leones. It’s the financial equivalent of trying to fill a leaking bucket with a teaspoon… while blindfolded.
But wait, there’s more. Domestic borrowing costs, which were already steep at 29.3% in 2023, soared to 40.8% in 2024. The government was essentially borrowing money at rates that would make loan sharks blush. Thankfully, by May 2025, a dose of “expenditure rationalization” which in layman terms is ‘austerity’ brought the cost down to 15.17%, which is still high enough to make investors sweat through their suits.
And what are we borrowing for? Mostly short-term treasury bills with real interest rates above 30%. These are the financial equivalent of payday loans. Expensive, short-lived, and guaranteed to keep you in a cycle of fiscal regret.
Public debt to GDP declined slightly from 46.2% in 2023 to 44.4% in 2024, thanks to high nominal growth and a stable exchange rate. But don’t pop the champagne yet, the debt is still very much alive and kicking. In fact, over one-third of it is domestic, and the rest, a cool $1.83 billion, is external, mostly owed to multilateral creditors like the IMF and World Bank. That’s right: we owe money to the very institutions that keep telling us we’re broke.
And who else do we owe? The usual suspects: China, South Korea, and the Kuwait Fund. It’s a global debt buffet, and Sierra Leone is piling its plate high.
In short, the country’s fiscal strategy seems to be: borrow high, pay slow, and hope the creditors are too polite to knock. But as the debt service balloons and the treasury bills stack up like unpaid utility bills, one thing is clear: Sierra Leone’s economy isn’t just distressed. It’s performing a tragicomic one-man show called “Debt Distress”
Note: This work of fiction was inspired by actual events, but is otherwise the figment of the writer’s imagination
