Where to live in Sierra Leone
We track 3 cities in Sierra Leone: Bo, Freetown and Kenema. Average temperatures run from 25°C to 26°C. We estimate a couple needs €1,935 to €2,015 a month to live centrally. For foreigners, long-term residency is comparatively open.
12 questions, about 4 minutes, no account needed. Taking the quiz is free, and so is seeing your #1 city. Full results for both of you are a one-time US$12 (€12 in Europe).
- Safety
- 59/100
- country-level estimate
- Healthcare
- 40/100
- country-level estimate
- Democracy
- 5.0/10
- estimated
Estimated from World Bank indicators and calibrated to the scales of our reference tables: safety from the country-level homicide rate per 100,000 people (VC.IHR.PSRC.P5, 2020) and Worldwide Governance Indicators Political Stability and Absence of Violence estimate (GOV_WGI_PV.EST, 2025), healthcare from the life expectancy at birth (SP.DYN.LE00.IN, 2024) and current health spending per person in US dollars (SH.XPD.CHEX.PC.CD, 2023), cost of living from the price level of GDP relative to the United States, from GDP per person in US dollars and at purchasing power parity (NY.GDP.PCAP.CD/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD, 2025) and democracy score from the Worldwide Governance Indicators Voice and Accountability estimate (GOV_WGI_VA.EST, 2025). Source: The World Bank (World Development Indicators, Worldwide Governance Indicators), CC BY 4.0.
Limited data for Sierra Leone. Figures for safety, healthcare, cost of living and political stability in Sierra Leone are country-level estimates from World Bank indicators, each named with its year. We have no tax, English, social openness or internet speed figures for Sierra Leone, so the quiz scores those factors conservatively and this page leaves them out.
The 3 cities we track
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally, from the World Bank price level.
Residency and visas
Comparatively open. Residency comes either through an employer-sponsored work permit or a self-set-up business permit (renewed annually), or via the government Go-for-Gold program that grants lifetime permanent residency to investors who buy and lodge gold bullion; there is no passive-income or means-tested self-funded route.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Sierra Leone:
- Investment: about $213k (Go-for-Gold permanent residency, single applicant: 1kg of 99.99% Sierra Leonean gold bullion (~USD 142,900 at June 2026 spot) lodged with the government for 5 years, plus USD 65,000 program fees and USD 5,000 due-diligence fee; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 15 of 198 passports can enter visa-free, 182 can get an e-visa or visa on arrival and 1 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).