Countries
Key facts
- Capital
- Freetown
- Region
- Africa, Western Africa
- Population
- 8,819,794 (2025)
- Area
- 71,740 km²
- Currency
- Sierra Leonean leone (SLE)
- Languages
- English, Mende (Sierra Leone), Timne
- Calling code
- +232
- Internet domain
- .sl
- ISO codes
- SL, SLE, 694
- Time zone
- UTC
- United Nations
- Member state
Land and position
Sierra Leone covers about 71,740 square kilometres. By area it ranks 121st among the 250 countries and territories on this site. It is a little smaller than Panama and a little larger than Ireland. It shares a land border with 2 neighbours: Guinea, Liberia. Its centre lies at about 8° north, 12° west, in the northern hemisphere.
Neighbours
People
About 8.82 million people live in Sierra Leone (World Bank, 2025). That makes it the 101st most populous of the 246 places on this site with a figure, with about 0.11 percent of the world's people. On average there are 123 people to each square kilometre. About 46 percent of people live in towns and cities (World Bank, 2025). A baby born there can expect to live about 62 years (World Bank, 2024). Languages listed for it: English, Mende (Sierra Leone), Timne. A person from Sierra Leone is called Sierra Leonean.
Money and economy
The currency is the Sierra Leonean leone (code SLE, symbol Le). The World Bank puts the size of its economy (GDP) at about US$ 7.46 billion (2025), which is about US$ 846 for each person (2025).
Time
Sierra Leone uses one time zone, UTC (Africa/Freetown). Clocks stay the same all year: there is no daylight saving time.
Time now: loading
Offsets are for January 2026. See Time Zones for a converter.
Largest cities
| City | People |
|---|---|
| Freetown | 802,639 |
| Kenema | 255,110 |
| Bo | 233,684 |
| Koidu | 128,030 |
| Makeni | 85,116 |
| Waterloo | 55,000 |
City figures are from GeoNames and count the city itself, not the wider urban area. They can be some years old, so use them to see the order of size.
More in Western Africa
Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali. See the whole region.
Figures were collected on 11 November 2026 from the World Bank, GeoNames and the open countries data set. See About and data sources. Borders and names follow those sources and do not express any view on disputed territory.