Sierra Leone invests $400M in telecom, 60% usage gap remains

According to Sierra Leone’s Minister of Communication, Technology and Innovation Salima Monorma Bah, despite the country investing $400 million in telecom infrastructure, it still faces a 60% usage gap.

Bah shared these sentiments at the recent Parliamentary Committee on Information and Communications’ annual stakeholder meeting at the Atlantic Hotel in Freetown.

The meeting brought together parliamentary bodies, NatCA, Sierratel and SALPOST management, the Felei Tech City project, mobile operators and civil society leaders.

Bah said that despite the national fiber backbone (NFB) being expanded to 14 of the country’s 16 districts, the usage gap remains high.

To bridge this, Bah called for greater industry accountability and infrastructure sharing to reduce the operating costs that hinder affordability, identifying these efficiencies as the critical pathway to universal connectivity.

She said with these reforms and the $15 million investment for the upcoming landing of a second subsea cable, Sierra Leone is set to transform its digital landscape into a powerhouse for education, healthcare and economic growth.

Related:SpaceX’s Starlink goes live in Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone’s digital divide high

The digital divide in Sierra Leone remains high. 

According to DataReportal statistics from the end of October 2025, Sierra Leone had 1.85 million Internet users. 

With a population of 8.86 million around the same period, the country’s Internet penetration rate stood at 20.8% of the total population at the end of the year.

This means that 7.02 million people in Sierra Leone did not use the Internet at the end of 2025, suggesting that 79.2% of the population remained “offline” at the end 2025. 

The West African country has, however, been working toward addressing the digital divide by partnering with other countries and companies to connect its underserved communities. For example, in August 2025, the country partnered with Liberia to roll out the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) free roaming initiative, designed to ease cross-border mobile roaming costs.

Relatedly, SpaceX’s satellite Internet service, Starlink, launched in Sierra Leone in June 2024.