• Sierra Leone explores blockchain to boost digital governance and transparency

• SIGN group meets officials to assess blockchain use in public services

• Tech push follows $50M World Bank grant and past blockchain trials
  

Sierra Leone is exploring ways to use blockchain technology to advance the country’s digital transformation.

On October 30, Minister of Communication, Technology and Innovation Salima Bah met with a delegation of blockchain experts from the Sovereign Infrastructure for Global Nations (SIGN) group, accompanied by Sierra Leone’s ambassador to China, Abubakarr Karim.

According to the ministry, the experts were expected to meet several local partners in the following days to discuss practical ways blockchain could strengthen the national digital ecosystem. No updates have been released since. “This visit highlights the government’s commitment to harnessing blockchain to promote transparency, trust, and innovation in public service delivery,” the ministry said in a statement.

The meeting follows a series of government efforts to integrate emerging technologies into Sierra Leone’s governance and economy. The administration is currently selecting participants for the “Big 5 AI & Blockchain Hackathon,” an initiative designed to train, mentor and challenge innovators to build solutions from scratch using artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies described by the ministry as “among the most transformative of our time.” Officials say the two technologies have the potential to reshape industries, strengthen governance and address critical development challenges.

Sierra Leone has previously experimented with blockchain. Its national digital identification system, launched in August 2019 in partnership with the United Nations and US-based nonprofit Kiva, was built using blockchain to improve access to financial services. In 2018, Swiss company Agora tested the technology during the country’s presidential election, manually recording votes from the Western Area on a permissioned blockchain. The ledger was publicly accessible but could only be validated by authorized parties, an approach designed to improve transparency and reliability in the vote-counting process.

The renewed focus on blockchain comes as Sierra Leone seeks to digitally connect all citizens and expand access to public services nationwide. The government aims to leverage technology to deliver more transparent, affordable and user-centered digital services at both national and local levels.

In January 2023, Sierra Leone secured a $50 million grant from the World Bank to support its National Digital Transformation Project. Despite these efforts, the country ranked below both the African and global averages in the United Nations 2024 E-Government Development Index, scoring 0.3042 out of 1, compared with the African average of 0.4247 and the global average of 0.6382.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report Blockchains Unchained, blockchain technology could transform public administration by securing identity and record management, facilitating financial transactions and digital currencies, and improving the traceability of land titles and supply chains. It could also enhance the distribution of public aid, increase transparency in public procurement, modernize energy grid management, protect intellectual property rights, secure electronic voting, and streamline information-sharing across government agencies.

However, the OECD cautioned that blockchain is not a cure-all for public-sector challenges. It cited several obstacles to implementation, including data immutability, privacy concerns, limited storage capacity for large data sets, the reliability of input data, governance issues, high costs, communication complexity, limited scalability, and the high energy consumption of certain blockchain models.

Isaac K. Kassouwi