Children in Sierra Leone

Daily life for children in Sierra Leone in facts, focussing on health, education and family life with details of projects and programs to support children in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone's population under 18 years old was estimated to be around 3,555,000 representing 48% of its total population according to UNICEF with a high child mortality rate of 68.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2024. Few children in Sierra Leone will live into old age with a life expectancy of just 61.79 years (2023). Literacy rates in 2022 are 48.64% for adults rising to 67.4 % for children and young people, though lower for girls. Little can be written about Sierra leone without reference to the civil war that raged from 23th March 1991 until 18th Jan 2002 which left over a third of the country's population displaced and tens of thousands dead.

More than that, the copuntry's infrastructure, (including thousands of schools), were left as just piles of rubble and the nation left emotionally scarred for generations, not least the country's children, thousands of whom had been forced, under pain of death, to become killer child soldiers. When a civil war ends it's not just a matter of signing a peace accord, the real challenge is how to integrate those who have brutalised and slaughtered back into the same communities. The child soldiers of Sierra Leone were brutalised from a very young age and had life or death power over adults in their communities. For them to return successfully into those communities and integrate back into both society and school proved to be a major challenge and many of them are parents of today's children in the country. Although the horror of those years is now fading, a long-standing civil war takes generations to recover from and in 2024 Sierra is in a derisory 181st place out of 193 countries when ranked in terms of life expectancy, literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards.

In Sierra Leone, 63% (around 3 million) of children are multidimensionally poor, with significant deprivations in nutrition, education, and basic sanitation and water facilities, according to a 2023 report. A significant portion, about one million, are severely poor, while another million are at risk of falling into poverty. As ever, there are higher levels in rural areas at 60% falling to 20% in urban areas with poverty highest in the north region and lowest in the west with a lifestyle based around subsistence farming and/or fishing. Rural Sierra Leone has very low electricity access, with rates around 5% and as low as 2% in some reports, though recent data from 2024 indicates a nationwide 21.1% overall access. While urban areas have significantly higher access, the rural gap is being addressed through projects that provide off-grid solar mini-grids and support the expansion of the national grid. Efforts are ongoing to improve reliability, expand access through renewable energy, and ensure that electricity leads to better health, education, and economic outcomes for communities. Homes in rural areas are generally built with mud bricks with thatched roofs with meals being cooked outside on an open fire.

Children in Sierra Leone

St George Foundation

Their primary work involves supporting homeless children or street children in Sierra Leone.
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SLWT

Working with children and youth providing advocacy and financial and technical support.
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SLEAD Trust

Makes grants to pay school costs for poor children from primary schools in Mahera, Shenge and Foredugu.
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Welbodi Partnership

Building the capacity of the health system to reduce the number of women and children who are sick.
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Give a Chance

Help with educational costs, provide nutritious and well-balanced meals to the children they work with.
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Volunteer Work

Check out all the latest fee paying and free volunteer work placements in Sierra Leone.
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Sponsor a Child

Details of how to sponsor a child in Sierra Leone with local child sponsor programs and projects.
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Sierra Leone Profile

Facts, videos, articles and information about the situation in Sierra Leone in our profile pages.
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<h3>Children in Sierra Leone Video</h3>

Rural Sierra Leone faces significant challenges with sanitation, where only 37.9% use improved facilities and 26% still practice open defecation, according to a 2023 report. This low access contributes to health problems like diarrhea and hinders development, as much of the infrastructure is inadequate or non-functional. Efforts are underway, including community-based initiatives and projects supported by organizations like the African Development Bank, to improve access to safely managed sanitation and hygiene services.

Washing is normally done in nearby rivers and water collected from wells of pumped sources. Children in Sierra Leone eat a diet of rice, cassava root, and leafy greens supplemented, when available, by fish. mice, rats, monkey meat or chicken. The country continues to experience high rates of chronic malnutrition, affecting roughly 6.3% of children under five with around 26% of children under five stunted (a form of chronic malnutrition). Progress has been limited in improving diet quality, as only a small percentage of children under two receive an adequate diet.

Polygamy is common place in Sierra Leone with children growing up within extended families often including aunts, uncles and grandparents. Given the war and health in the country, a high number all households are made up of just children and young people under the age of 18yrs with no adult carer. Child labour, not that is seen as such in the country, involves 31% of children ages 5-11yrs being lowest in the Western Region (13%) and highest in the Southern Region (46%) of the country. For those children in Sierre Leone attending school, school day starts at 8am and finishes at 2.30pm. The first nine years of education are compulsory and start with primary education (6-12yrs), then junior secondary education of three years and finally three years of either senior secondary education or technical vocational education after which for some four years of university or other tertiary education may be available to successful candidates.

At the end of primary education, children take the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) and, if they pass, are awarded the National Primary School Certificate that informs what type of further secondary education they will attend (if they stay on) ~ specialist or technical/vocational (often agriculture/carpentry/brickwork etc.) Those sudents in junior secondary school who are in technical and vocational tracks can, on completion, enter the workforce or continue their formal education in a technical/vocational institute, while to qualify for entry to the Senior Secondary School WASSCE program, a candidate must obtain a minimum of Unit/Grade 6 in five or more subjects including Language, Arts or Mathematics. In 2025 the Sierra Leone National Primary School Certificate (NPSE) pass rate was 78.2%, with a total of 171,112 pupils sitting the exam, with 128,766 passing.

The figure for the WASSCE pass rates are not known although what figures are available suggest a 19.7% pass rate for English among the results released (other figures were witheld due to 'discrepancies') and a significantly higher 46% pass rate was reported for Mathematics. Nevertheless, it is widely recognised that education for children in Sierra Leone is improving, spurred on by the election of Julius Maada Wonie Bio as President in 2018 who, on taking office, introduced free education to the more than 1.5 million primary and secondary students and nearly doubled the country's education budget. Today it stands at 6.79% of its GDP in 2023 (latest figure available), according to TheGlobalEconomy.com, although this figure shows a decrease from the 2022 value of 8.54% but still higher than the world average of 4.40%. Bio also made teacher training free and opened training institutes across the country.

Sierra Leone has a large orphan population, estimated to be around 310,000 children, due to hardships including the long civil war, the Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics, and ongoing poverty, which often results in parental death from disease, malnutrition, and lack of healthcare. Various local and international organizations are working to support these children by providing education, food, shelter, and healthcare, as well as reuniting them with extended family when possible, and fostering community-based care.

As one child commented "I feel like I have no purpose, like there is no meaning to it .... I have to struggle just to get clothes for us. I beg to eat." Life is tough enough for all children in Sierra Leone, however, without education nor social support many of these orphans ended up on the streets of towns like Freetown and many more former child soldiers found themselves unable to adjust to any form of normality having learned one lesson in life, how to grasp power through violence. However there are organisations such as SOS Children's Villages who have been working hard for decades, even before the civil war, to provide the best care possible for these children, even when their own staff and facilities came under rebel attack during the war. Left is a video about life for children in Sierra Leone and also projects and programs that work with children in the country you may wish to support.