Sierra Leone adopted an Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) in the mid-2000s as the
digital centrepiece of its post-conflict public financial management (PFM) reform programme. Two decades on, the system
processes the bulk of central government expenditure, yet audit reports, Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability
(PEFA) assessments and International Monetary Fund (IMF) surveillance continue to record weaknesses in budget
credibility, expenditure control and fiscal transparency. This article critically evaluates how IFMIS has influenced public
sector financial performance in Sierra Leone, focusing on budget execution, digital government accounting and financial
reporting efficiency. The study addresses a gap in the literature, which has documented IFMIS adoption across Sub-Saharan
Africa but has paid limited analytical attention to small, aid-dependent, post-conflict states. Using a qualitative singlecountry case study design grounded in documentary analysis, the article triangulates evidence from PEFA assessments (2007
to 2021), Audit Service Sierra Leone annual reports, Ministry of Finance and Accountant General’s Department
publications, IMF Article IV consultations, World Bank project documentation and peer-reviewed scholarship, interpreted
through an integrated framework drawing on the Technology Acceptance Model, Diffusion of Innovation Theory,
Institutional Theory, Agency Theory and Public Value Theory. The findings show genuine gains: automated commitment
control, a functioning Treasury Single Account, faster production of annual financial statements, stronger audit trails and
improved payroll integrity. Yet these gains are bounded by persistent constraints, including unreliable power and
connectivity, high staff turnover, weak system integration, extra-budgetary practices that bypass controls, underfunded
maintenance and fragile cybersecurity and business continuity arrangements. The article concludes that technology has
outpaced the institutions meant to govern it, and that the next reform phase must privilege enforcement, integration and
human capacity over new software. Twenty-five policy recommendations are advanced for government, development
partners and oversight institutions.
Musa Abdullah Kargbo, J. Conteh· International Journal of Inn...· 0 citations
Sierra Leone presents a paradox that should trouble anyone who studies public financial management reforms in low-income countries. Two decades of sustained investment, five independent Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) assessments and three successive reform strategies have produced genuine achievements: a Treasury Single Account (TSA), an upgraded Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) covering thirty ministries, departments and agencies, adoption of Cash Basis International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS), an operational electronic procurement platform and an ‘A’ rating for budget classification in the 2021 to 2022 PEFA assessment. Yet, in December 2025 the Financial Secretary warned publicly that fragmented data systems were bleeding value from payroll and pension administration, observing that “somebody will still continue to benefit from one system while the other system is losing”. This article takes that warning as its organising diagnosis. It argues that Sierra Leone has reached the limits of system-by-system modernisation and that the next generation of reform must treat three agendas as a single problem: interoperability across government financial systems, cyber-security and data protection for the financial information those systems generate, and institutional accountability for how that information is used. The article traces the reform trajectory from the Integrated Public Financial Management Reform Project (2008 to 2013) through the current interoperability roadmap, evaluates the emerging Data Protection and Right to Access Information Act and its unified dual-mandate authority, and analyses the persistent gap between transactional automation and data governance. It then proposes an integrated digital governance framework built on four pillars, digital infrastructure and systems integration, legal and regulatory enablement, institutional capacity and human capital, and oversight with citizen engagement, resting on a cross-cutting foundation of security and data protection by design, with a sequenced sixty-month implementation roadmap ‘costed’ against realistic institutional capacity and the financing envelope available from the IMF Extended Credit Facility, World Bank and African Development Bank operations. Sierra Leone’s experiment in fusing access to information and data protection within one authority, and in wiring anti-corruption oversight directly into digital PFM systems, offers lessons of genuine comparative significance for the Global South. JEL: M40, M41, M48, G00, H00
J. Conteh, Musa Abdullah Kargbo, Abdul Rahman N’Jai et al.· European Journal of Economic...· 0 citations
The findings show that Sierra Leone’s difficulty is less a shortage of data than a shortage of the governance arrangements, skills and incentives needed to convert data into decisions.
J. Conteh, Musa Abdullah Kargbo, Dante Allie Bendu et al.· International journal of res...· 0 citations