Summary Brief Number 19

The current method of property valuation in Freetown, Sierra Leone is highly inaccurate and generally regressive, as it does not take subjective property characteristics that are major determinants of value into account. The newly elected Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr made revenue mobilisation a central pillar of her ‘Transform Freetown’ agenda. As a means of achieving this, the Mayor and her advisers began to reach out internationally for reform advice. This brief outlines a pilot project carried out jointly by the IGC and ICTD for a new approach to property valuation in Freetown using a points-based valuation methodology in the Freetown context. The project had six key findings, including that high-level political leadership was a major enabler of the project’s success. The authors outline 6 policy considerations for future scale-ups of the research and for reforming property tax in Freetown.

Authors

Kevin Grieco

Kevin Grieco is a PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. He studies how low-capacity governments raise taxes and enforce policies. His current work focuses on fiscal capacity and traditional political institutions in Sierra Leone, collects original quantitative and qualitative data, uses field experiments to answer causal questions, and involves collaborations with local government and civil society partners.

Abou Bakarr Kamara

Abou Bakarr Kamara is a Country Economist for the International Growth Centre (IGC) Liberia and Sierra Leone. He is an economist with over 10 years experience in both research and policy.

Niccoló Meriggi

Niccoló Meriggi is a country economist for IGC (International Growth Centre) Sierra Leone. He has been working in Sierra Leone for three years, where he has been engaging and advising government on the implementation of development programmes, strategies to evaluate programme implementation, and the use of lessons learnt from these programmes.

Julian Michel

Julian Michel is a PhD student in Comparative Politics at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He has a range of research projects on topics such as taxation, migration, populism & democratic backsliding, and identity politics.

Wilson Prichard

Wilson Prichard is an Associate Professor at the University of Toronto, a Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Chair of the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) and former Executive Officer of the International Centre for Tax and Development (2020-2024). His research focuses on the relationship between taxation and citizen demands for improved governance in sub-Saharan Africa.

Graeme Stewart-Wilson

Graeme Stewart-Wilson is a PhD student in Political Science at the University of Toronto and a researcher with ICTD. His research focuses on tax reform in sub-Saharan Africa.
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