Sierra Leone
GDP per capita to 2060, by scenario
Constant-rate scenario path; the 2060 endpoint levels are illustrative, not forecasts.
Factor profile
Most workers farm small plots, and exports are mainly crops.
How this economy meets AI
Today’s production, workforce and automation baseline — context for the scenarios, outside the AGI Growth Index.
Where output comes from (% of GDP)
Where people work (% of employment)
Informal employment
Current automation exposure
A large share of the workforce remains in agriculture and informal activity. This provides some initial insulation from cognitive automation but also limits the speed at which existing workplaces can capture productivity gains.
Sources: World Bank WDI; ILOSTAT; Global Automation Atlas (Garg, Crosta & Baier, 2026). The latest available year is shown for each measure; vintages differ, so shares may not sum to 100.
Where Sierra Leone starts
Sierra Leone sits in the atlas's "stalled middle": countries with middling scores and slow growth, where gains arrive imported and late. It is one of the lowest-income members of that group, at about $846 per person. Its one clear strength is catch-up headroom, scored 4.4 out of 5. It starts so far behind that there is room to grow fast if the inputs arrive. But almost every input is thin. Compute and energy access scores 1, the floor. Physical build speed is 1.1 and AI diffusion capacity 1.2. Electricity reaches only a fraction of the country. Real assets exist: the Bumbuna hydro dam, the iron ore mines at Tonkolili and Marampa, Freetown's port, and a government innovation unit, the DSTI. Ten-year trend growth is 3.4% a year.
The three paths
These are simulations, not forecasts. The Modest path is the baseline; the two AGI scenarios fork from it. Under the Modest scenario, AI stays a normal technology. Sierra Leone would hold its trend: 3.4% growth a year, 63rd of 157. Its economy would keep doubling about every 21 years. Under Gradual takeoff, growth would still be 3.4% a year, reached only around 2045 after a two-decade ramp elsewhere — but its rank would fall to 143rd. The number stays flat while faster economies pull away. Under Fast takeoff, from the early 2030s, Sierra Leone would grow more slowly than it would have without AGI at all: 3% growth a year, 147th, a doubling stretched to over 23 years. A fast world rewards compute, capital and geopolitical weight, and Sierra Leone holds little of each. Politics could slow or redirect any path. How Sierra Leoneans and their government respond to transformative AI is a variable the model holds constant.
How you would know which world you are in
The scenarios look almost identical until about 2030. Watch leading indicators, not GDP, and watch them live. Three global signals matter most. First, whether the METR task horizon curve keeps doubling every four to five months through 2027–28; METR publishes it at metr.org. Second, whether frontier lab revenue and capital spending keep compounding; Epoch AI tracks both at epoch.ai. Third, whether growth in the ten to twenty most-ready economies — the United States and China above all — breaks above trend in the early 2030s. Double-digit growth there within a couple of years of 2030 would signal a fast world. A point or two above trend by the mid-2030s would signal a gradual one. A fade back to trend would signal a modest one. Sierra Leone's own tells would arrive earlier than GDP: iron ore order books and prices, the pace of grid and electrification rollout, mobile connectivity and mobile money uptake, and whether DSTI's digital services actually reach citizens.
If growth goes explosive
For Sierra Leone, explosive is the wrong word. Its rates are modest under every scenario, and lowest under the fast one. The frontier would compound at nearly 39% growth a year in a fast world; Sierra Leone would manage 3%. Even the regional median would run ahead. This is relative decline, not catch-up. At around 3% growth, the economy doubles in more than 23 years, so a child born today would reach adulthood in a country only about twice as rich. The honest downside is the export ladder. Iron ore and low-end manufacturing make up much of what Sierra Leone sells, and both are the kind of work a highly automated frontier can reprice or reshore. The rungs could be pulled up before the country climbs them. Its young workforce, the country's main asset, is also the input AI substitutes for, and skilled people may leave for faster economies. The hedge is to keep the assets it can own — power, land, mineral rights — and to use catch-up headroom while it still counts. Even a modest path would test the state: mining licensing, the energy ministry, Freetown's port and DSTI must all move faster than they do now.
What Sierra Leone can do now
Three levers follow from the scores, and two pay off whether or not AGI arrives. The first is AI diffusion capacity, at 1.2. Digital skills, permissive rules for deployment, and digitizing government services carry weight even in the skeptic's world, so this is a no-regret move. The second is physical build speed, at 1.1. Clearer permitting, pre-zoned land and transmission built ahead of demand help the economy under every scenario, so it too is no-regret. A cautious government can act on both today and lose nothing if the skeptics are right. The third lever is the bet: compute and energy access, at the floor of 1. Basic electrification is worth doing regardless, but hyperscale compute barely moves growth unless AI transforms the world. Closing it means packaging power and land to attract outside capital, which an $846-per-person economy cannot raise alone. Cabo Verde, a fellow small member of this group, built a technology park in Praia to court digital investment; Sierra Leone could adapt that model. Open the atlas's policy editor to see how lifting these scores shifts each path.
Use the policy editor to test how different factor scores change Sierra Leone’s modeled path. The roadmap builder below can then incorporate those targets into a 1,000-day planning prompt.
Drafted with Claude, Anthropic’s AI model, from the atlas’s data and an editorial template set by the author.
Create a 1000-day AGI and growth roadmap prompt
This prompt can be used with Claude, ChatGPT or an open-weight model hosted on your institution’s systems. It includes the atlas material for Sierra Leone: the country brief, economic structure, region, archetype and global scenarios. It instructs the model to ask for local information, use existing strategies and the political calendar, and preserve the atlas’s interpretation rules. The prompt is assembled in your browser; the information entered here is not sent elsewhere.
1 · Read the brief → 2 · Set targets in the policy editor → 3 · Generate and copy the prompt → 4 · Run it with an approved model, with high reasoning effort and web access where permitted
Instructions are generated in the selected language; the data annex remains in English. Translations are machine-drafted, and corrections from native speakers are welcome through the contact links on the start page.