IMF Approves $211 Million Climate Loan for Sierra Leone

The International Monetary Fund’s board on Thursday approved a $211 million loan to support Sierra Leone‘s efforts to build resilience to the effects of climate change, adding to an existing $265.2 million program.

The Resilience and Sustainability Facility (RSF) funds “will promote balance of payments stability,” said Kenji Okamura, deputy managing director at the IMF.

The funds will have “a focus on climate-sensitive public investment management, climate resilience, and financial stability,” the Fund said in a statement.

The impoverished African country is already almost two years into its existing IMF bailout, and Thursday’s board decision also made a disbursement of $31.72 million under that facility immediately available to the government.

The IMF board said the country’s economic outlook was “stable,” but that 2026 growth was expected to fall to four percent based on the economic fallout of the war on Iran, which has sent energy and fertilizer prices surging.

Year-end inflation is expected to hit 11.6 percent, the board said, about one percentage point higher than it is currently, according to Trading Economics data.

“The outlook is subject to significant risks, including rising political tensions ahead of the elections, the fallout from the war in the Middle East, and possible reform fatigue amid the sustained fiscal consolidation,” the IMF said.

In making the $31.72 million available under the existing facility, the IMF’s board waived certain performance criteria, including on the concessional external debt ceiling and net domestic assets.

Sierra Leone is one of the nations most vulnerable to global warming.

More than two million people along its coast are threatened by rising sea levels, according to a June 2024 study by the country’s National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) and the NGO Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC).

The country is “highly vulnerable to the increased frequency and severity of coastal erosion and sea level rise linked to the effects of climate change and human activities,” the study said.