Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone is unlikely to be directly involved in significant armed conflict in the next three years, with risk concentrated in political-security rupture scenarios and limited border incidents rather than sustained war.

Most likely: political contestation and episodic protest/communal tensions, but no sustained organised armed conflict. Watch for triggers that could harden into armed confrontation: credible reporting of security-force factionalism, a major election-administration legitimacy crisis, or a lethal incident at Yenga that prompts reciprocal deployments. External kinetic exposure remains limited and mostly diplomatic/regional-cooperation oriented.

Risk edges up approaching the 2028–2029 political cycle if economic stress and legitimacy disputes intensify and if security institutions polarise. Still, civil-war-scale conflict remains unlikely without durable armed organisation, financing, and sustained security-force fragmentation. Yenga is likely to remain a managed standoff punctuated by incidents unless bilateral/ECOWAS mediation collapses and border militarisation becomes routine.

Scope and definition Assesses the probability by end-2029 of (a) organised internal armed conflict reaching civil-war-like thresholds, or (b) sustained interstate hostilities involving Sierra Leone’s forces. Crime, protests, and brief security incidents are excluded unless they evolve into organised armed conflict.

Threat drivers Domestic: The dominant pathway to major violence remains a political-security rupture rather than a mass-based insurgency. Structural vulnerabilities persist: polarised, ethno-regional party competition; contested electoral legitimacy; and uneven depoliticisation and accountability in policing and security institutions. Governance and corruption weaknesses raise the odds that future disputes become zero-sum and securitised, especially if economic stress sharpens grievances.

External: Regional deterioration in the Sahel increases background risks (arms flows, trafficking, criminal-jihadist financing networks) but Sierra Leone remains geographically peripheral to current jihadist theatres and has not shown indicators of an active insurgent infrastructure. Alliance exposure is more likely to be indirect (diplomatic leadership, training, bounded regional cooperation) than direct kinetic entanglement.

Interstate: The Yenga dispute with Guinea is the clearest interstate flashpoint. Guinean re-entry and militarisation around mining/smuggling incentives increase the chance of a small firefight or coercive incident. However, incentives for sustained war remain weak: both states face high economic and diplomatic costs, and ECOWAS/AU/UN channels provide off-ramps.

Resilience and systemic firebreaks Sierra Leone retains meaningful stabilisers: post-civil-war security-sector reforms and generally intact civilian control; strong reputational and aid-dependence penalties for unconstitutional escalation; and limited conventional capability and logistics that constrain sustained offensive operations (reducing interstate-war feasibility). National cohesion mechanisms and intermediation forums exist, even if their independence is contested.

Net assessment New evidence reinforces governance/legitimacy fragility and highlights a more active border dispute, but does not indicate an emerging domestic armed movement or a regional trigger likely to pull Sierra Leone into sustained combat. The modal outcome remains unrest below armed-conflict thresholds; the key downside is a renewed coordinated security-actor challenge or an unmanaged Yenga incident that escalates beyond a local clash.