Online safety & content laws in Sierra Leone (2026)

The Cyber Security and Crime Act, 2021 (assented November 2021) is the governing instrument; it targets cybercrime, critical-infrastructure protection, electronic evidence, child online protection and privacy, rather than establishing a platform content-moderation/online-safety system.

Section 44 criminalises cyberstalking and bullying; Section 44(2)(b) penalises sending a message one knows to be false, with fines of roughly Le 30m–50m and/or 2–5 years' imprisonment for individuals, and up to Le 250m for corporations.

Press-freedom and journalist organisations report the Act being applied to prosecute or detain journalists and critics, warning of a chilling effect; the IFJ has urged review of Section 44(2) as a threat to media freedom.

The Act imposes corporate/legal-person liability (e.g. Section 46 for offences committed for a legal person's benefit) and includes service-provider confidentiality and limitation-of-liability provisions (Section 16), but no safe-harbour or notice-and-takedown intermediary regime as under the DSA.

The Act contains child-online-protection provisions (e.g. criminalising child sexual abuse material and online exploitation), but there is no general statutory age-verification mandate for platforms or adult-content sites.

Sierra Leone still lacks a dedicated data-protection statute; the Data Protection and Right to Access Information Bill 2025 was nationally validated and is to go to Cabinet then Parliament, with the Right to Access Information Commission slated to be the implementing authority.