Sierra Leone Creative Economy Diagnostic and Toolkit
Description of project
This consultancy focuses on assessing Sierra Leone’s creative economy (CE) to address a critical knowledge gap and provide actionable recommendations to unlock the sector’s growth potential. The creative economy represents a significant avenue for economic diversification, job creation, and cultural preservation, with the potential to address challenges faced by Sierra Leone's growing youth population. The assignment was designed to identify, map, and analyze key industries within the creative sector, their economic impact, and the challenges they face, while also proposing solutions to foster growth.
The consultancy emphasizes gender-sensitive and youth-centered approaches, leveraging Sierra Leone’s unique cultural assets and exploring opportunities in digitally enabled creative sectors such as music, film, gaming, and design. The outputs are aimed at guiding the World Bank’s future interventions, while also supporting the Government of Sierra Leone and development partners in utilizing the creative economy as a tool for inclusive development.
Services provided
Key Objectives of the Engagement:
- Operational Framework Development: Designed the Fund’s comprehensive operational manual, covering governance arrangements, roles, eligibility criteria, and implementation procedures.
- Governance Structure and Risk
- Inception Phase: Developed a detailed work plan and methodology for ecosystem mapping, stakeholder engagement, industry prioritization, and value chain analysis. Presented the inception report and secured alignment with WB and local stakeholders.
- Ecosystem Mapping and Desk Review: Conducted an extensive review of existing data, reports, and literature to map key creative industries, identify industry clusters, and highlight market and policy challenges. This included creating a preliminary prioritization of five creative industries for detailed analysis.
- Fieldwork and Stakeholder Engagement: Undertook fieldwork in Sierra Leone to collect primary data through interviews and consultations with key stakeholders, including government agencies, private sector actors, artists, and MSMEs. Documented case studies of successful creative economy MSMEs to provide actionable insights.
- Diagnostic Analysis: Produced a comprehensive diagnostic report detailing:
- A definition of Sierra Leone’s creative economy adapted to the local context.
- Economic mapping of creative industries and their contribution to job creation and GDP.
- Analysis of demand and supply factors, including market failures, regulatory gaps, and access to finance challenges.
- Identification of global trends and innovations relevant to Sierra Leone’s creative economy.
- Prioritization of key constraints and opportunities within the sector.
- Recommendations for sector-wide interventions and specific measures for the most promising industry (detailed value chain analysis).
- Guidance Note Development: Drafted a concise guidance note summarizing the methodology and lessons learned to support replication of the diagnostic in other countries with limited data availability.
Capacity Building and Stakeholder Buy-In: Conducted workshops to present findings to WB representatives, government officials, and local stakeholders, fostering understanding and support for the proposed interventions.
