Only a minute after arriving in Sierra Leone any first-time visitor will realize the popular saying ‘nothing is free even in Freetown’ is no joke at all. The moment of enlightenment occurs as soon as you touch down at the airport, where every inbound and outbound passenger is mandated to pay a $25 security levy to the privately owned US civil aviation company Securiport.
The fee was borne by the government until three years ago, when President Julius Maada Bio blamed Covid-19 and the global economic crisis for the change. It’s another impediment to recovering the once-booming tourist trade following the decade of civil war in the 1990s.
