Kenema City Project

Drawing insights from our involvement in tax reforms in Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, LoGRI has forged a partnership with Kenema, the nation’s third-largest city with approximately 255,000 inhabitants. Initiating in 2022, our collaboration with Kenema City Council (KCC) encompassed a pilot study detailing city building features and property values. This study paved the way for establishing property tax rates that are equitable and progressive. Spearheading the project, LoGRI identified and mapped all urban structures using high-resolution satellite imagery, simultaneously training local GIS professionals. In the final quarter of 2023 LoGRI, in tandem with KCC, is collecting field data, business information, and property characteristics from more than 50,000 structures identified from satellite imagery. This data will be used to build a database with business information and property value estimates, with the overall objective of building an fair and transparent tax system.

Our endeavors in Kenema not only enhance the tax system but also offer a blueprint for efficient reforms in cities with challenges such as informal real estate valuation and limited administrative capabilities. We’re pioneering methods in Kenema, including the use of GIS field tools to verify the precision of manually drawn building boundaries and evaluating the balance of accuracy and efficiency in both onsite and offsite property valuation methodologies, guided by local property value experts.