Freetown's Moptax Reform: GIS-Based Property Valuation for a Fivefold Tax Gain

Freetown City Council in Sierra Leone historically taxed property using outdated valuation rolls covering under half the city's buildings, with rates set close to arbitrarily. From 2020 the council worked with the International Centre for Tax and Development (ICTD), the International Growth Centre (IGC) and the Local Government Revenue Initiative (LoGRI) to rebuild the system around satellite imagery, GIS mapping and a simple points-based valuation formula.

Satellite imagery and GIS mapping identified and geo-located every structure in the city, and a points-based formula scored each property on observable features such as building material, number of storeys and location, replacing subjective assessments. A new digital platform, Moptax, built with the local firm Baloosoft, manages the resulting database, generates bills and records payments. The reform was approved in April 2020 and billed from June 2020 despite the COVID-19 pandemic, with the council prioritising the highest-value 50% of properties first and adding contactless billing and phone support to keep collection moving.

The reform doubled the number of registered properties from roughly 57,000 to 110,000 by April 2020 and raised estimated revenue potential more than fivefold. LoGRI reports an actual threefold surge in collected revenue following the 2021 rollout, with continued year-on-year growth through fiscal year 2023. The new formula was also progressive: bills for the highest-value quintile of properties rose by an average of 242%, while bills for the lowest-value quintile fell by roughly 70%.

The reform still depends heavily on its external technical partners: as of 2023, LoGRI's continuing role was explicitly to build Freetown City Council's in-house capacity to maintain the tax database, print and deliver bills, and sustain the system without outside support -- a transition not yet complete. The approach has been discussed as a template for other low-capacity municipalities through ICTD/LoGRI workshops, but independent replication with comparable published results has not yet been documented elsewhere.