About the AUD/SLE rate
The AUD/SLE rate is how many SLE one Australian dollar buys. It moves constantly with interest-rate expectations, commodity prices and global risk sentiment - see what moves the rate. Tradergy shows the mid-market reference rate and does not forecast where it’s heading. For the 52-week highs and lows and a daily table, see the AUD/SLE rate history.
Related views of this rate: the reverse rate, SLE → AUD, is on the receiving Sierra Leonean leone view, and sending Australian dollars to Sierra Leone is covered on the AUD → SLE transfer page. Every AUD pair sits on the convert hub, and to work in more than one currency at once there is the currency converter.
The eighteen months the leone was two currencies
One sentence of arithmetic in a gazetted regulation did the work. The Redenomination of the Leone (Characteristics) Regulations 2021, gazetted on 11 November 2021 under the Bank of Sierra Leone Act 2019, provide that the redenomination shall be done by dividing the nominal value of the existing currency by a multiplicand of one thousand, so that one thousand leones yields a face value of one leone.
The changeover itself was defined as a period. A second instrument, the Redenomination of the Leone Regulations 2024, fixes the transition period as commencing on 1 July 2022 and ending on 31 December 2023, and provides that the existing currency continued to be legal tender until that expiry, after which it ceased to be.
Inside those eighteen months the two currencies were not treated symmetrically, which is what kept the direction of travel one way. Financial service providers took cash deposits in both the existing and the redenominated currency, while withdrawals were made only in the redenominated one. Traders were told to give change primarily in new leones, falling back on old notes only when short. Prices and tariffs had to be displayed in both currencies throughout, and the new unit carried the symbol NLe for the duration.
Exchanging old money was made free of charge by regulation. After the transition period the regulations allow it to continue at the Bank alone, for a period the Bank determines, after which the Bank shall refuse to exchange existing currency held by any member of the public.
The notes themselves were designed to be unremarkable. The 2021 regulations specify that the one leone note shall be identical to the one thousand leone note then circulating, except that the words and figures are replaced and the security features enhanced. Sierra Leone changed the arithmetic of its money and left the appearance of it almost exactly as it was.
Sources: Redenomination of the Leone (Characteristics) Regulations 2021, Statutory Instrument No. 14 of 2021 · Redenomination of the Leone Regulations 2024, Statutory Instrument No. 4 of 2024 · Bank of Sierra Leone, public notice on redenomination, 11 August 2021