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Sierra Leone,
with its population of 7.977 million (2020), is located on
the west coast of Africa bordered by Guinea to its north
and east, by 291 miles of Atlantic Ocean coastline to
its west and south-west and Liberia to its south-east. Because of
its dense tropical rainforest, Sierra Leone (named after the mountains around
Freetown harbour by the Portuguese 'Serra Lyoa' ~ Lion Mountains) was mostly cut off from the rest of Africa. Europe made its first contact
there in 1462 and soon established trading posts and inevitably introduced
slavery. By the seventeenth century Portuguese imperialism was on the wan and
their presence there was largely supplanted by the British. By the 1800s Sierra
Leone, whilst then a British colony, was much smaller than its present day area
insofar as much of the land was still ruled by its indigenous people. Over the next decades British rule extended either by treaty, agreement or by
other means until it exerted full control over the area, mainly in order to
exclude the French.
In April 1961, Sierra Leone was
granted full independence from the United Kingdom and elections were arranged
for May 1962 in which the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) were victorious. A
few years later military rule was imposed following a further election in 1967
however just over a year later democracy was restored. By 1991 there was an air
of corruption in the politics of Sierra Leone and civil war broke outa and, by the time the war was declared over in January 2002,
thousands of people, especially children, had been
killed, tortured and maimed and over one third of the population was displaced. The precipitating
factors for the civil war were an underlying sense of injustice
that the ruling classes were benefiting from the income
generated from alluvial diamond mining whilst the poor remained
poor. Today the poor are still poor with boys in particular, as
they mature into adulthood, still having the scars of their child soldier years.
The country's infrastructure is still
weak and many are under educated, most un or under
employed as well with high
unemployment particularly affecting young people
(60%), the very young
people who were so brutalised as those child soldiers. As such,
many attempt to cross illegally in Europe in the hope of finding a better life
only for them to die at sea or end up in detention centres once arriving in
the EU, mainly via Spain and Italy. Sierra Leone is in 182nd place out of 189
countries and territories in 2019 when ranked in terms of life expectancy,
literacy, access to knowledge and the living standards of a country. Find out more about Sierra Leone today in
the profile pages below.
Sierra Leone Profile: Volunteer in Sierra Leone
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Sierra Leone Profile: Sierra Leone Civil War
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Sierra Leone Profile: Life in Sierra Leone
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Sierra Leone Profile: Sierra Leone Children
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Sierra Leone Profile: Child Sponsor Sierra Leone
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Sierra Leone Profile: Sierra Leone Images
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South Africa Profile: Sierra Leone Quiz
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Sierra Leone Profile: Freetown Profile
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Sierra Leone Profile: Freetown Lungi International Airport
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Sierra Leone Profile: Sierra Leone Map
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Sierra Leone Profile: Sierra Leone News
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