Sierra Leone
Sierra Leone is a small country of 71.740 km2 with 5.3 million inhabitants. It is located on the west coast of Africa, bordering Guinea to the north/northeast and Liberia in the east. Sierra Leone is a country with many different ethnicities where Mende and Temne peoples represent approximately 30 % of the population and Krio approximately 10 %. The remaining 30 % is represented by different smaller ethnicities but when asked directly most inhabitants will say they are Sierra Leoneans (Josefsen 2004). The median age is 19 years, the average life expectancy is about 50 years and the fertility rate is 5 children per woman. Sixty percent of the population is Muslim and 10 % are Christians, while the remaining 30 % have a different religion.
The country is very poor and it is the third least developed country in the world (UNDP 2009). This is partly explained by the 10-year-long civil war that ravaged the country from 1992 to 2002.
Before the civil war, and even further back in the late 1700s, Sierra Leone was not yet a state. The state Sierra Leone was formed when Europe/UK bought a part of West Africa and sent freed slaves there. They called the area “Province of Freedom” which explains the name of the capital of Sierra Leone, Freetown. The Krio population in Sierra Leone mainly lives in Freetown and they are descendants of the many former slaves, who once came into the country.
In 1808 the British declared Sierra Leone a British colony, and it was not until 1961 the country again became independent. A western-like democracy was introduced in 1961 and the country had two equally sized parties, Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) and All People Congress(APC). The Mende population primarily voted for SLPP and the Temne population for APC. The Krio population voted for which ever party represented their interests at the given time. From 1961 until the war, the country was marked by numerous coups, violent riots and a general instability that led the country into an economic collapse. The natural resources of Sierra Leone were grossly exploited by foreign interests: diamonds, in particular, were smuggled out of the country on a large scale.
In 1992 the civil war broke out. It was fought between government soldiers on one side and rebels on the other. The Rebels, who called themselves “Revolutionary United Front” (RUF) consisted of the government’s enemies and rebels from Liberia, where there was also a civil war going on. The war was a complicated matter, but there is no doubt that it was more about controlling the areas with diamonds than about political or ideological issues. The war is known in most of the world due to the large number of child soldiers that fought on the side of the rebels and the government, but also because of the many arm and leg amputations performed by the rebels on the population.
In 2002 the war officially ended when United Nations peacekeeping forces disarmed the RUF. In 2006 a free and fair election was carried out and in 2007 the country experienced the first peaceful change of government.
The formerly troubled country is now peaceful, but there are still signs of the devastations of the civil war. The country is deep in debt and deeply dependent on help and loans from the international community. Seventy percent of the population lives below the poverty line and most of them live in rural areas.
The country is known to be rich in natural resources, especially diamonds, titanium and possibly also oil. The government does not yet fully control these resources and the country still loses millions of dollars worth of diamonds through smuggling
Sierra Leone is an interesting country, because of its huge development potential as well as the enormous need of the population to escape their almost hopeless situation.