Portal:Sierra Leone

The Sierra Leone Portal

Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the west coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Sierra Leone's land area is 73,252 km² (28,283 sq mi). It has a tropical climate and environments ranging from savannahs to rainforests. As of the 2023 census, Sierra Leone had a population of 8,460,512. Freetown is its capital and largest city.

Sierra Leone is a presidential republic, with a unicameral parliament and a directly elected president. It is a secular state. Its constitution provides for the separation of state and religion and freedom of conscience. Muslims constitute three-quarters of the population, and there is a significant Christian minority. Religious tolerance is very high.

Sierra Leone's current territorial configuration was established in two phases: in 1808, the coastal Sierra Leone Colony was founded as part of the British Empire, to be a place to resettle returning Africans after the abolition of the slave trade; then in 1896, the inland Protectorate was created as a result of the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885. This led to the formal recognition of the territory as the Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate. Sierra Leone attained independence from the United Kingdom in 1961 under the leadership of Prime Minister Sir Milton Margai of the Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP). In 1971, under Prime Minister Siaka Stevens of the All People's Congress (APC), the country adopted a new constitution, transforming Sierra Leone into a presidential republic, with Stevens as the inaugural president.

In 1978, Stevens declared the APC to be the sole legally recognised party. In 1985, he was succeeded by Joseph Saidu Momoh. Momoh's enactment of a new constitution in 1991 reintroduced a multi-party system. That same year, a protracted civil war broke out between the government and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebel group. The conflict, characterised by multiple coups d'état, persisted for 11 years. Intervention by ECOMOG forces and later by the United Kingdom resulted in the defeat of the RUF in 2002, ushering in a period of relative stability. (Full article...)

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Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

The Sierra Leone Creole people (Krio: Krio pipul) are an ethnic group of Sierra Leone. The Sierra Leone Creole people are descendants of freed African-American, Afro-Caribbean, and Liberated African slaves who settled in the Western Area of Sierra Leone between 1787 and about 1885. The colony was established by the British, supported by abolitionists, under the Sierra Leone Company as a place for freedmen. The settlers called their new settlement Freetown. Today, the Sierra Leone Creoles are 1.2 percent of the population of Sierra Leone.

The Creoles of Sierra Leone have varying degrees of European ancestry, similar to their Americo-Liberian neighbours and sister ethnic group in Liberia. In Sierra Leone, some of the settlers intermarried with English colonial residents and other Europeans. Through the Jamaican Maroons, some Creoles probably also have indigenous Amerindian Taíno ancestry. The mingling of newly freed black and racially-mixed Nova Scotians and Jamaican Maroons from the 'New World' with Liberated Africans – such as the Bakongo, Ewe, Igbo, and Yoruba – over several generations in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, led to the eventual formation of a Creole ethnicity. (Full article...)

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General images -

The following are images from various Sierra Leone-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1A map of Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 2The road from Kenema to Kailahun District (from Sierra Leone)
Image 3A secondary school class in Pendembu, Kailahun District (from Sierra Leone)
Image 4A school in Koindu destroyed during the Civil War; in total 1,270 primary schools were destroyed in the War. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 5African Naval ratings march past the Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Hubert Stevenson. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 6Sierra Leone map of Köppen climate classification (from Sierra Leone)
Image 7Isata Mahoi shown editing radio programmes in Talking Drum studio Freetown; she is also an actress in the Sierra Leone radio soap opera Atunda Ayenda (from Sierra Leone)
Image 8A mosque and a church in Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 9A farmer with his rice harvest in Sierra Leone. Two-thirds of Sierra Leone's population are directly involved in subsistence agriculture. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 10Odelay mask by Temne people. Brooklyn Museum. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 11British West African Campaign troops in Freetown, 1914–1916. Published caption: "British expeditionary force preparing to embark at Freetown to attack the German Cameroons, the main object of the attack being the port of Duala. Auxiliary native troops were freely used in African warfare." (from Sierra Leone)
Image 12A secondary school class in Pendembu, Kailahun District (from Sierra Leone)
Image 13Historical GDP per capita development (from Sierra Leone)
Image 14Bai Bureh, Temne leader of the Hut Tax War of 1898 against British rule (from Sierra Leone)
Image 15Sierra Leone's total population, from 1961 to 2013 (from Sierra Leone)
Image 16A map of Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 17Houses at Sierra-Leone (May 1853, X, p. 55) (from Sierra Leone)
Image 18National Stadium in Freetown (from Sierra Leone)
Image 19The Sierra Leone Supreme Court in the capital Freetown, the highest and most powerful court in the country (from Sierra Leone)
Image 20Sierra leone, sapi, olifante, c. 1490-1510 (from Sierra Leone)
Image 21An APC political rally in the northern town of Kabala outside the home of supporters of the rival SLPP in 1968 (from Sierra Leone)
Image 22An APC political rally in the northern town of Kabala outside the home of supporters of the rival SLPP in 1968 (from Sierra Leone)
Image 23The 14 districts and 2 areas of Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 24A school in Koindu destroyed during the Civil War; in total 1,270 primary schools were destroyed in the War. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 25The distribution of major ethnic groups within Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 26A radio listener in Kailahun (from Sierra Leone)
Image 27An Ivory Hunting Horn, Sapi people, Modern day Bullom or Temne People, Sierra Leone, late 15th century (from Sierra Leone)
Image 28A situation map of the Ebola outbreak as of 8 August 2014 (from Sierra Leone)
Image 29Electricity generation in Sierra Leone in terawatt-hours (from Sierra Leone)
Image 30A mosque and a church in Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 31The road from Kenema to Kailahun District (from Sierra Leone)
Image 32British West African Campaign troops in Freetown, 1914–1916. Published caption: "British expeditionary force preparing to embark at Freetown to attack the German Cameroons, the main object of the attack being the port of Duala. Auxiliary native troops were freely used in African warfare." (from Sierra Leone)
Image 33Electricity generation in Sierra Leone in terawatt-hours (from Sierra Leone)
Image 34Temne leader Bai Bureh seen here in 1898 after his surrender, sitting relaxed in his traditional dress with a handkerchief in his hands, while a Sierra Leonean West African Frontier Force soldier stands guard next to him (from Sierra Leone)
Image 35National Stadium in Freetown (from Sierra Leone)
Image 36Houses at Sierra-Leone (May 1853, X, p. 55) (from Sierra Leone)
Image 37Odelay mask by Temne people. Brooklyn Museum. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 38Bai Bureh, Temne leader of the Hut Tax War of 1898 against British rule (from Sierra Leone)
Image 39African Naval ratings march past the Governor of Sierra Leone, Sir Hubert Stevenson. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 40Rice farming in Rolako (from Sierra Leone)
Image 41The distribution of major ethnic groups within Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 42Fragments of prehistoric pottery from Kamabai Rock Shelter (from Sierra Leone)
Image 43The Sierra Leone Supreme Court in the capital Freetown, the highest and most powerful court in the country (from Sierra Leone)
Image 44The 14 districts and 2 areas of Sierra Leone (from Sierra Leone)
Image 45Sierra leone, sapi, olifante, c. 1490-1510 (from Sierra Leone)
Image 46Bunce Island, 1805, during the period the slave facility was run by John and Alexander Anderson (from Sierra Leone)
Image 47A farmer with his rice harvest in Sierra Leone. Two-thirds of Sierra Leone's population are directly involved in subsistence agriculture. (from Sierra Leone)
Image 48Sierra Leone map of Köppen climate classification (from Sierra Leone)
Image 49Bunce Island, 1805, during the period the slave facility was run by John and Alexander Anderson (from Sierra Leone)
Image 50The Koindu dance (from Sierra Leone)

Recognized content -

Entries here consist of Good and Featured articles, which meet a core set of high editorial standards.

Mass wasting of mud in Freetown on August 14, 2017

On the morning of August 14, 2017, significant mudflow events occurred in and around the capital city of Freetown in Sierra Leone. Following three days of torrential rainfall, mass wasting of mud and debris damaged or destroyed hundreds of buildings in the city, killing 1,141 people and leaving more than 3,000 homeless.

Causal factors for the mudslides include the region's particular topography and climate – with Freetown's elevation close to sea level and its greater position within a tropical monsoon climate. Those factors were assisted by the generally poor state of the region's infrastructure and loss of protective natural drainage systems from periods of deforestation. (Full article...)

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