Plant and animal life
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The distribution of plants and animals has been influenced by such factors as relief and soil types and, perhaps more important, by farming methods and civil strife. Remnants of the extensive original forest cover survive in the Gola Forest Reserves, in the southeastern hill country near the Liberian border. Secondary forest is now dominant; valuable timber species including African mahogany and African teak, once common in the original forests, are now rare. The secondary forest consists of other tree species such as the fire-resistant palm tree, a valuable source of palm oil and kernels.
The prevalence of savanna vegetation increases to the north as precipitation decreases. The savannas owe their present extent and character largely to the erosion produced by farming, grazing, and the use of fire. There are some small areas of climax savanna—a closed area of broad-leaved, low-growing trees and tall tussocky grasses. Other savannas are derived from forest and are characterized by fire-resistant savanna trees with tall grasses. Tracts of tallgrass savanna also occur. Remnants of mangrove swamps constitute the main coastal vegetation community, especially in the saline tidal areas of river estuaries. Piassava, a kind of raffia palm, is common in the swampy grasslands of the south.
Unrestricted hunting during Sierra Leone’s civil war (1991–2002) adversely affected much of the country’s wildlife. Large game animals, such as elephants, leopards, lions, hyenas, and buffalo, are rarely seen outside of national parks or reserves. Chimpanzees and various species of monkeys are common in the forest zones, while other animals, such as antelope and bushpigs, are more generally distributed. There is a wide variety of insects, including the malaria-carrying mosquito and the tsetse fly. Hippopotamuses, crocodiles, and manatees occupy the rivers, including such rare species as the pygmy hippopotamus and the dwarf crocodile. The coastal waters, estuaries, and rivers, such as the Sierra Leone and the Sherbro, contain a wide variety of fish and shellfish, such as tuna, barracuda, bonga (shad), snapper, herring, mackerel, and lobster. Sierra Leone’s rich birdlife, which emerged relatively unscathed from the years of conflict, includes emerald cuckoos, owls, little African swift, vultures, and many other species. Several parks, sanctuaries, and reserves have been established to protect Sierra Leone’s wildlife, including Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary and the Gola Forest Reserves in the south and Outamba-Kilimi National Park in the north. Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary, located near Freetown, was established to rescue and rehabilitate abandoned or orphaned chimpanzees.
People
Ethnic groups
There are about 18 ethnic groups that exhibit similar cultural features, such as secret societies, chieftaincy, patrilineal descent, and farming methods. The Mende, found in the east and south, and the Temne, found in the centre and northwest, form the two largest groups. Other major groups include the Limba, Kuranko, Susu, Yalunka, and Loko in the north; the Kono and Kisi in the east; and the Sherbro in the southwest. Minor groups include the coastal Bullom, Vai, and Krim and the Fulani and Malinke, who are immigrants from Guinea concentrated in the north and east. The Creoles—descendants of liberated blacks who colonized the coast from the late 18th to the mid-19th century—are found mainly in and around Freetown. Throughout the 19th century, blacks from the United States and West Indies also settled in Sierra Leone. Ethnic complexity is further enhanced by the presence of Lebanese and Indian traders in urban centres.
Languages
Krio, a language derived from English and a variety of African languages, is the mother tongue of the Creoles and the country’s lingua franca. Among the Niger-Congo languages, the Mande group is the largest and includes Mende, Kuranko, Kono, Yalunka, Susu, and Vai. The Mel group consists of Temne, Krim, Kisi, Bullom, Sherbro, and Limba. English, the official language, is used in administration, education, and commerce. Arabic is used among Lebanese traders and adherents of Islam. School texts, information bulletins, and collections of folktales are produced in indigenous languages such as Mende and Temne.
The Vai script used in Liberia and Sierra Leone has the distinction of being one of the few indigenous scripts in Africa. Some of the local languages are written in European script, and a few, especially in the Muslim areas in the north, have been transcribed into Arabic.
Religion
About two-thirds of the population are Muslims, while about one-fourth are Christians. Less than one-tenth of the population practice a variety of traditional religions. However, this number does not include the many Sierra Leoneans who practice traditional religions in tandem with their professed Muslim or Christian faiths. Other religions—including Bahāʾī, Hinduism, and Judaism—are practiced by small percentages of the population.
Settlement patterns
Villages of about 35 buildings and 200 inhabitants dominate the rural landscape. Modernization is slowly altering the traditional pattern of rural settlement; the old circular village form, with a tight cluster of houses, is rapidly yielding to the linear village along a road or the regular gridiron pattern with adequate spacing between houses. Although disrupted by the country’s civil war, economic activity in these villages centres largely around rice farming. The extended family provides farm labour for both rice farming and cash crop production. Fishing is becoming increasingly important. The raising and herding of cattle is largely confined to the north. The small shopkeeper is typical of the villages, as are the tailor and carpenter. Traditional crafts, such as metalworking, cloth dyeing and weaving, and woodworking, are rapidly disappearing with the increased importation of cheap manufactured goods.
Except for Freetown, the development of large towns occurred only after World War II. A prominent feature of the towns is the daily market, which contains petty traders, the majority of whom are women. Bo, in the southeast, was an early administrative and educational centre. Other important towns include Kenema, east of Bo, which has grown as a result of diamond mining, and Makeni, a major commercial centre, in the north. Mining of diamonds has also been important to Koidu, Sefadu, Yengema, and Jaiama in the east. Port Loko, Kabala, Bonthe, Moyamba, Kailahun, Kambia, Pujehun, and Magburaka are administrative centres with retail trading and produce marketing. Many towns were damaged or destroyed in the civil war.
Economy
Private capital dominates mining concerns, commerce, and banking. European, Lebanese, and Indian interests are predominant, and participation by Sierra Leoneans is limited. Various inefficient parastatals were privatized in the 1980s and ’90s.
There were growing economic difficulties in the 1980s, including a heavy external debt burden, escalating costs of food and fuel imports, and erratic mineral-export production. Substantial devaluations of the national currency, the leone, also occurred, and a series of economic stabilization programs supported by the International Monetary Fund were initiated to address these problems. Foreign investment, which centred on the mineral sector, declined drastically after the start of the civil war in 1991. Bauxite and rutile mines, the producers of most of the export earnings, closed in 1995. By the time the war ended in 2002, much of the formal economy had been destroyed, and the government was faced with the arduous task of rebuilding the country’s economic infrastructure.
Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Shifting agriculture, a system of cultivation that employs plot rotation in an effort to preserve soil fertility, is the technique largely practiced in Sierra Leone. More than three-fifths of the population engage in agricultural production, primarily for the domestic market but some also for export. Rice, the main food crop, is widely cultivated on swampland and upland farms. Swamp rice cultivation is concentrated in the lower reaches of river basins, of which the Scarcies is the most important. Efforts are being made to reduce upland rice farming, with its attendant soil erosion, in favour of swampland farming, with its superior yields. Other food crops include millet, peanuts (groundnuts), cassava (manioc), sweet potatoes, and oil palms. Vegetable gardening is important around the major urban centres, where markets are available to farmers. The major cash crops are palm kernels, cocoa, coffee, piassava, and ginger, and production is carried out entirely by small-scale farmers. In the 1970s the government attempted to improve agricultural productivity by creating development projects funded by the World Bank. Various other multilateral and bilateral aid projects along similar lines followed in the 1980s with varying success. Agricultural production declined drastically during the civil war.
Forest covers more than one-third of the country, the most important area of which is the Gola Forest Reserves, a tract of primary tropical rainforest near the Liberian border. Timber is produced for the domestic and export markets and includes Guarea cedrata, a cedar-scented, pink, mahogany-type wood, and the Lophira alata variety procera.
Sierra Leone’s many waterways are the home of many varieties of fish, such as bonga (a type of shad), butterfish, snapper, and sole. The coastal waters contain such shellfish as shrimp, lobster, and oysters. The country should be an ideal place for commercial fishing, but illegal activity by foreign fisheries and the years of civil war severely affected this sector. After the end of the civil war, the sector began to show gradual improvement.
Resources and power
Mineral resources are fairly well distributed and include diamonds, chromite, and reserves of rutile (titanium dioxide) that are among the world’s largest. There are iron ore reserves, but these are no longer commercially mined. Other minerals include bauxite, columbite (a black mineral of iron, manganese, and niobium), gold, and platinum, largely in the southern plateau region.
Mining employs a large segment of the population and provides a significant contribution to the national economy. Diamonds are mined by a few private companies and by vast numbers of private prospectors. The National Diamond Mining Company (Diminco) also mined diamonds until 1995. Mining methods range from mechanical grab lines with washing and separator plants to crude hand digging and panning. Many diamonds are found in river gravels, especially along the Sewa-Bafi river system. Official exports of diamonds have declined dramatically since the 1960s due to extensive smuggling and the depletion of reserves. Foreign investment beginning in the mid-1990s helped develop the deep-mining of diamonds, which was officially suspended after 1999 and then slowly reinstated after the war’s end in 2002. Internal instability left much of the diamond region in the hands of rebel forces throughout the 1990s and early 21st century, thereby providing them with a lucrative source of funding for their rebellion. The trading of these so-called “blood” or “conflict” diamonds—a problem not only in Sierra Leone but also in other African countries—became a source of worldwide controversy. The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution in July 2000 that banned the import of uncertified rough diamonds from Sierra Leone; the embargo was lifted in June 2003.
The privately owned Sierra Leone Development Company mined iron ore at Marampa from 1933 to 1975. In 1981 the government reopened the mine at Marampa under the management of an Austrian company but soon encountered financial difficulties and suspended operations in 1985. The Sierra Leone Ore and Metal Company (Sieromco) began open-cast bauxite mining at Mokanji Hills in 1964; the ore was shipped to Europe for reduction and refining into aluminum. Due to the dangers of operating in the midst of the civil war and to damage sustained during the early years of the conflict, the company ceased operations at the mine in 1995 and abandoned it in 1996. Rutile, found in the southwest, was exploited beginning in the mid-1960s by Sherbro Minerals Ltd. Production. After the company’s demise in the early 1970s, prospecting activities boomed under the Bethlehem Steel and Nord Resources corporations. Rutile mining was an important part of the country’s economy before mining activities were disrupted by rebel fighting in 1995, when bauxite mining also ceased; the mining of both minerals had resumed by 2006.
Electricity is generated primarily by thermal plants, which are supplemented by a few small hydroelectric installations, such as the Dodo hydroelectric power plant in the southeast. The hydroelectric power potential of Sierra Leone’s deeply incised river valleys is appreciable. Construction of the Bumbuna hydroelectric power plant on the Rokel (Seli) River, which began in the 1980s, was interrupted by the civil war and did not resume until after the fighting had ended.
Manufacturing
Industrialization is restricted largely to import substitution. Manufacturing is concentrated in Freetown, and production is mainly of consumer goods, such as cigarettes, sugar, alcoholic beverages, soap, footwear, textiles, mineral fuels, and lubricants. Although factories are small and generally employ fewer than 1,000 workers each, their role in economic diversification is important. Farther inland, industries are focused on the processing of agricultural and forest produce, such as rice, timber, and palm oil. Traditional industries, such as fish curing and leatherwork, continue.
Finance, trade, and labour
The Bank of Sierra Leone is the country’s central bank; it issues currency (the leone), maintains external reserves, and acts as banker and financial adviser to the government. The National Development Bank is charged with providing finances to investors within the country. The Sierra Leone Commercial Bank provides credit and technical assistance to farmers. Private commercial banks also exist in the country.
Foreign trade has expanded substantially since independence, although its character still reflects the colonial nature of the economy. An excessive reliance is placed upon a few primary products, most of which go to China, South Korea, and various countries in Africa and Europe. Minerals and agricultural products account for the bulk of exports. Imports, however, have become more diversified and include machinery, vehicles, fuel, and food products. China, the United Arab Emirates, Belgium, and India are among the chief sources for imports.
Government revenue is derived from direct and indirect taxes. In addition to import and export taxes, the government can also rely on company, excise, income, and mining taxes for revenue. The government’s revenue from trade has been undermined by the growth of smuggling of diamonds and agricultural produce.
Transportation
A government railway was completed in 1908 as a means of opening the country to commerce and ensuring effective British occupancy. By 1975, however, the railway had been phased out, leaving only a short rail line that linked the iron ore mine at Marampa with the port at Pepel.
A road network, originally developed as a feeder system to the railway, has become the principal transport carrier. The network is dominated by a series of highways radiating from Freetown to inland urban centres. The government launched a long-term program in the late 1980s to modernize the road system to meet the needs of rapidly expanding traffic, but by the end of the 20th century the roads were in serious disrepair. Reconstruction of the road network was a priority in the years after the end of the civil war.
Inland waterways carry a considerable volume of mineral ores, piassava, and food products. Launches and sailing boats are important, especially on the southern route to Bonthe and the northern route to the Great and Little Scarcies. Freetown is the country’s principal port. Its facilities handle all imports and agricultural exports. Specialized ports include Niti, which handles all bauxite and rutile exports, and Bonthe, which exports agricultural products.
The international airport of Lungi is situated on the north bank of the Sierra Leone River opposite Freetown. It can accommodate commercial jets and a large annual volume of traffic. Domestic air transport is limited.
