Sierra Leone

The coast was visited by Portuguese traders from the fifteenth century, and the region became caught up in the Atlantic slave trade, with the slave fort on Bunce Island a grim landmark. In the late eighteenth century the British founded Freetown as a settlement for freed and rescued slaves, who, with later arrivals, formed the Krio community. Sierra Leone became a British colony and protectorate before gaining independence in 1961. Decades later, from 1991 to 2002, it suffered a devastating civil war.

Sierra Leone has a varied landscape, from a swampy Atlantic coastline and the mountainous peninsula on which Freetown sits, beside one of the largest natural harbours in the world, to interior plains and plateaus rising to hills and mountains in the east. The climate is hot and tropical, with a heavy rainy season, and the country was once largely covered in rainforest, much of it now cleared. This green, well-watered land supports farming and holds significant mineral deposits, including diamonds.

The flag of Sierra Leone has three horizontal bands of green, white, and blue. The green is said to represent the country's agriculture and its mountains and natural resources, the white unity and justice, and the blue the hope offered by the natural harbour of Freetown and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. The simple, calm tricolour was adopted at independence in 1961, expressing the aspirations of the new nation.

Sierra Leone is notable for its religious tolerance and coexistence. The majority of the population is Muslim, predominantly Sunni, alongside a substantial Christian minority, both Catholic and Protestant, and many people who follow traditional African religions. It is common for these faiths to live side by side, even within families, and for festivals of one religion to be shared by others. Traditional secret societies and beliefs also remain an influential part of the culture.

The cuisine of Sierra Leone centres on rice, eaten at nearly every meal and considered so essential that a day without it is hardly thought a proper day of eating. Rice is served with rich, often fiery sauces, including the popular cassava-leaf and potato-leaf stews and groundnut soup, accompanied by fish, chicken, or meat. Plenty of chili, palm oil, and fresh produce characterise the food, and fish from the Atlantic and the rivers is an important part of the diet.

Agriculture is the livelihood of most people in Sierra Leone, who grow rice, the staple crop, along with cassava, sweet potatoes, and a range of vegetables, much of it on small farms, while cocoa, coffee, and oil palm are grown for export. The country is also rich in minerals, above all diamonds, mined from its gravels and notorious during the civil war, as well as rutile, bauxite, and gold. Fishing in the rich Atlantic waters is another important resource.

The founding of Freetown as a haven for freed slaves gives Sierra Leone a unique place in history, and the descendants of these settlers, the Krio, developed a distinctive culture and language. The country's most traumatic modern experience was the civil war from 1991 to 2002, a brutal conflict marked by atrocities and financed in part by the trade in so-called blood diamonds. Sierra Leone later faced the West African Ebola epidemic, and has worked since toward peace and recovery.

Sierra Leone has a population of around 8 million people, made up of several ethnic groups, the largest being the Temne and the Mende, along with the Krio, the descendants of freed slaves whose language, an English-based creole, serves as a widely spoken lingua franca alongside the official English. The population is young and concentrated in the rural farming areas and in the capital, Freetown, on its harbour peninsula. The country has worked to rebuild a sense of national unity since its civil war.