Introduction
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Sierra Leone lies in West Africa, bordering Guinea and Liberia. The capital is Freetown, a coastal city with a long history of fishing and involvement in the slave trade. Approximately half of the workers in Sierra Leone are subsistence farmers and the nation relies on its natural stores of diamonds and iron to produce most of its revenue. Seventy percent of the population lives below the poverty line partly due to the civil war that raged from 1991 to 2002. It devastated the region, leaving thousands dead over a million displaced. Sierra Leone's official language is English.
(TUBS, 2011)
Population
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The primary ethnic groups in Sierra Leone are the Temne, who account for 35 percent of the population, and the Mende, who account for 33 percent. Other indigenous groups form 25 percent of the population and those who came to the region after being freed from slavery and extremely small amounts of other groups make up the final seven percent of the population. The median age is 19 years. A third of females attend primary school in their lifetime while 39 percent of males do so (UNICEF, 2013). The overall literacy rate in the nation is 48 percent. Just over 70 percent of the population is Muslim and over 20 percent is Christian.
(CIA World Factbook, 2018)
Geography and Environment
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Sierra Leone has a tropical climate with a rainy and a dry season. The west is a coastal region containing swampland. The inner parts of the country contain mountains, plateaus, and plains. There is both rainforest and farmland in the plains. The health of the nation's natural resources and the environment is under threat. According to Ophaniel Gooding, The fish population is diminishing due to illegal fishing that accounts for about 30% of catches off of the coast of Sierra Leone (2017). Deforestation is another environmental problem that Sierra Leoneans face. It leads to dangerous mudslides such as the one that killed over one thousand people in 2017 because the tree roots help to anchor the soil.
(Atherton, 1968)
Recent History
1782 - Britain begins sending former slaves to Sierra Leone, these former slaves founded the British colony in Freetown.
1961 - Sierra Leone gains independence from Britain.
1991 - Civil war erupts in Sierra Leone.
2017 - Mudslides in Sierra Leone kill over 14,000 people (Gibbins, 2017)
1961 - Sierra Leone gains independence from Britain.
1991 - Civil war erupts in Sierra Leone.
2017 - Mudslides in Sierra Leone kill over 14,000 people (Gibbins, 2017)
*Unless otherwise stated, all statistics come from the CIA World Factbook