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The Politics of Economic Decline in Sierra Leone

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 November 2008

David Fashole Luke
Affiliation:
Centre of African Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Stephen P. Riley
Affiliation:
Department of International Relations and Politics, Staffordshire Polytechnic, Stoke-on-Trent

Extract

The fact that Sierra Leone is one of Africa's little-known states is an acknowledgement of its marginalisation and reversal of fortunes since independence from Britain in 1961. But this observation is also a reminder that under colonial rule, Sierra Leone had received considerable notoriety for several reasons: an important naval base, commercial centre, and seaport; a hot-bed of political agitation and perennial challenge to British authority; and a centre of education – the so-called ‘Athens of West Africa’.1 In more recent times, however, Sierra Leone jas not caught the attention of international commentators and the world press. It has not achieved the strategic or international political significance of such major African states as Algeria, Côte d'Ivoire, Egypt, Nigeria, Zambia, or Zimbabwe. And looking back to the 1950s and 1960s, it was not led to independence by the charismatic persona of a Kwame Nkrumah, who hoped to achieve the rapid transformation of Ghana to a modern industrial economy and society, ot by a romantic like Julius Nyerere, who hoped to turn Tanzanian peasants into citizens of modern communes.

Type
Africana
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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Page 139 note 2 ibid.

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Page 141 note 1 The ‘Green Revolution’ agricultural programme started in 1986 is faltering, and was perhaps fundamentally misconceived. Cf. Richards, Paul, African Agricultural Revolution: ecology and food production in West Africa (London, 1985).Google Scholar

Page 141 note 2 Kamara et al., loc. cit. p. 12.