| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 3,000 [1] | |
| Religion | |
| Islam and Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Lebanese diaspora |
| Part of a series of articles on |
| Lebanese people |
|---|
 |
 Lebanonportal |
There is a significant population of Lebanese people in Sierra Leone .
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 3,000 [1] | |
| Religion | |
| Islam and Christianity | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Lebanese diaspora |
| Part of a series of articles on |
| Lebanese people |
|---|
| |
| Lebanonportal |
There is a significant population of Lebanese people in Sierra Leone .
Lebanese immigrants first came to West Africa in the mid-19th century when a silk-worm crisis struck their homeland, then part of the Ottoman Empire; the first Lebanese arrived in British Sierra Leone in 1893. The first groups were Maronite Christians, but beginning in 1903, Shia Muslim Lebanese began to arrive from South Lebanon where there was an agricultural crunch. [2] They worked as small traders, at first occupying the same position in the economic structure as indigenous coastal traders. [3]
At first, they had little access to capital and little control of import or export; they were at the mercy of the large colonial merchant firms, the same as indigenous traders. [4] They brought imported manufactured goods such as textiles, jewellery, and mirrors to rural areas where European and creole traders would not go, and traded them for local agricultural produce, primary palm kernels and kola nuts. [5] As they expanded their trading interests into the interior, they gained some commercial power. However, they were blamed for a 1919 rice scarcity, and riots broke out against them in which their shops were looted. [6] Even the colonial authorities, traditionally seen as the patrons of the Lebanese, did not protect them; instead, they deported two Lebanese traders blamed for causing the shortages. This was one of the first major incidents that contributed to the Lebanese having a negative image in Sierra Leone. [7]
In the 1920s, they not only began to enjoy better access to credit, but also began to play a role themselves in extending credit to agricultural producers in the interior, sometimes at exorbitant rates which sparked the intervention of the colonial government. [8] Beginning in the 1930s, the Lebanese began to outcompete indigenous traders, by concentrating their returns from commerce back into the same sector to expand their purchases of goods, rather than diversifying into other sectors. They also began to establish their own links to exporters in other countries. [9] The worldwide Great Depression actually strengthened their position, as smaller African-owned trading enterprises were hit the hardest. [10]
During the same period, the discovery of diamonds at Kono District in 1930 sparked the beginning of a major shift in the business activities of the Lebanese. The first Lebanese trader arrived in Kono soon after the discovery of diamonds, two years ahead of the British rulers. The establishment of the Sierra Leone Selection Trust's monopoly on diamond mining and export did little to stem their involvement in the diamond trade; many Lebanese traders were deported in the 1940s for illicit diamond trading. By the 1950s, diamonds had become the most important business sector for Lebanese traders. Throughout the 1950s, they continued their diamond smuggling, mainly to Liberia; as many as 20% of diamonds on the world market may have passed through the hands of Lebanese and Mandingo traders in Sierra Leone and Liberia. [11]
However, the Lebanese are not solely active in the diamond sector; they also operate cinemas, hotels, casinos, factories, and travel agencies. From 1963 to 1971, there was even a short-lived Lebanese-owned bank, the Intra Bank. [12]
There are five key Lebanese families in Sierra Leone, who had largely consolidated their position by the 1970s; most Lebanese prominent in trade in the country and its neighbours have some connection to them. [13]
| Countries |
| ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Personalities |
| ||||||||||
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It shares its southeastern border with Liberia, and the northern half of the nation is surrounded by Guinea. Covering a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi), Sierra Leone has a tropical climate, with diverse environments ranging from savanna to rainforests. The country has a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. Freetown is the capital and largest city. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are subdivided into 16 districts.
Sierra Leone first became inhabited by indigenous African peoples at least 2,500 years ago. The Limba were the first tribe known to inhabit Sierra Leone. The dense tropical rainforest partially isolated the region from other West African cultures, and it became a refuge for peoples escaping violence and jihads. Sierra Leone was named by Portuguese explorer Pedro de Sintra, who mapped the region in 1462. The Freetown estuary provided a good natural harbour for ships to shelter and replenish drinking water, and gained more international attention as coastal and trans-Atlantic trade supplanted trans-Saharan trade.
Blood diamonds are diamonds mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, terrorism, or a warlord's activity. The term is used to highlight the negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas, or to label an individual diamond as having come from such an area. Diamonds mined during the 20th–21st century civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau have been given the label. The term conflict resource refers to analogous situations involving other natural resources. Blood diamonds can also be smuggled by organized crime syndicates so that they could be sold on the black market.
Kabala is the capital and largest town of Koinadugu District in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. Kabala is one of the main towns in Northern Sierra Leone and is set in a rural landscape, surrounded by mountains.
Koidu Town is the capital and largest city of the diamond-rich Kono District in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. The population of Koidu Town is 124,662 based on the 2015 Sierra Leone national census. Koidu Town is the fifth largest city in Sierra Leone by population, after Freetown, Kenema, Bo and Makeni. Koidu Town is a major urban, business, commercial and diamond trade center. Koidu Town lies approximately 280 miles east of Freetown, and about 60 miles north of Kenema.
Sherbro Island is in the Atlantic Ocean, and is included within Bonthe District, Southern Province, Sierra Leone. The island is separated from the African mainland by the Sherbro River in the north and Sherbro Strait in the east. It is 32 miles (51 km) long and up to 15 miles (24 km) wide, covering an area of approximately 230 square miles (600 km2). The western extremity is Cape St. Ann. Bonthe, on the eastern end, is the chief port and commercial centre.
The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Liberian dictator Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted 11 years, enveloping the country. It left over 50,000 dead.
Brigadier David Lansana was the first prominent Sierra Leonean in the Sierra Leone Military during the colonial era. After Sierra Leone gained independence, he served as Military Attaché to the United States.
The Temne, also called Atemne, Témené, Temné, Téminè, Temeni, Thaimne, Themne, Thimni, Timené, Timné, Timmani, or Timni, are a West African ethnic group, They are predominantly found in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. Some Temne are also found in Guinea. The Temne constitute the largest ethnic group in Sierra Leone, at 35.5% of the total population, which is slightly bigger than the Mende people at 31.2%. They speak Temne, a Mel branch of the Niger–Congo languages.
Kailahun District is a district in the Eastern Province of Sierra Leone. Its capital and largest city is the town of Kailahun. The second most populous city in the district is Segbwema. Other major towns in Kailahun District include Koindu, Pendembu and Daru. As of the 2015 census, the district had a population of 525,372. Kailahun District is subdivided into fourteen chiefdoms.
Jamil Sahid Mohamed Khalil was a Sierra Leonean-Lebanese businessman, diamonds and commodities trader. He attained prominence in the diamond industry across Africa and Antwerp and became an influential figure in the politics of Sierra Leone through his close association with President Siaka Stevens. Jamil also came to dominate other business sectors including fisheries, tourism construction and aviation.
There is a significant community of Lebanese people in Senegal.
An independence referendum was held in Liberia on 27 October 1846. The result was 52% in favor, with independence being declared on 26 July 1847.
The mining industry of Sierra Leone accounted for 4.5 percent of the country's GDP in 2007 and minerals made up 79 percent of total export revenue with diamonds accounting for 46 percent of export revenue in 2008. The main minerals mined in Sierra Leone are diamonds, rutile, bauxite, gold, iron and limonite.
Sierra Leone is officially a secular state, although Islam and Christianity are the two main and dominant religions in the country. The constitution of Sierra Leone provides for freedom of religion and the Sierra Leone Government generally protects it. The Sierra Leone Government is constitutionally forbidden from establishing a state religion, though Muslim and Christian prayers are usually held in the country at the beginning of major political occasions, including presidential inauguration.
Sierra Leone is home to about sixteen ethnic groups, each with its own language. In Sierra Leone, membership of an ethnic group often overlaps with a shared religious identity.
The Saro, or Nigerian Creoles of the 19th and early 20th centuries, were Africans that were emancipated and initially resettled in Freetown, Sierra Leone by the Royal Navy, which, with the West Africa Squadron, enforced the abolition of the international slave trade after the British Parliament passed the Slave Trade Act 1807. Those freedmen who migrated back to Nigeria from Sierra Leone, over several generations starting from the 1830s, became known locally as Saro(elided form of Sierra Leone, from the Yoruba sàró). Consequently, the Saro are culturally descended from Sierra Leone Creoles, with ancestral roots to the Yoruba people of Nigeria.
The Sierra Leone Creole people 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.
Alhaji Mohamed Bailor Barrie, simply referred to as Bailor Barrie or M.B. Barrie was a Sierra Leonean businessman, activist and philanthropist. He hailed from Sierra Leone's northern district of Koinadugu and was a member of the Fula ethnic group of which he later became a well known activist and leader. Barrie became prominent in Sierra Leone's post colonial economic environment in the 1970s as the first Fula to venture into the European-Lebanese dominated import business of motor vehicles. He became very successful in the booming diamond mining and trading industry in the 1970s and 1980s, which established him as one of Sierra Leone's most successful businessmen, even without a standard level of education. Then president of Sierra Leone Siaka Stevens was using Barrie's success to defend himself against critics attacking him for ignoring the country's crumbling educational sector, by claiming that one could be successful like Barrie without any standard level of education. Barrie died in a road accident in 1989 on his way from Kenema, in the eastern part of Sierra Leone.
