Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered to the southeast by Liberia and by Guinea to the north. Its land area is 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi). It has a tropical climate and environments ranging from savannas to rainforests. As of the 2015 census, Sierra Leone had a population of 7,092,113. Freetown is both its capital and its largest city. The country is divided into five administrative regions, which are further subdivided into 16 districts.
Julius Maada Wonie Bio is a Sierra Leonean politician who has served as president of Sierra Leone since 4 April 2018. He is a retired brigadier in the Sierra Leone Army and was the military head of state of Sierra Leone from 16 January 1996 to 29 March 1996, in a military junta government known as the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC).
Bernadette Lahai, CRSL is a Sierra Leonean politician and the current Minority Leader of Parliament of Sierra Leone. She is the leader of the main opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP) in the Sierra Leone House of Parliament. She currently represent Constituency 13 from Kenema District in the Sierra Leone House of Parliament.
Aminatta Forna is a British writer of Scottish and Sierra Leonean ancestry. Her first book was a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest (2002). Since then she has written four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). In 2021 she published a collection of essays, The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion. (2021), which was a new genre for her.
Sierra Leonean Americans are an ethnic group of Americans of full or partial Sierra Leonean ancestry. This includes Sierra Leone Creoles whose ancestors were African American Black Loyalists freed after fighting on the side of the British during the American Revolutionary War. Some African Americans trace their roots to indigenous enslaved Sierra Leoneans exported to the United States between the 18th and early 19th century. In particular, the Gullah people of partial Sierra Leonean ancestry, fled their owners and settled in parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and the Sea Islands, where they still retain their cultural heritage. The first wave of Sierra Leoneans to the United States, after the slavery period, was after the Sierra Leone Civil War in the 1990s and early 2000s. According to the American Community Survey, there are 34,161 Sierra Leonean immigrants living in the United States.
Nawal Elsaadawi was an Egyptian feminist writer, activist and physician. She wrote numerous books on the subject of women in Islam, focusing on the practice of female genital mutilation in her society. She was described as "the Simone de Beauvoir of the Arab World", and as "Egypt's most radical woman".
Marilyn Louise Booth is an author, scholar and translator of Arabic literature. Since 2015, she has been the Khalid bin Abdullah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Elizabeth II was Queen of Sierra Leone from 1961 to 1971, when Sierra Leone was an independent constitutional monarchy. She was also the monarch of other Commonwealth realms, including the United Kingdom. Her constitutional roles in Sierra Leone were mostly delegated to the governor-general of Sierra Leone.
Constance Cummings-John was a Sierra Leonean educationist and politician. She was the first woman in Africa to join a municipal council and in 1966 became the first woman to serve as mayor of Freetown, Sierra Leone. She was based in London, England, for the latter part of her life.
Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a Constitutional Republic in West Africa. Since it was founded in 1792, the women in Sierra Leone have been a major influence in the political and economic development of the nation.
Literature of Sierra Leone is the collection of written and spoken work, mostly fictional, from Sierra Leone. The coastal west-African country suffered a civil war from 1991 until 2002. Before the civil war, Sierra Leone had many writers contributing to its literature and since the end of the war the country has been in the process of rebuilding this literature. This is an overview of some important aspects of the literature of Sierra Leone before, during, and after the war.
Mabel Dove Danquah was a Gold Coast-born journalist, political activist, and creative writer, one of the earliest women in West Africa to work in these fields. As Francis Elsbend Kofigah notes in relation to Ghana's literary pioneers, "before the emergence of such strong exponents of literary feminism as Efua Sutherland and Ama Ata Aidoo, there was Mabel Dove Danquah, the trail-blazing feminist." She used various pseudonyms in her writing for newspapers from the 1930s: "Marjorie Mensah" in The Times of West Africa; "Dama Dumas" in the African Morning Post; "Ebun Alakija" in the Nigerian Daily Times; and "Akosua Dzatsui" in the Accra Evening News. Entering politics in the 1950s before Ghana's independence, she became the first woman to be elected a member of any African legislative assembly. She created the awareness and the need for self-governance through her works.
Delia Jarrett-Macauley, also known as Dee Jarrett-Macauley, is a London-based British writer, academic and broadcaster of Sierra Leonean heritage. Her debut novel, Moses, Citizen & Me, won the 2006 Orwell Prize for political writing, the first novel to have been awarded the prize. She has devised and presented features on BBC Radio, as well as being a participant in a range of programmes. As a multi-disciplinary scholar in history, literature and cultural politics, she has taught at Leeds University, Birkbeck, University of London, and other educational establishments, most recently as a fellow in English at the University of Warwick. She is also a business and arts consultant, specialising in organisation development.
Fedwa Malti-Douglas is a Lebanese-American professor and writer. She is a professor emeritus at Indiana University Bloomington. Malti-Douglas has written several books, including The Starr Report Disrobed (2000). She received a National Humanities Medal in 2015.
Lucilda Hunter, née Caulker was a Sierra Leonean librarian, novelist and biographer, who wrote under the name Yema Lucilda Hunter.
Nabeela Farida Tunis is a Sierra Leonean politician who has served as the country's Foreign Minister since May 2019.
Yakama Manty Jones is a Sierra Leonean multipotentiality living this through her portfolio career. Jones is an economist, entrepreneur and philanthropist with a Ph.D. in finance and economics. She is the Director of Research and Delivery at the Sierra Leone Ministry of Finance and a Focal Person for the World Bank's Human Capital Project in Sierra Leone. In 2021, she was selected as an Amujae leader by the EJS Center. Jones has authored and co-authored multiple scholarly articles and spoken at TEDxYouth, Africa Oxford Initiative, and the World Bank.
The Gilded Ones is a 2021 young adult fantasy novel by Sierra Leonean American writer Namina Forna. Forna's debut novel was published on February 9, 2021, and quickly entered the New York Times Best Seller list and Indie Bestseller lists.
The Merciless Ones is a young adult fantasy novel written by Namina Forna, published in 2022. The story follows Deka, the protagonist who challenges society's strict norms and expectations in a world where women are subjugated. There are themes of empowerment, resilience, and rebellion throughout the narrative, offering readers a thought-provoking exploration of gender roles and societal oppression. The Merciless Ones has often been celebrated for its diverse representation of strong female characters who defy the traditional stereotypes. Forna's work in this novel has sparked critical discussions on topics such as gender equality, empowerment, and the importance of challenging societal norms. This book is the sequel to The Gilded Ones and is a continuation of Forna's "The Deathless Series."
