Sierra Leone is formally the Republic of Sierra Leone, informally called Salone, a nation on the southwest coastline of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and also Guinea surrounds the north fifty percent of the nation.

Sierra Leone has an exotic environment with a diverse setting ranging from savanna to jungles, a complete location of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi) and also a populace of 7,092,113 since the 2015 census. The funding and also biggest city is Freetown. The country is divided right into 5 administrative areas which are partitioned right into sixteen districts.

Sierra Leone is a constitutional republic with a unicameral parliament and a straight chosen president serving a five-year term with a maximum of two terms. The existing president is Julius Maada Bio. Sierra Leone is a nonreligious country with the constitution offering the separation of state and also religious beliefs and flexibility of principles (that includes flexibility of ideas as well as faith).

Muslims make up about three-quarters of the populace, though with an influential Christian minority. Spiritual resistance in the West African nation is very high and also is normally taken into consideration a standard as well as part of Sierra Leone’s social identity.

Although inhabited for millennia, Sierra Leone, as the country as well as its boundaries are recognized today, was founded by the British Crown in two stages: first, the coastal Sierra Leone Colony in 1808 (for returning Africans after the abolition of enslavement); second, the inland Protectorate in 1896 (as the Crown needed to establish even more rule inland following the end result of the Berlin Seminar of 1884-1885).

Thus, the nation formally ended up being referred to as the “Sierra Leone Colony and Protectorate” or simply British Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone acquired freedom from the United Kingdom on 27 April 1961, and also became a Commonwealth realm on the exact same day; the nation’s name changed to the Ascendancy of Sierra Leone. Sir Milton Margai ended up being Sierra Leone’s initial prime minister.

Throughout minority decades complying with independence, Sierra Leone saw an increase in political tasks, transformations, chaos, altruistic as well as socio-economic situations. The country had its first basic political elections as an independent country on 27 Might 1961. Margai’s Sierra Leone Individuals’s Celebration (SLPP) won a plurality of parliamentary seats and also he was re-elected Head of state.

A new constitution was taken on in 1971, paving the way for Sierra Leone becoming a republic, as well as Siaka Stevens, leader of the All Individuals’s Congress (APC), coming to be the very first exec president of the Republic of Sierra Leone. Stevens held on to this placement for 14 years (up until 1985) under a one-party system of government assisted in by the questionable 1978 Constitution.

Nonetheless, Stevens’ hand-picked successor Joseph Saidu Momoh promised to return the country back to a multi-party system; a brand-new constitution was embraced in 1991 that provided the means for a multi-party democracy. A ruthless civil battle burst out the same year, which took place for 11 years with disastrous results on practically every little thing that defined Sierra Leone as a country. In simply a year after the battle burst out (in 1992), Head of state Momoh was ousted in a successful stroke led by Sierra Leone Military captain Valentine Strasser.

Strasser was later “ousted” by his army colleague and also second-in-command Julius Maada Bio, for failing to devote to a fast transfer to private regulation. Biography would certainly then return the nation back to a democratic republic in 1996 via a basic political election.