Sierra Leone sits on the Atlantic coast of West Africa between Guinea to the north and Liberia to the south. The country covers 71,740 square kilometers, roughly the size of Ireland. Most visitors arrive through Freetown, the capital city built on the Freetown Peninsula. The coastline extends 402 kilometers. Freetown harbor is the third-largest natural deep-water harbor in the world. The interior rises through rainforest and savanna to the Loma Mountains in the northeast, where Mount Bintumani reaches 1,948 meters as the highest point.
The Gola Rainforest National Park shares a border with Liberia and forms part of the Upper Guinea forest ecosystem, one of the world's biodiversity hotspots. Gola contains thirteen primate species including western chimpanzees, Diana monkeys, and red colobus. The forest also holds more than 330 bird species, 50 of which occur nowhere else in the Upper Guinea forest region. Tiwai Island Wildlife Sanctuary sits in the Moa River in the east. Eleven primate species live on Tiwai within 12 square kilometers, making it among the highest primate densities recorded in Africa. Pygmy hippopotamuses, once thought locally extinct, have been documented in rivers around the sanctuary since 2010.
Freetown was founded in 1792 by the Sierra Leone Company as a settlement for formerly enslaved Africans who had fought for Britain during the American Revolutionary War. These settlers, known as Black Loyalists, arrived from Nova Scotia after earlier relocation from the United States. Later arrivals included Jamaican Maroons deported in 1800 and Liberated Africans, former slaves freed from slave ships by the British Royal Navy after 1808. The Krio people descended from these groups. Their language, Krio, is an English-based creole spoken by 97 percent of the population as a first or second language. Krio functions as the lingua franca across all ethnic groups.
Bunce Island sits in the Sierra Leone River 32 kilometers upstream from Freetown. Between 1670 and 1808, this slave fort operated continuously, shipping thousands of enslaved people across the Atlantic. Records show concentrated trade with South Carolina and Georgia. The Gullah people of the South Carolina and Georgia sea islands trace direct linguistic and cultural connections to Sierra Leone. In 1839, Sengbe Pieh, known in American courts as Joseph Cinqué, led the Amistad rebellion after being illegally enslaved near present-day Sierra Leone. The United States Supreme Court freed the captives in 1841. The fort ruins remain accessible by boat from Freetown.
The national dish is cassava leaves, cooked slowly with palm oil, onions, and meat or fish until the leaves break down into a thick stew. Cassava grows across the country and the leaves require extended cooking to reduce bitterness. Plasas uses potato leaves prepared similarly. Groundnut stew combines peanut butter with chicken, okra, and tomatoes. Jollof rice appears in Sierra Leone as in neighboring countries but versions differ. Pepper soup, made with fish or goat and hot chilies, is consumed for breakfast and medicinal purposes. Akara are fried bean cakes made from black-eyed peas. Street vendors sell binch, small fried dough balls, throughout the day. Palm oil is the base fat in most cooking.
The Temne are the largest ethnic group, concentrated in the north and northwest including Freetown. The Mende dominate the south and east. These two groups together comprise approximately 60 percent of the population. The Limba live in the north, the Kono in the diamond-rich eastern region, and the Kuranko in the northeast. Political alignment has historically followed ethnic lines. The Temne supported the All People's Congress while the Mende backed the Sierra Leone People's Party. Civil war from 1991 to 2002 killed an estimated 50,000 people and displaced over two million. The Revolutionary United Front, backed initially by Liberia, fought the government over diamond revenues and political grievances. British military intervention in 2000 turned the conflict. The war ended officially on January 18, 2002.
The Ebola outbreak from 2014 to 2016 killed 3,956 people in Sierra Leone according to World Health Organization final counts. Schools closed from June 2014 to April 2015. The economy contracted by 21 percent in 2015. Tacugama Chimpanzee Sanctuary outside Freetown houses over 100 rescued chimpanzees, many orphaned by illegal bushmeat hunting or pet trade. The sanctuary was established in 1995 and sits on 100 acres of Western Area Peninsula National Park. The park itself covers 17,688 hectares and contains the last remaining patches of Western Area Peninsula forest.