$Unique_ID{COW03141} $Pretitle{380} $Title{Sierra Leone Chapter 3B. International Boundaries and Political Subdivisions} $Subtitle{} $Author{Irving Kaplan} $Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army} $Subject{population census sierra leone freetown percent area areas per rate} $Date{1976} $Log{Table 1.*0314101.tab } Country: Sierra Leone Book: Sierra Leone, A Country Study Author: Irving Kaplan Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army Date: 1976 Chapter 3B. International Boundaries and Political Subdivisions Sierra Leone borders only two other countries, Guinea (405 miles) on the north and east and Liberia (190 miles), also on the east and on the south. The present-day boundary with Guinea was determined largely by agreements between France and Great Britain between 1882 and 1895 that sought to delineate the spheres of interest of the two colonial powers in the area during the so-called scramble for Africa of the late 1800s. French military action at the end of the century and in the early 1900s against ethnic groups in territory then claimed by Liberia adjacent to southeastern Sierra Leone culminated in various territorial readjustments. This section of the Sierra Leone-Guinea border was agreed upon in 1911 and demarcated in 1913. A border with Liberia was initially agreed upon between Great Britain and independent Liberia in 1885. The agreement set the Mano River as the dividing line in the western part of the two territories and projected a line from the river farther inland to form the rest of the boundary. Adjustments were subsequently made in 1903, 1911, and 1930 that resulted in the present-day border. The 1911 convention included a substantial mutual exchange of territory that added the eastern extension of Kailahun District to Sierra Leone. River courses constitute more than half the borders, and the watershed dividing line between the basin of the upper Niger River in Guinea and several basins in Sierra Leone makes up a substantial further portion; the remainder consists of arbitrarily established straight lines. As elsewhere throughout Africa south of the Sahara the boundaries were established mainly on economic and political considerations and virtually entirely in the light of European interests. Stemming from this, almost the entire Sierra Leone border is straddled by homogeneous cultural groups. With respect to members of these groups in Sierra Leone there appeared to be no indication of irredentist sentiment in 1975 (see ch. 4; ch. 11). In the mid-1970s the country's first-order administrative divisions consisted of three provinces, encompassing some 99 percent of the national territory, and the small Western Area, in which Freetown is located (see fig. 1). The provinces were divided into a total of twelve districts that were further subdivided into about 145 third-level administrative units called chiefdoms (see ch. 9). Northern Province covered almost one-half the country's total area, and the other two provinces each constituted roughly one-quarter. The southern boundary of Northern Province followed a line that generally separated the nation's two largest ethnic groups, the Temne on the north and the Mende on the south. The eastern section of this boundary lay between the Koranko and Kono peoples. District delineations bore little relationship to ethnic association with the exception of Kono District, in which the vast majority of members of that group were concentrated (see ch. 4). Sierra Leone has laid claim to jurisdiction over the adjacent waters of the Atlantic Ocean to a distance of 200 nautical miles. At the time of independence in 1961 the country claimed territorial seas only to the three-nautical-mile limit. In 1965 an amendment to a 1957 fisheries act extended the limit to twelve nautical miles. This remained in effect until April 1971 when the Interpretation Act of 1971 defined "territorial sea" as any open water within 200 nautical miles of the Sierra Leonean coast. The new definition was incorporated in the fisheries act by an amendment to that act in October 1973. SETTLEMENT PATTERNS AND MAN-MADE FEATURES The basic rural settlement pattern is the rather tightly nucleated village or hamlet, the major exception being the dispersed individual dwellings or family compounds of the Fullah. The nucleated village developed essentially as a defense mechanism during the lengthy period of interethnic and intertribal strife that characterized Sierra Leone until about the end of the nineteenth century (see ch. 2). Throughout the forested zone over most of the country such villages lay inside surrounding thick protective screens of trees, beyond which were the village's cultivated fields and bush fallow (see ch. 13). In the more open savanna woodlands of the northeastern plateau region similarly nucleated settlements usually occupied defensible elevations. In some places, however, local conditions brought modification of the typically concentric arrangement of houses (or family compounds) is the village, as in the coastal swamp regions, where linear villages occupied sand ridges. Although the compact, concentric village remained the most common kind in the mid-1970s, modifications have developed in many places. The need to bunch together for security no longer exists, and there is a tendency for villages to spread out and for hamlets to arise near the villages. Particularly where roads pass nearby or through a village, new houses are built in a linear pattern. Fires that destroy villages from time to time may be followed by new village layouts, including gridlike patterns. Towns, actually large villages, existed in precolonial days at principal river ferrying points where the traffic stimulated trade and the provision of services. Along the coast towns appeared early in the slaving period as trading centers for slaves and some agricultural items from the interior. The appearance of towns was followed from the late 1700s by the development of towns, especially in the Freetown area, settled by freed slaves (see ch. 2). European trade with the interior long used the waterways and, as this trade increased, commercial centers arose at the head of navigation of rivers, for example, at Pujehun or at river confluences such as at Port Loko. An impetus to town emergence inland was given by the construction of a railroad across the southern part of the country beginning in 1895. Completed in 1916 and designed to tap agricultural production in the area, it brought about the development of collecting and marketing centers at strategically located places. Establishment of administrative centers led to town development, road expansion encouraged the rise of towns at various crossroads to serve as trading centers, and the growth of mining led to some town formation at the principal mining sites. Western-style architecture was introduced very early by the Creoles, who constructed two-story houses and other structures patterned on the Caribbean models with which they were familiar. This style was generally restricted to the coastal area in which the Creoles lived, however, and had no influence on traditional styles inland. The establishment of British administrative centers after formation of the Protectorate (see Glossary) in 1898 led to the construction of some Western-style buildings at those places. Present-day Freetown resembles a Western city, but other towns retain many traditional features: scattered Western-style public structures and areas of modern houses occupied by materially better-off families are found alongside traditional African housing (see ch. 6). In early 1976 the largest man-made feature was the road system, which generally interconnected the towns of the three provinces, the Western Area, and Freetown. This system was composed of an estimated 5,000 miles of roads of different size and surface usable by motorized vehicles (see ch. 14). Visible but largely, if not entirely, in disuse and under dismantlement was a railroad line running from Freetown to Pendembu (227 miles) in the far southeastern part of the country with a branch line from Bauya to Makeni (eighty-three miles) in central Sierra Leone. A second, industrial railroad line extended from the ore port of Pepel on the Sierra Leone River to the Marampa iron mine (fifty-six miles) near Lunsar. Other man-made features of significance were the ports of Freetown and Bonthe, Lungi International Airport, and twelve smaller airports at various points throughout the country. POPULATION Population estimates and various sample censuses were made for the Colony (see Glossary) of Sierra Leone beginning in 1802 (after 1871 regularly every ten years) and for the Sierra Leone Protectorate starting in 1901. In general, however, especially for the Protectorate, such censuses were little more than educated guesses. In 1931 a full enumeration in the Colony and sample counts in the Protectorate produced an estimate of close to 1.77 million inhabitants for the whole territory. A similar census was carried out in 1948, at which time the population was estimated at nearly 1.86 million people. This was the last of the preindependence censuses, but various official estimates were issued on population size during the remainder of the colonial period, including one for 1960 that placed it at almost 2.5 million. The 1960 total proved to be far in excess of the number counted in the first generally reliable census of the whole country in 1963. The first complete enumeration of the entire population, made on April 1, 1963, gave a total of 2,180,355. On the basis of a postenumeration check on the thoroughness of the coverage and the estimated sampling error probability, the figure was adjusted upward by 5 percent, giving a final total of over 2,289,000. The adjustment was not considered applicable to individual localities, however, and the internal breakdown of the 1963 census data is based on the original enumeration results. A second national census, on December 8, 1974, gave a population of 2,729,478. An adjustment of 10 percent for underenumeration was subsequently made, establishing the official population figure at 3,002,426, some 713,000 more than the 1963 adjusted total, an increase of over 31 percent in somewhat less than twelve years. Detailed data from the 1974 census for comparative analysis remained unavailable in early 1976. Population Dynamics The rate at which the population grew during the period of size estimates can only be guessed-the indicated annual rates for the intercensal periods from 1901 to 1948 varied widely from over 3 percent for the ten years between 1901 to 1911 to just over 0.3 percent during the seventeen-year interval from 1931 to 1948. The 1963 census was unable to establish the growth rate because of the unreliability of the preceding 1948 estimate. United Nations (UN) estimates for the period from the 1963 census to the beginning of the 1970s, however, placed the average annual growth rate at 2.2 percent, and the United States Bureau of the Census estimated it at 2.3 percent in 1972. Furthermore, using the adjusted population figures for the 1963 and 1974 censuses, the indicated rate for the intercensal period is actually close to 2.4 percent (at which the time required for the population to double is about thirty years). At variance with these estimates was a mid-1975 statement by an official of the Sierra Leone Central Statistics Office that a realistic rate was 2 percent per annum; the basis for this conclusion was unreported. The problem of determining a relatively accurate growth rate was greatly complicated by deficiencies in vital statistics. Reporting of births and deaths was required by law, but data appeared possibly complete only in the Western Area. A UN estimate for the 1965-70 period placed the crude birthrate at forty-five per 1,000 people and the crude death rate at twenty-three per 1,000. The Central Planning Unit of the Ministry of Development and Economic Planning estimated that during the five-year period of the 1975-79 development plan the average number of births would be forty-four per 1,000 people and of deaths eighteen per 1,000. The 2.6-percent rate of natural increase of the population projected for the plan period was based on expectations that the death rate would decline with improvement in and expansion of health services and that the birthrate would remain relatively unchanged (see ch. 6). The possible decrease in infant mortality during this time from the 165 per 1,000 live births in 1972 estimated by the United States Bureau of the Census could be pronounced. (UN sources placed the infant mortality rate even higher, at 183 per 1,000 live births in the early 1970s.) Fertility rates were among the highest in the world. In a survey conducted in 1969 and 1970 married and single women in the age bracket from forty to forty-four who had had children were found to have had a mean total of 7.4 live births; in rural areas women in the same category had had a mean total of 8.3 live births. The gross reproduction rate, that is, the average number of daughters of women in the reproductive age, was 2.9. There was no indication in the mid-1970s of any decline in the fertility rate, and it was possible that a gradual increase in life expectancy might even result in some further increase in the rate. The 1969-70 survey and analyses of the 1963 census have indicated variations in fertility levels-expressed in terms of ideal number of children and mean number born-between the rural and urban populations and among different ethnic groups. Rural women tended to idealize larger families more than did those living in Freetown and other towns, and Temne women generally preferred a greater number of children than did Mende and Creole. Nationally the mean ideal number of children desired by Temne women (in the age range from fifteen to forty-nine years) was slightly under seven, whereas for the Mende it was 5.5 and for the Creole four. The mean number of children ever born live to women in these different groups who were between forty and forty-nine years old was 8.4 for the Temne, 6.4 for the Mende, and somewhat fewer than five for the Creole. Family Planning In the mid-1970s the government attitude toward family planning was essentially noncommittal. The lack of a national policy might have owed something to political considerations but probably was more closely related to the generally conservative outlook of the society-of which government members were a part-whose cultural traditions and religious beliefs all favored high fertility. The only active family planning agency was the Sierra Leone Planned Parenthood Association. The association was founded in 1960 and in the early 1970s had about four clinics in operation; the number of new visits during this time totaled at most 3,000 to 4,000. In view of popular attitudes the association stressed adequate spacing of pregnancies-a traditional, accepted practice-as a way to improve the health and welfare of both mother and child rather than stressing direct family limitation. The 1969-70 survey found a wide knowledge of family planning among women in Freetown and other urban areas. A large number favored such planning, although only a comparatively small number actually practiced it. Indications were that an active campaign aimed at urban residents and supported by the government would produce many acceptors, including individuals who would employ modern contraceptive methods and materials (which could be freely imported). Knowledge of family planning was also widespread in the rural areas-where the vast majority of women in the reproductive age are found. Knowledge in this case, however, was largely of traditional techniques, and approval of family planning was small (about one out of ten women compared to more than six out of ten in urban areas). Factors influencing the very low acceptance by rural women were possibly the generally known dangerousness and ineffectiveness of various traditional methods. Social and religious factors also appeared to play a part, including a moral rejection of planning that probably stemmed from an association of the principal traditional practices with abortion. The development in rural areas of any extensive willingness to accept family planning, therefore, appeared in the mid-1970s to be still a long-term proposition. Ethnic variations in approval of family planning occurred among Creole, Mende, and Temne women. All groups, however, gave broad approval in urban areas, and it was particularly strong among the Creole women, whose long urban background perhaps gave them a more sophisticated attitude. More Mende expressed approval than Temne in Freetown and other towns; but for unstated reasons, despite their idealization of a larger number of children, a substantially greater percentage of Temne women (over 14 percent) than Mende women (less than 3 percent) in the rural areas approved of family planning. Age and Sex Distribution Data obtained in the December 1974 census covering the age and sex distribution of the population were unavailable in early 1976. In view of the higher rate of population growth prevailing during the 1963-74 intercensal period, however, a change in the age structure can be assumed, with the proportion of individuals in the age-group from birth to fourteen years increasing considerably above the 36.7 percent the group constituted in 1963. (The United States Bureau of the Census estimated the proportion at 43 percent in 1972.) The general youthfulness of the population has presumably also increased, the proportion under thirty-five years of age rising above the 71.7 percent it made up in 1963. In 1963 the adult population between fifteen and forty-five years of age (life expectancy at birth was about forty to forty-one years at that time) constituted 46.6 percent of the total and people older than that, 16.7 percent. There were 101.7 females to every 100 males at the 1963 census. Certain area variations in sex ratios were much more pronounced, however, a major reason apparently being migration. Northern Province in general showed a large surplus of females, which appears to have resulted from migration of males to mining areas outside the province as well as to other occupations. In sharp contrast was a large area in the southeastern part of the country that encompassed the Sewa and Moa rivers and the latter's tributary, the Male River; this included the principal diamond mining region, where males were far in excess of females. Freetown, a goal of many migrants, including students, also had a substantially larger proportion of males. It was not likely that these major-area features of male-female distribution had been altered greatly in the intercensal period. Density and Rural-Urban Distribution There was an average of seventy-eight people per square mile according to the 1963 census and eighty-two per square mile when the 5-percent upward adjustment for undercounting and statistical error are included. At the 1974 census the unadjusted total gave an average density of almost ninety-eight per square mile, which was increased by the official 10-percent upward adjustment of the census total to over 107 people per square mile. This average was far above the densities for Africa as a whole (thirty-one per people per square mile) and for western Africa (about forty-seven per square mile) as estimated by the UN in 1973. In 1973 only six states of continental Africa were estimated to have higher densities than Sierra Leone, and two others had roughly the same density. The population is widely distributed. The 1963 census recorded nearly 19,000 separate localities having place names. In addition there was a large number of unnamed, usually small, groups of dwellings. These were scattered across areas in Northern Province in particular, where they formed the abodes of nomadic cattle raisers, and others were seasonal homes in ricegrowing areas (see Settlement Patterns and Man-Made Features, this ch.). In 1963 only a very few areas were found without, or virtually without, inhabitants. These areas included inhospitable terrain covered by mangrove swamps, the upper levels of the high Loma and Tingi mountains of eastern Sierra Leone, and parts of the forest reserves (see Geographic Regions, this ch.). The least densely populated section of the country at that time was in the north and northeast, where considerable areas had fewer than twenty-five people per square mile. Concentrations of from 100 to under 250 people per square mile were found in a generally northeast-to-southwest belt in the southeast where a modern wage economy based largely on cash crops and diamond mining was located. Another region of dense population concentration lay north and east of the Western Area. This higher density in large part was accounted for by the more intense economic activities, which included iron mining, rice cultivation in reclaimed swamps, truck farming, and fishing. The heaviest concentration was in the Western Area, associated with Freetown and its suburbs. In early 1976 only very gross figures on distribution and density were available from the 1974 census (see table 1). Comparison and analysis of the growth, or possible decline, of the population in specific regions and subdivisions awaited issuance of more detailed data. The population was predominantly rural in 1963-three-quarters lived in villages or groupings of dwellings having fewer than 1,000 inhabitants. The census did not establish a dividing line between rural and urban localities, but some analysts have taken the 1,000-inhabitant level, used as a separating point in the census enumeration, as the beginning of urbanization. The urban aspects of many of the places above the 1,000-inhabitant level, however, were at that time still very rudimentary. [See Table 1.: Sierra Leone, Population Distribution and Density by Major Administrative Division, 1963 and 1974] The variation in size of the 160 places recorded as having populations of 1,000 and over was marked. Of the total, 101 had between 1,000 and 1,999 people, and fifty-two others ranged from 2,000 to 7,999 people. The remaining seven urban areas included five that had between 10,000 and 14,000 people, one (Bo) having almost 27,000, and Freetown, whose population was then close to 128,000. Freetown's population actually constituted 24 percent of the total urban population of approximately 525,000 and was greater than the combined populations of the smallest town category. Urbanization and Migration In early 1976 a solid indication of the rate at which urbanization has been occurring was awaiting the publication in detail of the results of the 1974 census for comparison with the country's first firmly based nationwide population statistics, obtained in 1963. A preliminary figure for 1974 for the Freetown urban complex (274,000 inhabitants as against close to 158,000 in 1963) indicated an average annual rate of growth since the 1963 census of about 5 percent in that urban area. Some very limited urbanization outside Freetown and the Western Area had taken place by the 1920s-at least eight urban localities in the provinces having populations of 1,000 or more people existed in 1927. After World War II new roads and transportation facilities made it easier to reach district and provincial administrative centers where developing health and social facilities, amenities, and opportunities for wage employment acted to attract both seasonal and permanent migrants from the surrounding rural populations. The rapid expansion of diamond mining in the southeastern part of the country beginning in the 1950s stimulated the rise of new centers that drew not only local people but also many from considerable distances. The population growth of several of these provincial towns was quite marked by the time of the 1963 census and proportionately much greater-although much smaller in numbers-than that of the Freetown area, which more than doubled from 73,000 in 1927 to almost 158,000 in 1963. In this same period the inhabitants of Bo, capital of Southern Province, increased sevenfold, from an estimated 3,780 to 26,613. Lunsar, near which the Marampa iron mining operation is located, grew from an estimated seventy-eight people to over 12,000. Equally phenomenal was the expansion of Koidu in the diamond mining region from ninety-six inhabitants to almost 12,000. During this time Makeni, capital of Northern Province, and Kenema, capital of Eastern Province, grew from 1,000 and 1,200 inhabitants respectively to more than 12,000 and more than 13,000. In contrast Bonthe, which was the second largest town in 1927, increased from 5,400 in 1927 to only about 6,200 in 1963 as its activities as a port were curtailed because of silting and the redirection of export goods to Freetown. The 1963 census indicated a substantial amount of internal migration, over one-quarter of the population having been found resident in a chiefdom other than the one in which they were born. Various migration studies in the 1960s showed the principal goals of many migrants to be either Freetown or the large diamond mining region. The reasons for movement to Freetown included its educational facilities and the desire for employment, although other factors also played a part. In the late 1960s young, mostly unskilled males from rural areas made up a substantial portion of the in-migration. The 1963 census showed Freetown's migrants to have come from throughout the country, but almost two-thirds of the total were from only fifteen chiefdoms, thirteen of which were located in the western half of the country. A principal cause of migration then was growing pressure on the land, characterized by shortening of the fallow period and land deterioration to the point where it could not meet subsistence levels (see ch. 13). Migrants to the diamond mining areas included many seasonal workers, primarily farmers from relatively nearby rural communities who mined during the dry season and returned thereafter to their villages. There was also significant permanent migration that had some effect on the availability of agricultural labor and was reported to have led to an average higher age among farmworkers since most of those leaving agriculture were younger people. Migration was not confined to particular ethnic groups but occurred among all groups. Members of the larger ones, the Mende and Temne, were found in all chiefdoms, as were Fullah and Susu. Of the 148 chiefdoms listed in the 1963 census, 144 had members of at least ten of the eighteen ethnic groups in Sierra Leone within their boundaries. The migration to Freetown and urban centers in the diamond mining areas has resulted in what the development plan has described as difficult economic and social problems. A long-range program aimed particularly at reducing the noticeable differences in social and economic development between Freetown and the Western Area and the rest of the country, as well as the trend toward urban population overconcentration in the Western Area, was proposed that included the development of urban centers throughout the provinces. Primary growth centers were to be established at the provincial capitals and certain other towns that would have major industrial installations and provide higher level services either to the province as a whole or to several districts. Secondary centers would be developed from district capitals or other towns where industrial development and services would be on a smaller scale, and headquarters of chiefdoms and large villages would constitute a third-level urbanized area furnishing marketing and service facilities for between 10,000 and 15,000 people. * * * More extensive information on the country's rainfall is available in S. Gregory's Rainfall over Sierra Leone. The Vegetation of Sierra Leone by N. H. Ayodele Cole, which also incorporates a field guide to common Sierra Leonean plants, discusses the ecological factors that affect the vegetation and describes in considerable detail the various major plant communities. Sierra Leone has been completely mapped topographically at the scale of 1:50,000 in a series of 118 sheets that were published between 1965 and 1973 for the Sierra Leone government by the Directorate of Overseas Surveys of Great Britain. This set is identified as D.O.S. 419 (Series G742). More convenient for general use is a set of four sheets at the scale of 1:250,000 issued similarly in 1972 and 1973. Designated Series D.O.S. 619, these four maps have general elevations indicated by hypsometric layers supplemented by contour delineations in meters.