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Main article: Africa
Government
Economy
ECOWAS membership
The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) is a regional organization established in 1975 to strengthen economic cooperation between West African countries .
GDP $496 per capita
Inflation
2022: Inflation in November - 29.1%
Alcohol market
Minimum age to purchase alcoholic beverages
Consumption
2023: Fish consumption is higher than meat consumption
2019: High rice consumption: 148.5 kg per person per year
2018: Vegetable consumption - 50 kg per capita
Power
2020: Energy consumption per capita
and
2019: Electrification
Sierra Leone IT Market
2022: More than 1 start-up
Cooperation in Russia
2019: President Julius Maad Bio meets with Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and Konstantin Malofeev
For more details see Konstantin Valerievich Malofeev
Foreign trade
2022: China is the biggest export destination
Population
Main article: Population of Africa
Overweight
Migration
2021: Net outflow over 4 years
Mortality
Traffic safety
Education
Percentage of people who can read
Health care
2021: Maternity leave
in
2020
Duration of guaranteed paid sick leave 6 months or more
Part of the population defecates on the street
Crime
2024: State of emergency due to the spread of the drug jackpot
In April 2024, Sierra Leone declared a state of emergency due to the spread of drugs.
Excitement is building in West Africa over a drug called jackpot (a mix of synthetic drugs with marijuana) that has been spreading to young people in Sierra Leone and neighboring Liberia for the past four years.
Considered a cheap alternative to marijuana, it turns out to be more deadly - in the country every now and then mass burials of drug addicts are found.
Amid increased drug use and a critical situation, Maad Bio's government imposed a state of emergency.
According to the decree, an anti-addiction department was created. But more serious measures, like the arrests of merchants, have not yet followed.
2019: Minimum 15 years for rape
The new legislation, adopted in September 2019, provides for imprisonment for at least 15 years for rape. Previously, such a period was the maximum.
The country's president, Julius Maada Bio, declared a state of emergency in February 2019 after police statistics showed cases of sexual and gender-based violence had doubled.
The new law also guarantees free treatment for rape victims.
Prisons
2019: Minimum age for children to be jailed
2018: Number of prisoners per 100 thousand citizens
Diseases
Culture
Customs
Female circumcision
Sierra Leone is one of the few African countries where female circumcision is a legal procedure for 2019.
In August 2019, it became known that one village in Sierra Leone refused female circumcision.
The temple in the village of Tavuya, where the brutal rite was held, was demolished by decision of the leader back in 2018.
This is an exceptional case for a country where nine out of ten girls are circumcised to celebrate initiation into a female community known as Bondo.
But the leader's initiative is due not so much to ethics or humanity as to economic gain. The fact is that the initiation ceremony is accompanied by extremely costly celebrations.
Initiations of girls take place several times a year for two weeks. The holiday requires high costs from parents: they must buy new clothes for the child and feed the guests all this time. Abandoning the tradition, the villagers increased food supplies, and a field for crops was organized on the site of the temple.
Ordination of Boys as Members of the Poro Secret Union in West Africa
Initiation (from Latin initiatio - the performance of the sacrament, initiation) is a rite that marks the transition of an individual to a new stage of development within the framework of any social group or mystical society.
In Africa, the transition from one social group to another, as elsewhere, took on a special nature of initiation, after which young men became full adult members of society. Initiations in Africa were carried out mainly by secret societies.
The dedication began with the fact that the young men who were to pass this test allegedly died and were kidnapped by their ancestors: in reality, they were taken with them by disguised members of the secret union to a special place known only to the initiates. Neither the moment of abduction, nor the place where young men will live from now on, nor in general all the activities of the union, women, children and the uninitiated were allowed to see the death penalty on pain.
The rather long (from several months to several years) period of initiation, as well as all the rites and ceremonies associated with it, by the end of training are more and more mystified and adopt a pronounced religious-mystical coloring, which is maintained and strengthened in the most severe way, up to terror.
For example, what was the nature of this peculiar "school" in the secret union of Poro (one of the most common unions in West Africa).
Training began with the simplest types of manual labor. First, the boys were taught to prepare the necessary material, then - to weave ropes and ropes, then they mastered the art of weaving mats, baskets, etc. This was followed by wood carving: the boys had to be able to make a spoon, a crest, a chair... They were also trained to use some things for the purpose of fishing: as, for example, to fish with the nets themselves woven together. Every day, young men practiced running, jumping and climbing trees. They were taught how to set traps, traps, how to build a hut, a bridge, a crossing. In short, in this school, a boy should learn to be a man and behave like a man.
The union also cared about artistic education: songs, dances, playing musical instruments - drum, marimbe (kind of xylophone) were mandatory for study.
In the end, a special place in the system of education and initiation was occupied by the introduction into the secrets of the union itself. After taking a terrible oath of absolute silence on pain of death, the boys were shown masks of their ancestors and taught to make them, introduced to the instrument (buzzer or ratchet), which depicted the voice of the ancestor, taught songs and dances, which had previously been performed only before the consecrated members of the union and which the newly ordained were to perform for the first time at the festival of return.
After completing the entire course, new, now full-fledged citizens of society returned home, staging their "resurrection."
The return of the young men home and their resurrection was given the form of a kind of dramatic performance: returning in a solemn procession, the "newly born" pretended to be supposedly not able to do anything with young children who need to learn to walk, talk, and eat again. In some peoples, a special pantomime was played, which depicted the whole story of the alleged death and resurrection of the initiates. Here the young men demonstrated their art in singing and dancing, which they studied in a secret union.
History
1914
1792: A thousand former slaves establish Freetown around the world's oldest cotton tree
In the capital of Sierra Leone, the world's oldest cotton tree, sacred to the inhabitants of Freetown, grows. Towering in the middle of a vast field, the 73-metre-tall Ceiba pentandra was one of the first objects notable in 1792 for a thousand former black slaves determined to build a "City of the Free." It was around the cotton tree that Freetown's laying ceremony was held on Sunday 11 March 1792, and thanksgiving prayers have been held around it every year since.
Sport
2022: The most popular sport is football
in
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