Arabic Literacy Among the Yalunka of Sierra Leone

Africa ◽  
1974 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-81
Author(s):  
Leland Donald
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe Yalunka of north-eastern Sierra Leone are predominantly Muslim. Their religion seems to be a straightforward variant of contemporary West African Islam. They have been exposed to Islam for several centuries and although they had powerful Muslim neighbours during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for most of this period they resisted conversion and remained pagan (Laing, 1825; Donald, 1968) until 1882, when they were conquered by one of the armies of Samory and forcibly converted. After the establishment of British and French control over their area in the 1890s many Yalunka reverted to paganism, but Islam remained viable and the number of adherents increased steadily. By the 1950s nearly all Yalunka in Sierra Leone were at least nominal Muslims.

Black Yellow Fever Immunities, Innate and Acquired, as Revealed in the American South

1977 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 419-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth F. Kiple ◽  
Virginia H. Kiple
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
American South ◽  
West African ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Tropical Africa ◽  
Cheap Labor ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The American South ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Differential Experience

West Africa’s disease environment of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was decidedly hazardous to the health of Europeans who ventured there. Comtemporary observers reported die-offs of white troops reaching the 80 percent mark annually, while the loss of one half of a ship’s company on the coast was not all that unusual. Philip Curtin has calculated that on the average England’s loss of white troops ranged between 300-700 per 1,000 mean strength per annum with his most recent word on the subject placing the overall white death toll at about half of the white soldiers, government officials, and civilian personnel who reached West African shores. K. G. Davies, on the other hand, would have the “risks of the African station” even higher with an individual facing “three chances in five of being dead within a year.”West African natives by contrast positively thrived amidst European death. Again referring to Curtin’s data, the biggest killer of whites by far was “fever.” The fevers of Sierra Leone, for example, dispatched white troops at the rate of 410.2 per thousand per annum during the years 1819-1836, yet caused the death of only 2.5 African troops per thousand per annum. A similar differential experience with fevers occurred throughout West Africa—an experience which Professor Curtin has suggested constituted a crucial reason for the Atlantic slave traded Europeans would have preferred to locate plantations in tropical Africa close to a seemingly inexhaustible source of cheap labor, but they were persuaded by the lethal nature of West African fevers to locate those plantations instead in the more salubrious New World. Put plainly, they found the expense of transporting African workers across the Atlantic eminently preferable to challenging the odds against their own survival in Africa.

From warrior to migrants: critical perspectives on early migrations among the Zarma of Niger

Africa ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas M. Painter
Keyword(s):  
West African ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Technical Cooperation ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Critical Perspectives

Opening ParagraphIn 1956 the Journal de la Société des Africanistes published a monograph-length paper by Jean Rouch entitled ‘Migrations au Ghana (Gold Coast: enquête 1953–1955)’ (Rouch, 1956). The paper was one of several publications during the 1950s and 1960s based on studies by Rouch and other researchers who participated in what was probably the largest study ever of West African migrations, financed by the Commission for Technical Cooperation in Africa South of the Sahara and the Scientific Council for Africa South of the Sahara (CCTA/CSA).

Migrant Aŋlo Fishing Companies and Socio-Political Change: A Comparative Study

Africa ◽  
1969 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 396-410 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Wyllie
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Study ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Coastal Area ◽  
Political Change ◽  
West African ◽  
Beach Seine ◽  
African Countries ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphThe Aŋlo are an Ewe-speaking people who occupy the low-lying coastal area between the Volta river in Ghana and Lome, the capital of Togo. They are among the most mobile of West African peoples, Aŋlo beach seine fishing companies having for many years operated from beaches as far afield as Sierra Leone and Angola. In recent years, however, the governments of certain West African countries have ordered their removal in attempts to protect the interests of indigenous fishermen. This has meant that these companies have tended more and more to return to Ghanaian beaches, but have found that the increasing mechanization of Ghanaian coastal fishing presents a serious threat to their continued operation.

Network building and political power in northwestern Sierra Leone, 1800–65

Africa ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen M. Howard ◽  
David E. Skinner
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Interregional Trade ◽  
Network Building ◽  
Political Networks ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
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Wealth Rank

Opening ParagraphThe study of social, economic and political networks provides a new perspective on the history of northwestern Sierra Leone and neighbouring parts of Guinea during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This article concerns the men and women of wealth, rank and power who built and maintained local and extensive networks focused on towns in northwestern Sierra Leone, Port Loko and Kambia, at two time periods,c.1800 andc.1865. These activities involved the production and exchange of resources; the migration, settlement and intermarriage of families; and the creation, expansion and fission of households, alliances and other groups. Network analysis illuminates major historical changes, such as the development of towns, kingdoms and interregional trade systems. Furthermore, it reveals the shifting nature of ethnic identities, particularly among the Mande. And finally, it helps to show how society in the northwest became more class differentiated as internal and external commerce expanded.

Structural Change in the Sierra Leone Protectorate

Africa ◽  
1955 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 217-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Little
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
West African ◽  
African Society ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
New Class ◽  
The North ◽  
The One ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
The Impact

Opening ParagraphIn recent centuries indigenous West African society has experienced the impact of two external cultural forces, the one personified by Moslem invaders and migrants from the north, the other by European colonists from the West. With the spread of Islam, the way of life of whole peoples has been largely transformed, but the main changes which have occurred in the structure of African society are the result of Western and Westernizing influences. It is the purpose of this article to examine a particular aspect of these structural changes which is exemplified by the appearance of a new class of ‘educated’ and ‘literate’ individuals and their relationship with traditional society in the Sierra Leone Protectorate. The Protectorate, with which this article is exclusively concerned, comprises the hinterland of the Sierra Leone Colony, and is under a Native Authority system of government. In the Colony, political and legal institutions are modelled mainly on the English system. As explained later, the terms ‘educated’ and ‘literate’ are used throughout to denote relative degrees of Westernization due to education.

Rice, yams and chiefs in Avatime: speculations on the development of a social order

Africa ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 659-677 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Brydon
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Ivory Coast ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
West African ◽  
Local Culture ◽  
Northern Ghana ◽  
Crop Type ◽  
Opening Paragraph ◽  
Cultivation Techniques

Opening ParagraphContemporary texts on West African crops usually note that rice is grown in areas west of the Tano: southern Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, Gambia and Liberia grow a considerable quantity of rice and in recent years there has been much attention given to improving both crop type and cultivation techniques. Northern Ghana has also seen the introduction of wet rice cultivation on a large scale. But there are areas in eastern Ghana, to the east of the Volta, where rice is grown. The rice is the indigenous glaberrima type; cultivation techniques owe nothing to the developers and rice-growing has a nodal place in local culture.

Development and Operation of Ebola Diagnostic Laboratories Led By Public Health England in Sierra Leone during the West African Ebola Outbreak 2013-2015

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Bailey ◽  
Jane Shallcross ◽  
Christopher H. Logue ◽  
Simon A. Weller ◽  
Liz Evans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
West African ◽  
The West

Soldiers in Revolt

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maggie Dwyer
Keyword(s):  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
West African ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
Risky Decision ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Military Studies ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
Original Dataset

Soldiers in Revolt examines the understudied phenomenon of military mutinies in Africa. Through interviews with former mutineers in Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, and The Gambia, the book provides a unique and intimate perspective on those who take the risky decision to revolt. This view from the lower ranks is key to comprehending the internal struggles that can threaten a military's ability to function effectively. Maggie Dwyer's detailed accounts of specific revolts are complemented by an original dataset of West African mutinies covering more than fifty years, allowing for the identification of trends. Her book shows the complex ways mutineers often formulate and interpret their grievances against a backdrop of domestic and global politics. Just as mutineers have been influenced by the political landscape, so too have they shaped it. Mutinies have challenged political and military leaders, spurred social unrest, led to civilian casualties, threatened peacekeeping efforts and, in extreme cases, resulted in international interventions. Soldiers in Revolt offers a better understanding of West African mutinies and mutinies in general, valuable not only for military studies but for anyone interested in the complex dynamics of African states.

Informed Consent: Ezenwa–Ohaeto between Past and Future Uses of Pidgin

Matatu ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 115-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chantal Zabus
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
First Language ◽  
West African ◽  
The Other ◽  
Wole Soyinka ◽  
The West ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
African Coast ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The One

The essay shows how Ezenwa–Ohaeto's poetry in pidgin, particularly in his collection (1988), emblematizes a linguistic interface between, on the one hand, the pseudo-pidgin of Onitsha Market pamphleteers of the 1950s and 1960s (including in its gendered guise as in Cyprian Ekwensi) and, on the other, its quasicreolized form in contemporary news and television and radio dramas as well as a potential first language. While locating Nigerian Pidgin or EnPi in the wider context of the emergence of pidgins on the West African Coast, the essay also draws on examples from Joyce Cary, Frank Aig–Imoukhuede, Ogali A. Ogali, Ola Rotimi, Wole Soyinka, and Tunde Fatunde among others. It is not by default but out of choice and with their 'informed consent' that EnPi writers such as Ezenwa–Ohaeto contributed to the unfinished plot of the pidgin–creole continuum.

1787–1887–1987: reflections on a Sierra Leone bicentenary

Africa ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 57 (4) ◽  
pp. 411-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Fyfe
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Sierra Leone ◽  
Forest Belt ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Language Pattern ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Opening Paragraph

Opening ParagraphSeen in the widest perspective, 1787 is only one date among the uncounted tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years during which the present Sierra Leone has been inhabited. Archaeologists have done disappointingly little work there. But it is clear from their findings (and by implication from findings in the rest of forest-belt West Africa) that people have lived there a very long time. Though traditional historiography always tends to present the peoples of Sierra Leone as immigrants from somewhere else, the language pattern suggests continuous occupation over a very long period. As Paul Hair (1967) has shown, there has been a striking linguistic continuity in coastal West Africa since the fifteenth century. Nor is there evidence to suggest that before that period stability and continuity were not the norm.

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