Cross-Reactive Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and MERS-CoV in Pre-COVID-19 Blood Samples from Sierra Leonians

Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa have experienced lower COVID-19 caseloads and fewer deaths than countries in other regions worldwide. Under-reporting of cases and a younger population could partly account for these differences, but pre-existing immunity to coronaviruses is another potential factor. Blood samples from Sierra Leonean Lassa fever and Ebola survivors and their contacts collected before the first reported COVID-19 cases were assessed using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays for the presence of antibodies binding to proteins of coronaviruses that infect humans. Results were compared to COVID-19 subjects and healthy blood donors from the United States. Prior to the pandemic, Sierra Leoneans had more frequent exposures than Americans to coronaviruses with epitopes that cross-react with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), SARS-CoV, and Middle Eastern respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The percentage of Sierra Leoneans with antibodies reacting to seasonal coronaviruses was also higher than for American blood donors. Serological responses to coronaviruses by Sierra Leoneans did not differ by age or sex. Approximately a quarter of Sierra Leonian pre-pandemic blood samples had neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 pseudovirus, while about a third neutralized MERS-CoV pseudovirus. Prior exposures to coronaviruses that induce cross-protective immunity may contribute to reduced COVID-19 cases and deaths in Sierra Leone.

Making sense of girls empowerment in Sierra Leone: a conversation

This Testify article features a conversation about the emancipatory potentials and pitfalls of girls empowerment as practiced, experienced, and judged by Sierra Leonean activists. We – two scholars and four activists – discussed views on and experiences of girls empowerment approaches that have been interpreted in critical scholarly literature as a form of neoliberal responsibilization. Also within this critical literature, there is often the notion that these approaches may yet create openings for emancipatory agency and counter-conduct. However, it remains unclear whether this happens and to what extent. Our conversation centres activists’ views on the academic critique of girls empowerment and raises a number of questions, including: Why do many feminist activists in Sierra Leone embrace girls empowerment approaches? What do they see in them? How do they interpret and practice them? Where do they see potentials and pitfalls? And what is the role of donors?

Temple Run

Amongst young people in Freetown, ‘Temple Run’, a mobile phone game that requires the player to run for their life across treacherous obstacles, is used as code for the perilous journey that an increasing number of young Sierra Leoneans made to Europe via Libya. Through ethnographic accounts, the article discusses the role of dreams of migration in Freetown youths’ articulations of a distinctive political imagination through which they at once critique and re-imagine their relation to the state and assert their identity and expectations as Sierra Leonean citizens. These narratives are rooted in everyday experiences of neglect and state violence but also embody a long history in the region of intersections between migration, insecurity, and contestations of power. Exploring migration as discourse, separate from practice, the paper shows how migration imageries become incorporated into expressions of presence rather than simply longings for absence and into normative ideas of citizenship.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Foundation of the Kingdom of Galinhas in Southern Sierra Leone, 1790–1820

In the early nineteenth century a centralized political entity, the Galinhas kingdom, emerged in southernmost Sierra Leone. Based on sources from Cuban, British, American, Spanish, and Sierra Leonean archives, this article examines the factors accounting for the emergence and consolidation of Galinhas. I argue that the postabolitionist (1808) redeployment of North Atlantic slave trading actors, networks, routes, and spaces, particularly the connection with Cuba and resources from the island, created the conditions for Galinhas's commercial growth and the centralization of its political power. I then problematize the relationship between warfare, the Atlantic slave trade, and state making. During the foundation of a predatory state, before a slaving and political frontier existed, wars were detrimental to trade. When warfare and commerce — or any social activity — coexisted in the same physical space, the interdependent balance between them, which supported the slave trade itself, was disrupted. After the end of the war, political stability boosted slave trading operations.

Climate Change and Ecocide in Sierra Leone: Representations in Aminatta Forna’s Ancestor Stones and The Memory of Love

War has been instrumental in destroying land and forests and thus is a major contributor to climate change. Degradation due to war has been especially significant in Africa. The African continent, once green, is now almost denuded of its rich forests and pillaged of its precious natural resources due to the brutality of colonisation and more recent postcolonial civil wars. In Sierra Leone the civil war continued for over eleven years from 1991 to 2002 and wrought havoc on the land and forests. Thus the anxiety and trauma suffered by the people not only includes the more visible aspects of human brutality, but also the long lasting effects of ecocide which relate to climate change. Underlying narratives that address traumatic ecological disasters is a sense of anxiety and depression resulting from the existential threat of climate change. This paper demonstrates how narratives can metaphorically represent both ecocide and climate change and argues that such stories help people in tackling the real life stresses of anxiety and trauma. To establish the argument this paper has drawn on scientific and sociological data and placed these vis-à-vis narrative episodes in Aminatta Forna’s novels Ancestor Stones (2006) and The Memory of Love (2010). In these novels Forna depicts the ecological crisis that colonisation and civil war have wrought on Sierra Leone. The anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder – of war and ecocide – suffered by the fictional Sierra Leonean characters are explained through Cathy Caruth’s trauma theory.

Current Tobacco Use and Susceptibility To Using Tobacco Among Non-Users of Tobacco: A Cross-Sectional Study Among School-Going Adolescents in Sierra Leone

Background Tobacco use is a global health threat associated with a high disease burden and deaths. Studies concerning current tobacco use and susceptibility to using tobacco products among adolescents who are potential adult tobacco users in Sierra Leone have not been explored. We aimed to estimate the prevalence and correlates of current tobacco use and tobacco non-users susceptibility to using tobacco amongst Sierra Leonean high-school students. Method We used data obtained from the 2017 Sierra Leone Global Youth Tobacco Survey (GYTS), which presented information collected from 6680 students aged 11-17years nationwide. Gender-based correlates of current use and susceptibility to using tobacco among non-tobacco users were determined by complex sample logistic regression analyses. Adjusted odds ratios (AOR) and respective 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were reported. p-values less than 0.005 were considered significant. Results The prevalence of current tobacco use among high school adolescents in Sierra Leone was 10.7% and was higher in males (12.2%) than in females (7.4%). Male [AOR = 1.32 (95%CI:1.01–1.72)], exposure to household secondhand smoke [AOR = 2.68(95%CI:1.71–4.20)], having peers who smoke [AOR = 3.07(1.53–6.16)] were more likely to be currently using tobacco. On the other hand, adolescents exposed to antismoking media messages were less likely to be current tobacco users [AOR = 0.45(95%CI: 0.24–0.83)]. The overall tobacco non-users susceptibility to using tobacco among adolescents in Sierra Leone was 18.2% [male (18.0%), female (18.5%)]. Exposure to tobacco promotion [AOR = 1.50(95%CI:1.07–2.11)] and non-exposure to antismoking education [AOR = 1.39(95%CI:1.04–1.85)] were significantly associated with tobacco non-users’ susceptibility to using tobacco. Conclusion Our study suggests that one-in-ten school-going adolescents currently use tobacco, with nearly one in five non-users susceptible to using tobacco. Given the high prevalence of tobacco product use among Sierra Leonean adults, our findings highlight the need for policies and interventions to prevent tobacco use behaviour among adolescents aimed at averting tobacco use in adulthood.

UNDERSTANDING THE COLLECTIVISM DILEMMA: A QUALITATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE ROLE ETHNICITY PLAYS IN PROMOTING THE COLLECTIVIST BEHAVIOUR OF CHRISTIAN AND MUSLIM FAMILIES AT MEALTIMES

The findings show how ethnicity plays a significantly role in Sierra Leonean families meal consumption behaviour. It defines the social grouping of families, and demonstrates how they align with the type of language spoken, their cultural beliefs, the region or community they come from and most notably the assumptions they espoused at the dinner table. These factors are symbolic in defining the character of families at mealtimes, but it significance vary from family to family based on their ethnic orientation and the degree of acculturation experienced by them. This paper evaluates the role ethnicity plays in promoting the collectivist behaviour of Christian and Muslim families when they interact socially at mealtimes. This is emblematic of the fact that the cultural behaviour of families is never sacrosanct and inflexible, but changes from time to time based on their level of exposure to either a new environment and/or a new social group. Consequently, this paper highlights the role of ethnicity on the behaviour of Christian and Muslim families (husband and wife) at mealtimes and draw attention to its significance as crucially element of collectivism, particularly in relation to its role in the social interaction between similar and dissimilar gender groups. The authors critically reviewed the role ethnicity has on families meal consumption behaviour and presented a comparative analytical summary of how gender is critical to the meal behaviours of different gender and religious groups. The study evaluated the role ethnicity plays in families meal social interaction behaviour and highlighted factors such as affection, gender differentiation, education and hierarchy, as prime factors of the collectivistic behaviour of families. However, it was evident from the findings that failure to demonstrate emotional ties at mealtimes can debilitate families cohesiveness and display of common strength.