Traces the experiences of child soldiers in Sierra Leone during and after war and examines the implications of their participation.

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life. “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Nineteenth-century Sierra Leone presented a unique situation historically as the focal point of early abolitionist efforts, settlement within West Africa by westernized Africans, and a rapid demographic increase through the judicial emancipation of Liberated Africans. Within this complex and often volatile environment, the voices and experiences of children have been difficult to trace and to follow. Enslaved children historically are a challenging narrative to highlight due to their comparative vulnerability. This book offers newly transcribed data and fills in a lacuna in the scholarship of early Sierra Leone and the Atlantic world. It presents a narrative of children as they experienced a set of circumstances which were unique and important to abolitionist historiography, and demonstrates how each element of that situation arose by analyzing the rich documentary evidence. By presenting the data as well as the individuals whose lives were affected by the mission schools (both as teacher or pupil) this study has sought to be as complete as possible. Underlying the more academic tone is a recognition of the individual humanity of both teachers and students whose lives together shaped this early phase in the history of Sierra Leone. The missionaries who created the documents from which this study arises all died in Sierra Leone after having profound impacts on the lives of many hundreds of pupils. Their students went on to become important historical figures both locally and throughout West Africa. Not all rose to prominence, and the book reconstructs the lives of pupils who became local tradespeople in addition to those who had a greater social stature. This book attempts to offer analysis without forgetting the fundamental human trajectories which this material encompasses.

Meet Adama and Adamu a Sierra Leonean daughter and father duo who enjoy playing, learning games, and eating their favorite snack.Adama loves Akara is part of an early reader series that celebrates African culture while helping children ages 3-5 learn short letter vowel sounds.Practice short vowel sound "a" with Adama loves Akara.

A haunting, beautiful first novel by the bestselling author of A Long Way Gone. Named one of the Christian Science Monitor's best fiction books of the year. When Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone's civil war and the fate of child soldiers that "everyone in the world should read" (The Washington Post). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called "arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature," has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone. At the center of Radiance of Tomorrow are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they're beset by obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town's water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they're forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike. With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times.

After a decade-long civil war, Sierra Leone witnessed an unprecedented surge in school enrollments at the primary and then the secondary levels. Committed to the Education for All objectives, the government further encouraged greater access to school. The country must now negotiate the transition from postwar recovery to regular delivery of education services. The main tasks ahead include reaching the remaining out-of-school children and improving the quality of the learning environment and, ultimately, of learning outcomes. Success will depend on the unrelenting, strong commitment of the government, the capacity of providers to effectively deliver education services, and a sustainable financial framework.

Our primary goal for the Sierra Leone Icon series is to increase awareness about people who helped shape the history of Sierra Leone and around the world. We have done our best to balance facts, the emotions and the illustrations to deliver a book that will inspire a wide range of young adults about Sierra Leone.

The armed conflict in Sierra Leone and the extreme violence of the main rebel faction - the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) - have challenged scholars and members of the international community to come up with explanations. Up to this point, though, conclusions about the nature of the war are mainly drawn from accounts of civilian victims and commentators who had access to only one side of the war. The present study addresses this currently incomplete understanding of the conflict by focusing on the direct experiences and interpretations of protagonists, paying special attention to the hitherto neglected, and often underage, cadres of the RUF. The data presented challenges the widely canvassed notion of the Sierra Leone conflict as a war motivated by 'greed, not grievance'. Rather, it points to a rural crisis expressed in terms of unresolved tensions between landowners and marginalized rural youth, further reinforced and triggered by a collapsing patrimonial state.

A new political history of the former British colony in West Africa, best known for its diamonds and recent violent civil war, this covers 225 years of history and fills a gap in African studies.