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Sierra Leone: Effects Of Imperialism And Collonization In Africa

Decent Essays

Sierra Leone is mainly a mining country, this caused it to be colonized and for their own native people being used as slaves in their mines. This shaped its social development by making it a far higher concentration of natives than other countries. But, because of their enslavement and American control until recently, literacy rates and per capita GDP are disturbingly low. Politically, though, it’s more stable than most countries in this case.

When Sierra Leone was colonized, it was considered a rich environment for slave trade, they referred to human beings like a natural resource that Sierra Leone was abundant in. Eventually, when slave trade was made illegal, though, in an attempt to try and mend what they had done, Britain sent former slaves to live in Sierra Leone, and eventually the US followed suit. This made it so all the native cultures that were already there got mixed in and even distorted with American and British slave culture and in some cases other forms of European culture. This severely impacted the overall culture and, therefore, made the government more vulnerable to “traditions” getting out of hand.

A huge issue in SIerra Leone is FGM(Female Genital Mutilation), …show more content…

It’s interesting to think that most of the world can be seen coping with the effects of imperialism and colonialism by Europe at any point in history. It was nice to hear more about Africa than the poverty and about how “underdeveloped” they are. Something interesting that I didn’t really expect was the amount of affect that colonialism really had on Africa, and how recently all these nations really became independent. There was a wide range of issues across Africa, from drought to persecution of women, all the way to corruption in the government. I think it was cool to see people realize this fact and realize that it’s not as different as they may think it is over

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