Land, Law, and Legal Subjectivities in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone

Abstract

Thus the government of Sierra Leone assessed the state of its agricultural sector in its most recent poverty-reduction strategy paper, developed with the goal of moving the country among the rank of the “Middle Income status.” In Africa as a whole, rural population has tripled between 1950 and 2000, and is projected to continue to grow in the near future (Boone 2014: 52-3). Despite rapid urbanization in many parts of the continent, demographic pressures on rural lands have grown, leading in some cases to conflicts over access. Sierra Leone, which is routinely ranked among the bottom of the 187 or so countries included in the United Nation's Human Development Index, had a rural population density in 2005 of 588.4 people per square kilometer of arable land, an increase of almost 14% over some 35 years, and a figure well above the continent-wide mean of 328.8 people/sq. km. (Boone 2014: 54).