Sierra Leone

capital: Freetown
population: 5 million

Elite profited from diamond trade
Sierra Leone (SL) was a British colony for freed slaves created in the late 1700's. After independence in 1961 a small political elite dominated the successive governments. They exclusively profited from the country's lucrative trade in diamonds. As a reaction to this system of exclusive patronage Foday Sankoh started an armed insurrection with the RUF (Revolutionary United Front) and took power in 1991. But violence and war didn't stop there. Despite this continuous warfare general elections took place in 1996. In July 1999 all parties agreed to a regionally brokered cease-fire. The UN passed a resolution that same year to provide an armed peace keeping force that left the country in 2004/2005.

Today mainly diamonds and unskilled miners
Today "Extractive industries" in SL means mining diamonds. Either in the form of arti-sanal mining or more capital-intensive industrial mining. Mainly the labour-intensive artisanal mining provides in a lot of unskilled employment, but mining licences are primarily given to industrial mining companies. Besides incomes from foreign aid, the revenue generated by the official export of diamond (3% tax levy) is the primary source of income (2005: US $141.9 million)

Gold and platinum
Mining potential in Sierra Leone is huge. The country was once the world's largest supplier of rutile (titanium ore), until production was halted by the war in the mid-1990s. The operator, ‘Sierra Rutile', was the country's largest exporter at the time. There are numerous gold occurrences throughout the country, as well as bauxite, platinum and dimension stone.

Problematic
On the one hand diamonds have proven to be a problematic source of export earn-ings, owing to challenges ranging from smuggling and illicit mining to government corruption. Furthermore diamonds served to sustain the operations of the rebels in the civil war. And until today diamonds might serve as a source to finance conflict. Moreover the working conditions of the numerous artisanal diggers in SL should be free of human rights violations and the diggers' share in diamond earnings must re-flect their major role in the extraction process. Smuggling of diamond gemstones, which means evading the verification and trade control on diamonds through the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, remains a problem.