African Entrepreneurship

AFRI CAN
ENTREPRENEURSHI P
MUSLIM FULA MERCHANTS IN SIERRA LEONE
Alusine Jalloh
African Entrepreneurship
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African
Entrepreneurship
M U S L I M F U L A M E R C H A N T S
I N S I E R R A L E O N E
Alusine Jalloh
Ohio University Center for International Studies
Monographs in International Studies
Africa Series No. 71
Athens
1999 by the
Center for International Studies
Ohio University
Printed in the United States of America
All rights reserved
The books in the Center for International Studies Monograph Series
are printed on acid-free paper !
03 02 01 00 99 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jalloh, Alusine, 1963
African entrepreneurship : Muslim Fula merchants in Sierra Leone /
Alusine Jalloh.
p. cm. (Monographs in international studies. Africa
series ; no. 71)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-89680-207-8 (pbk.)
1. MerchantsSierra LeoneFreetown. 2. Fula (African people)
Sierra LeoneFreetown. 3. IslamEconomic aspectsSierra Leone
Freetown. 4. EntrepreneurshipSierra LeoneFreetown. I. Title.
II. Series.
HF3933.Z9F734 1999 99-27144
380.109664dc21 CIP
To my twin brother Alhassan Jalloh
vii
Contents
List of Illustrations, ix
List of Tables, xi
Acknowledgments, xiii
Introduction, xix
List of Abbreviations, xxvii
A Note on Currency, xxix
1. The Fula Trading Population, 1
2. The Livestock Trade, 31
3. The Merchandise Trade, 76
4. The Motor Transport Business, 113
5. Islamic Activities, 151
6. Politics, 188
Conclusions, 219
Notes, 232
Glossary, 254
List of Interviews, 257
Bibliography, 260
Index, 277
ix
Illustrations
Figures
1.1 Alhaji Momodu Allie (Fula chief and businessman), 5
1.2 Almamy Oumarou Jalloh-Jamburia
(Fula chief and businessman), 6
2.1 Alhaji Momodu Bah (Fula chief and businessman), 58
2.2 Alhaji Ibrahima Allie (son of Alhaji
Momodu Allie and businessman), 60
2.3 Alhaji Baba Allie (son of Alhaji
3.1 Alhaji Abass Allie (son of Alhaji
3.2 Fula commercial property in Freetown, 109
4.1 Agibu Jalloh (Fula businessman), 131
4.2 Alhaji Mohamed Bailor Barrie (Fula businessman), 135
5.1 Fula mosque in Freetown, 154
5.2 Alhaji Seray Bah (Fula imam), 155
6.1 Alhaji Lamrana Bah (early Fuuta
Jalon Fula settler in Freetown), 200
6.2 Alhaji A. B. Tejan-Jalloh (Fula
politician and businessman), 204
Maps
1. Sierra LeoneGuinea region, xv
2. Sierra Leone, xvi
3. Greater Freetown, 1978, xvii
x / Illustrations
xi
Tables
2.1. Estimated Trade Cattle Crossing
from Guinea into Sierra Leone, 19611978, 36
2.2 Estimated Cattle Population in
Sierra Leone, 19611978, 39
2.3 Estimated Cattle Raised in
Sierra Leone, 19611978, 40
2.4 Estimated Cattle Slaughtered
in Freetown, 19611978, 53
2.5 Estimated Government Meat Contract
of Alhaji Momodu Bah, 19641978, 65
4.1 Estimated Taxis Owned and Operated
by Fula Merchants in Freetown, 19611978, 121
4.2 Estimated Lorries Owned by Fula
Merchants in Freetown, 19611978, 122
4.3 Estimated Poda-Podas (Light Vans) Owned
by Fula Merchants in Freetown, 19611978, 123
xiii
Acknowledgments
This book is the result of more than a decade of research on
Sierra Leone. I am grateful to the Social Science Research
Council (USA) for a predissertation fellowship to conduct
eldwork in Sierra Leone in 1990. I am also grateful to the
Department of History at Howard University for a Summer
Research Grant that enabled me to conduct extensive eld-
work in Sierra Leone and the Republic of Guinea in 1992.
For help in Sierra Leone, I would like to thank my parents
Alhaji Malal Jalloh and Adama Jalloh, Alhaji Baba Allie, Alhaji
A. B. Tejan-Jalloh, Alhaji M. Seray-Wurie, Alhaji Musa Jalloh,
Alhaji Chernor Marju, Alhaji Ali Jalloh, Alpha Amadu Bah,
Salieu A. Camba, Mohammed Cham, Rashid Jalloh-Jamburia,
Mrs. Binta Allie, Agibu Jalloh, Kadijatu Jalloh, Abubakr Jalloh,
and Alhaji Dr. Ibrahim I. Tejan-Jalloh, Abdul Mansaray,
Sheikh Allie, Sheikh Mohamed Barrie, and Mohamed Lam-
rana Bah. They acted at various times as informants and
friends.
For advice and help at various stages of writing, I gratefully
acknowledge the assistance of Aziz A. Batran, Chernor M.
Jalloh, Sulayman S. Nyang, Linda M. Heywood, Sylvia O.
Macauley, and Ijatu Barrie of Howard University; Professor
Emeritus Christopher Fyfe of Edinburgh University; Allen M.
Howard of Rutgers University; Stephen E. Maizlish of the
University of Texas at Arlington (UTA); David E. Skinner of
Santa Clara University; Mohamed B. Sillah of Hampton Uni-
versity; C. Magbaily Fyle of Ohio State University; M. Alpha
Bah of the College of Charleston; Ibrahim Kargbo of Coppin
State College; Abdul K. Bangura of Bowie State University;
and Vincent B. Thompson of Connecticut College. I am also
grateful to Adesina During of UTA for helping me prepare the
manuscript for publication.
My largest debt is to my twin brother Alhassan Jalloh in
Sierra Leone, to whom I have dedicated this book. He was a
constant source of friendship and encouragement. He played a
vital role in helping collect the data on the Fula merchants.
I apologize to all those whom I have not mentioned by name,
but whose assistance, encouragement, and kindness helped to
make this book possible.
xiv / Acknowledgments
0 30
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RUTGERS CARTOGRAPHY 1999
Moyamba
MOYAMBA
Bonthe
BONTHE
Pujehun
PUJEHUN
KENEMA
Kenema
KAILAHUN
Kailahun
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PORT LOKO
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GUINEA GUINEA
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Provincial headquarters
District headquarters
Main paved roads
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Map 1. Sierra LeoneGuinea region
Map 2. Sierra Leone
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9 Forodugu
10 Freetown
11 Furikaria
23 Lab
24 Madina
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26 Magbeli
27 Mamou
28 Mange
29 Melikuri
30 Moyamba
31 Musaia
32 Poredaka
33 Port Loko
12 Gbinti
13 Kabala
14 Kailahun
15 Kamabai
16 Kamakwie
17 Kambia
18 Kankan
19 Karina
20 Kindia
21 Kouroussa
22 Kukuna
34 Pujehun
35 Rokel
36 Rowula
37 Siguiri
38 Sinkunia
39 Sulima
40 Taiama
41 Tikonko
42 Timbo
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Colony of
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SENEGAL
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GUINEA
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Area of
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SIERRA LEONE
Rutgers Cartography 1999
N
N
Lower
Allen Town
Upper Allen
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Old
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ATLANTIC
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Rutgers Cartography 1999
GREATER
FREETOWN
1978
Greater Freetown
Municipality
Central Business
District
PENINSULA
FOREST
RESERVE
Settlements
Roads
Map 3. Greater Freetown, 1978
Introduction
I conceived of this book in 1983 when I became fascinated with
the rise of Muslim Fula merchants in Sierra Leone.
1
My intel-
lectual curiosity about how Fula immigrants and their Sierra
Leoneanborn ospring made the transition from a poor, mar-
ginalized group to an important merchant class led me to hold
discussions with them in Freetown, the capital city.
2
As a
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula raised in Freetown, I was able to
identify and communicate with the Fula merchants without
diculty. This was also due to my parents extensive contacts
in the Fula community. My Fula father, Alhaji
3
Malal Jalloh-
Jamburia,
4
who was well known to many of the early Fula set-
tlers, had migrated to Freetown from Fuuta Jalon during the
early twentieth century and settled in the east of Freetown
among his kin, including Moodi Tija Jalloh-Jamburia and
Almamy Oumarou Jalloh-Jamburia.
5
Like many of the early
Fuuta Jalon immigrants, my father took up cattle trading, and
in 1952 he married my mother, Adama Kargbo, who was born
and raised in Freetown but whose Temne parents came from
Sanda Tenderin in the Bombali district of northern Sierra
Leone. My grandfather Alhaji Momoh Yalee Kargbo, a ka-
ramoko (Muslim teacher or scholar), was also well known to
the Fula and the rest of the multiethnic Muslim community
in the east of Freetown, where he resided for several years.
The information I obtained from my preliminary investigation
xix
among the Fula merchants further led me to consult the his-
torical literature on Sierra Leone, which oers no book-length
study on the various commercial activities of the Fula in Sierra
Leone. Despite the importance of the Fula in the Sierra Leon-
ean economy, few studies of any kind have been done on them.
6
The central question of the present study is how and why
Muslim Fula surmounted their economic, political, and social
marginalization in Christian-Kriodominated Freetown to
become successful merchants. The study examines wholesale
and retail Fula businesses, within which categories the scale of
trade ranged from large to small. Among Fula retailers, for
example, there were hawkers, market-stall owners, owners of
shops both large and small, and owners of multiple shops. The
present study, however, focuses on Fula wholesalers and large-
scale retailers.
In 1990 and 1992 I conducted extensive eldwork in Sierra
Leone, Guinea, and Britain. I examined a large body of records
in the British and Sierra Leonean archives. Moreover, I stud-
ied assorted government documents and the unpublished busi-
ness records and private papers of Fula merchants in Sierra
Leone.
I also collected oral data from cross-ethnic informants in
Sierra Leone. Most of them had rsthand knowledge of the
history presented here; in fact, some of them had participated
in the historical events I investigated. I complemented these
interviews with some that I conducted in the United States
among the Sierra Leoneanborn ospring of the Fula mer-
chants. The interviews, which I conducted in Krio and Pulaar,
were recorded on cassette tapes, copies of which will be de-
posited at the Sierra Leone Collection, Fourah Bay College,
University of Sierra Leone, in Freetown.
This study of the Fula mercantile population in Freetown is
the result of this research. It focuses on the period between
1961 and 1978. The year 1961 marks the beginning of the
xx / Introduction
postcolonial period. The study ends in 1978 because that date
represents a watershed in the history of Fula mercantile activ-
ities in Freetown. In that year President Skou Tour of the
Republic of Guinea introduced an era of political and economic
liberalization. This resulted in the mass return of Guinean-
born Fula merchants to Guinea from Freetown. It was also at
this time that the Sierra Leonean government initiated na-
tional registration for noncitizens. This led a large number of
Fula merchants to return to their homelands in dierent coun-
tries in West Africa, especially Guinea, in order to avoid po-
tential harassment and deportation as strangers.
This book is an account of the Muslim Fula who played a
major part in transforming the commercial economy of Sierra
Leone. The study documents that Fula immigrants and their
Sierra Leoneanborn ospring exploited commercial oppor-
tunities through hard work and risk taking to become wealthy
merchants among the heterogeneous mercantile class in Sierra
Leone. Moreover, it relates the success of Fula merchants with
respect to entrepreneurship, ethnic solidarity, and the economic
context in which they operated.
This volume is the rst book-length study to reconstruct
the variety of commercial activities of Fula immigrants and
their Sierra Leoneanborn ospring in Sierra Leone. It is also
the rst to examine the social dimensions of Fula mercantile
activities and to detail the connection between Fula merchants
and national politics in Sierra Leone. C. Magbaily Fyles over-
view of the Fula diaspora in Sierra Leone, which draws heav-
ily on published sources, provides useful information on Fula
migration, trade, and politics from the precolonial era to the
postcolonial period.
7
Although focused on the town of Koindu
in eastern Sierra Leone, M. Alpha Bahs study of the Fula in
the twentieth century also contains valuable information on
some of their mercantile activities, migration patterns, and as-
pects of their social organization.
8
Introduction / xxi
This book is also the rst in-depth study of the role of Islam
in Fula business thinking, commercial organizations, and intra-
ethnic trading relations in Sierra Leone. It examines how
Islam inuenced interaction between Fula merchants and fel-
low Muslim traders from dierent ethnic groups, on the one
hand, and between Fula traders and non-Muslim merchants,
on the other. In addition, this book examines the impact of
Islam on the social life of Fula traders. Bahs study helps read-
ers understand how Islam helped to shape the commercial and
social behavior of the Fula. Although the interdisciplinary
study on the Fula resulting from the Fifteenth International
African Seminar held at Ahmadu Bello University in 1979
does not cover Sierra Leone, it contains valuable comparative
information on the impact of Islam on Fula elsewhere in West
Africa.
9
The present study departs from the prevailing scholarship
on the business history of Africa, such as the works by A. G.
Hopkins, by arguing that Fula mercantile concerns in Sierra
Leone were independently owned private enterprises, not ap-
pendages of Western expatriate commerce.
10
In addition, the
study demonstrates that Fula private enterprise was not de-
pendent on state resources, as was the case with many African
businesses in the postindependence period, as documented in
several studies.
11
From a comparative standpoint, the present study comple-
ments a number of good interdisciplinary studies on trading di-
asporas in West Africa. By focusing on the Fula in Sierra Leone,
this book broadens the geographic focus of these diaspora-
oriented studies and expands appreciation of the internal
movement of Africans and the subsequent creation of ethnic
minority communities on the continent. In contrast to other
West African countries like Nigeria and Ghana, Sierra Leone
has received little attention in the scholarly writings on trad-
ing diasporas, primarily due to the countrys relatively small
xxii / Introduction
size. Moreover, this work explores issues of comparative im-
portance in diaspora studies, such as the social and political
relationships between immigrant communities and host soci-
eties, the relationship between immigrants and their home-
lands, and the intergenerational relations within immigrant
communities.
12
Chapter 1 deals with the Fula merchant population in Free-
town. It traces the migration of the Fula from dierent coun-
tries in West Africa to Freetown and the internal migration of
the Fula from the Sierra Leonean interior to Freetown over a
period of three centuries. Moreover, it explains why the Fula
went to Freetown, as well as the structure and evolution of
their community in the city. The remainder of the rst chapter
deals with Fula merchants as a social group. In addition to
discussions of the institutions of marriage and family, social
mobility in the Fula mercantile community is examined. Fur-
thermore, an attempt is made to situate the Fula in the social
hierarchy of the multiethnic Freetown society in which they
undertook their commercial activities.
Chapter 2 explores the role of the Fula in the livestock
trade that connected Freetown with the provinces and neigh-
boring Guinea. A central component of this trade was the
butchering business, characterized by cross-ethnic competi-
tion and intraethnic Fula competition. An attempt is made to
establish the importance of Fula kinship networks in the live-
stock trade from both supply and marketing standpoints.
Important Fula families in the cattle trade and butchering busi-
ness are also identied and discussed to illustrate Fula com-
mercial organization, success, and shortcomings. Moreover, the
property investments of Fula cattle traders and butchers are
documented.
Chapter 3 describes the various activities of the Fula in the
merchandise trade, which included provisions, textiles, and pro-
duce. It also traces the evolution and importance of the role of
Introduction / xxiii
the Fula as urban shopkeepers in the Freetown economy. The
hierarchical organization of the Freetown merchandise trade
as well as its transethnic competitive component are also ex-
amined. Furthermore, Fula methods of capital accumulation,
such as domestic service, hawking, the diamond business, and
reliance on family members and kinship groups for cash or
credit, are documented. This chapter also discusses the dier-
ent types of enterprises in which Fula traders invested their
prots, which included mostly urban properties.
Chapter 4 explores the role of Fula merchants in the motor
transport business of Freetown, which was one of the fastest
growing sectors of the citys economy. The analysis explores
the issues of capital accumulation, business management, types
of investments, the role of kinship networks in the acquisition
and operation of motor vehicles, and the contradictions be-
tween Fula Islamic faith and business practices. The central
role of the diamond trade as a source of capital to the Fula in
the motor transport business is discussed in detail. The Free-
town motor transport business was a major investment vehi-
cle of Fula merchants in various areas of the Sierra Leonean
economy. Studies by N. A. Cox-George and Kelfala M. Kallon
provide a useful framework for understanding the various as-
pects of entrepreneurship in Sierra Leone, including the issues
of capital accumulation and business management.
13
Chapter 5 deals with the Islamic activities of Fula mer-
chants in Freetown. It identies and discusses the mechanisms
through which the Fula contributed to the diusion of Islam.
Primary attention is given to the role of Fula merchants in es-
tablishing Islamic educational institutions for propagating the
Muslim faith and promoting Islamic scholarship. The role of
Fula family households in the socialization of children in Is-
lamic values in a predominantly Western, Christian environ-
ment is also discussed. In addition, the impact of the Islamic
xxiv / Introduction
social obligations of Fula traders on their mercantile activities
is investigated.
Chapter 5 makes a signicant contribution to the limited
literature on Muslims in postindependence Sierra Leone. Until
now, the bulk of these writings have dealt with the precolonial
and colonial periods. Since independence, Muslims, who now
constitute more than half of the 4.5 million people of Sierra
Leone, have continued to play important roles in shaping the
religious and cultural landscape of the country. The historical
and contemporary importance of Muslims warrants more
studies than are presently available.
14
Chapter 6 looks at the role of Fula merchants in politics on
two levels: chieftaincy and national aairs. Beginning with an
examination of the evolution of Fula chieftaincy from the colo-
nial era to the postcolonial period, this chapter attempts to
document the importance of mercantile wealth and networks
in the election of Fula chiefs in Freetown. The response of the
government during the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP)
and All Peoples Congress (APC) rule to Fula chieftaincy pol-
itics and the role of the Fula chief in national politics are fur-
ther examined.
Moreover, chapter 6 deals with the connection between
Fula merchants and national politics during the SLPP and
APC eras. It discusses the emergence of Fula merchants as an
interest group and how they were constrained or coopted into
the postcolonial state during the reign of the SLPP and APC
governments. In addition, the chapter treats in detail the im-
pact of politics in Guinea and the political cooperation be-
tween President Skou Tour of Guinea and President Siaka
Stevens of Sierra Leone on the Fula immigrant mercantile
community in Freetown between 1968, when the APC rst
came to power in Sierra Leone, and 1978.
Introduction / xxv
xxvii
Abbreviations
APC All Peoples Congress
CAST Consolidated African Selection Trust
CBD Central Business District
CFAO Compagnie Franaise de lAfrique Occidentale
CMS Church Missionary Society
CSO Colonial Secretarys Oce
DELCO Sierra Leone Development Company
FBC Fourah Bay College
FPU Fula Progressive Union
FS Financial Secretary
FYO Fula Youth Organization
GBO G. B. Ollivant and Company
GDO Government Diamond Oce
MIA Ministry of Interior Archives
MIAD Ministry of Internal Aairs and Development
MMTC Milton Margai Teachers College
NDMC National Diamond Mining Corporation
NIC National Interim Council
NRC National Reformation Council
OAU Organization of African Unity
PDG Parti Dmocratique de Guine
PWD Public Works Department
PZ Paterson, Zochonis and Company
SCOA Socit Commerciale de lOuest Africain
SIC Supreme Islamic Council
SLA Sierra Leone Archives
SLGR Sierra Leone Government Railway
SLPMB Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board
SLPP Sierra Leone Peoples Party
SLST Sierra Leone Selection Trust
UAC United Africa Company
xxviii / Abbreviations
A Note on Currency
Until 1964 Sierra Leone used the British system of pounds,
shillings, and pence ( s d), in which 1 equaled 20 shillings
and one shilling equaled 12 pence. In 1964 the Sierra Leone
government introduced the leone (Le) as the national cur-
rency. Prior to 1978, when Sierra Leone delinked its currency
from the British pound, the country maintained a xed ex-
change rate with the pound (Le2 = 1). From 1964 to 1978
the ocial exchange rate of the leone to the United States dol-
lar uctuated (Le1 = $1.141.40).
xxix
1
The Fula Trading Population
Preindependence Fula Migration and Settlement
The Fula trading population in postcolonial Freetown, which
was a component of a larger multiethnic merchant class in the
city, was comprised of immigrants and their Sierra Leonean
born ospring.
1
The Fula presence in this area dates back to
the seventeenth century, when the Fula traveled to the coastal
peninsula on which Freetown was later built to trade slaves,
gold, cattle, and cloth with the Portuguese and coastal ethnic
groups like the Temne.
2
But the Fula did not establish a per-
manent settlement. Instead they returned with European goods
along the long-distance trade routes that originated primarily
in Fuuta Jalon in French Guinea (now Republic of Guinea).
3
With the establishment of a settlement of freed slaves on the
peninsula in 1787, Fula trade with this area expanded greatly.
The settlement was originally named Province of Freedom
and then renamed Freetown in 1791 by the Sierra Leone Com-
pany after the original settlement was destroyed by the Temne
residents. The Fula success was due to their initiative and the
1
eorts of the Sierra Leone Company, which was comprised of
English businessmen and philanthropists like Granville Sharp.
The company sent several trade delegations to Timbo, the cap-
ital of Fuuta Jalon, to meet with the almamy.
4
In 1794, for ex-
ample, James Watt and Thomas Winterbottom left Freetown
for Timbo, where they stayed for two weeks of consultations.
They returned to the colony with news that the almamy had
agreed to expand trade with Freetown.
5
When the British government declared a crown colony in
Freetown in 1808, the authorities recognized the importance
of the Fula caravan trade and continued earlier eorts to at-
tract the Fula by sending trade delegations to the almamy of
Fuuta Jalon. In 1819, as Freetown became a major trading
center in West Africa, the Fula established a permanent settle-
ment in the east of the colony to take advantage of expanding
commercial opportunities. This settlement was called Fula Town,
and it stretched from Dunkley Street on the north to Rocklyn
Street on the south, and terminated at Mountain Cut. Fula Town
became a place of residence for permanent as well as itinerant
Fula traders who participated in the commerce of Freetown. It
was also a center of Islamic culture and proselytizing as Mus-
lim Fula embarked on the mission of converting the colonys
multiethnic population to Islam, although this was not readily
welcomed by the Christian missionaries and the colonial ad-
ministration.
6
The Fula in Freetown were part of a larger diaspora in
Sierra Leone that included the Koinadugu district, where the
Fula diaspora is concentrated today; the Tonkolili district; the
Bombali district; the Kailahun district; and the Pujehun dis-
trict in the Sierra Leone protectorate. Fula migration to some
of these areas dates back to the seventeenth century, but the
major waves occurred between the eighteenth and twentieth
centuries. Like the Fula who migrated to Freetown, the Fula
who migrated to the outlying districts were primarily moti-
2 / African Entrepreneurship
vated by commercial opportunity. They also played a major
role in the spread of Islam in the Sierra Leonean hinterland
through their establishment of educational institutions and their
proselytizing eorts. Although nomadic and itinerant, many of
these Fula immigrants became sedentary and created Islamic
communities among the indigenous inhabitants. Moreover, some
Fula families, such as the Bunduka in the Bombali district and
the Kai Kai in the Pujehun district, even became political rulers
in their communities. Over the years Fula families such as the
Bunduka, Jah, and Kai Kai were acculturated through cross-
ethnic marriages. Many of the ospring of these Fula immi-
grants migrated to Freetown, where they settled permanently.
A notable example is Alhaji Abubakr (A. B.) Tejan-Jalloh, who
lived in the east of Freetown.
7
The Fula came from dierent areas of West Africa and from
diverse social origins, the vast majority from Fuuta Jalon. These
immigrants were mostly from the diiwe (administrative re-
gions) of Timbo, Hacundemaje, Lab, and Timbe in Fuuta
Jalon; in fact, the Fula community in Freetown was originally
divided into these four administrative units. But in the 1960s
seven divisionsMaasi, Bantikel, Tliml, Burwaltapel, Koi,
Bomboli, and Korladehwere added to reect the growing
Fula population in Freetown. In addition, the Timbi section
was divided into two units: Timbi Madina and Timbi Tuni.
These divisions, which were headed by subchiefs, were based
on clan and territorial units in Fuuta Jalon. The subchiefs
were appointed by and accountable to the Fula chief.
8
Despite their common homeland, there were divisions among
the Fuuta Jalon Fula. The main clans were Jalloh or Diallo
(Yirlaabe), Bah or Ba (Ururbe), Barrie or Barry (Dayyibe), and
Sow (Ferrobe). The vast majority of the Fuuta Jalon Fula in
Freetown retained these clan identities as jettooje (family names).
Clan membership and alliances were important in Fula com-
mercial organization and political organizing in Freetown.
9
The
The Fula Trading Population / 3
immigrants were involved in chain migration that resulted in
the clustering in Freetown of migrants from the same towns in
Fuuta Jalon. They formed tightly knit communities around the
large groups of kin and fellow townspeople to which the major-
ity of the immigrants belonged. In addition, many of them re-
tained strong links with their hometowns, links reinforced by
ongoing ows of money and people.
10
Besides the Fuuta Jalon Fula, there were the Fula from
Senegal, such as the Bunduka, Alhaji Amadu-Sie, and Alhaji
Momodu Allie (g. 1.1), whose homeland was Fuuta Toro
along the Senegal River.
11
They constituted a minority in the
Fula community. These Fula, like the Fuuta Jalon Fula, came
to Sierra Leone primarily for trade. Alhaji Allie, for example,
left Senegal in 1904 and traveled with a French cattle trader,
Ernest Furrer, along the coast through Bathurst (the capital
city of the Gambia; later Banjul) and Conakry (the capital city
of Guinea) to Freetown to trade in cattle. He then settled per-
manently in the east of the colony among a multiethnic Mus-
lim immigrant population. Between 1904 and 1948 Alhaji Allie
exploited several commercial opportunities in the butchering
business and real estate market of Freetown to become one of
the most successful entrepreneurs in colonial Sierra Leone. He
also created extensive social networks that, together with his
nancial success, gave his family an elite status in the colonial
and postcolonial Fula community.
12
Not only was there a slight linguistic dierence between
the Fula from Fuuta Jalon, with a Puol-Poulle dialect, and
those from Senegal, with a Haalpulaaren dialect, but these
groups were political rivals in Freetown.
13
Both the Fuuta
Jalon and Senegalese Fula in Sierra Leone were part of a large
Fula group spread through much of West Africa from Senegal
to Lake Chad. But unlike Fula in northern Nigeria, those in
Sierra Leone did not enforce purdah on women. Much has
been written about the Fula elsewhere in West Africa detail-
ing their origins, which remain controversial among scholars.
Scholars have also written extensively about the Fulas pas-
toral mode of existence, mercantile pursuits, and role in the
spread of Islam in West Africa. Most of these studies have
focused on the Fula communities in Nigeria, Guinea, Senegal,
and The Gambia.
14
Although Fula immigrants were lumped together and stereo-
typed as an underclass by urban residents in colonial Freetown,
they were not socially homogeneous. Some of them came from
wealthy aristocratic families in societies where cattle, not cash,
was the basis of jawdi (wealth). In fact, Fula immigrants like
Alhaji Allie and Almamy Oumarou Jalloh-Jamburia (g. 1.2)
came from the rimbe (noble class) in Fuuta Toro in Senegal and
Fig. 1.1. Alhaji Momodu Allie (Fula chief and businessman)
FPO
80%
in Fuuta Jalon, respectively.
15
Many of the Fula immigrants
were commoners, and some had held maccube (servile status) in
their homelands, where they had a low social image. While the
traditional class distinctions of the Fula immigrants in their
homelands were visible within their communities, they were
less clearly marked in the broader Freetown society.
16
Up to the late 1920s the Fula population in Freetown was
relatively small. According to the ocial census for 1921,
there were fewer than eight hundred Fula residing in Free-
town. But this gure is questionable since a large number of
newly arrived Fula immigrants and established residents did
not register with the colonial administration for fear of depor-
tation to their homelands. Many were young males in their
Fig. 1.2. Almamy Oumarou Jalloh-Jamburia (Fula chief and
businessman)
FPO
80%
teens or early adulthood who had left their parents or young
wives and children to pursue economic opportunities in Free-
town and to avoid French military conscription. They were
mostly worok (porters), hawkers, shopkeepers, and cattle traders.
A primary reason for the small permanent Fula settlement was
that the Fula were unwilling to settle in a predominantly Chris-
tian society, which they felt would compromise their Islamic
values. Moreover, many of the Fula were nomads who were
averse to sedentary life in the colony.
17
However, the early 1930s, following the Great Depression,
represented a watershed in Fula migration to Freetown. Ac-
cording to the 1931 census, the Fula population there had in-
creased by 85 percent since 1921. Their number rose from 719
in 1921 to 1,331 in 1931 out of a total population of 95,558. Of
this increase 1,072 were male Fula, while 259 were Fulamusus
(Fula women).
18
The vast majority of Fula immigrants were
undocumented aliens from Guinea. There were several entry
points through which they entered Sierra Leone. Of these the
Kambia, Bombali, and Koinadugu districts, on the northern
border with Guinea, were often used by young Fula male im-
migrants in their teens or early adulthood.
19
They migrated
alone or in small groups and would often rst migrate to
Freetown to look for lodging and to learn Krio, the lingua
franca in Sierra Leone,
20
before sending for their Fula wives.
But some married non-Fula indigenous women living in Free-
town or in the protectorate whom they brought with them to
Freetown.
21
The increased Fula migration to Freetown during this pe-
riod was part of a larger migration of several ethnic groups
from the protectorate to that city. This internal migration was
occasioned by economic hardship brought about by the Great
Depression. This also accounts for the large presence in Free-
town of immigrants, mostly males, from other West African
countries like Liberia. Furthermore, the immigrants were
attracted by employment opportunities and higher wages in
such areas of the colonys economy as the construction of mil-
itary fortications, which resulted from the outbreak of World
War II.
22
Many of the Fula immigrants became merchants only after
they settled in Freetown. They arrived impoverished, drawn
by the possibilities of becoming wealthy through trade. They
were red with the ambition to succeed but hamstrung by the
lack of capital. For these immigrants the good life was a com-
bination of wealth gained through trade and the progressive
attainment of Islamic learning, both forms of power and suc-
cess among the Fula. Through success in trade they hoped to
attain leisure time, which they would devote to learning and to
one of the most coveted gifts that wealth can bring to a Fula,
the opportunity to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. The tes-
timonies of these immigrants indicate that they endured the
emotional hardship of leaving their families behind and the
physical pain of traveling hundreds of miles on foot, by road,
and by sea to Freetown to accumulate wealth through trading.
Since these Fula immigrants lacked Western education and
did not desire to acquire it because of their Islamic faith, trad-
ing was the only occupation open to them in the Westernized
colony.
23
Moreover, many Fuuta Jalon immigrants recount that they
migrated to Freetown to escape intolerable economic condi-
tions that were compounded by oppressive French taxation
and military conscription. They saw the city as oering a rel-
atively better life in terms of economic opportunities. The
colonial administration had concentrated Sierra Leones utili-
ties as well as industrial, commercial, nancial, and educa-
tional institutions in Freetown. The city became the focus of
modernization and migration, making it and the surrounding
area the most densely populated part of the country. Although
the whole of West Africa experienced economic diculties be-
cause of the Great Depression, Freetown fared much better in
terms of job opportunities and higher wages than did many
areas of the region.
24
Not all the Fula immigrants came directly to Freetown. A
large number of them settled rst in the protectorate, espe-
cially in the Bombali, Tonkolili, and Koinadugu districts, be-
fore migrating to Freetown. These Fula established kinship
networks within their communities and across their regions
with other Fula connections that served social and commercial
purposes. Many of these Fula accumulated some capital through
trading before resettling in Freetown to take advantage of
greater economic opportunities. Often they were told by re-
turning Fula kinsmen from Freetown about the many com-
mercial opportunities in the city. The testimonies of these
immigrant merchants reveal that they traded in various mer-
chandiseincluding kola nuts, cattle, and palm oilwithin
the protectorate and between this area and Freetown. Many of
them maintained their trade networks with the protectorate
after they settled permanently in the city.
25
Once in Freetown, the Fula immigrants quickly established
a reputation for shrewdness, frugality, and resourcefulness,
even though they were unfamiliar with the language, culture,
and laws of their new country. Although ridiculed and ha-
rassed by some urban dwellers, the Fula immigrants were also
known for a habit of silent submission, amenability to disci-
pline, and willingness to work long hours without protest.
This endeared them to many Freetown residents, especially
Krio professionals and merchants as well as Lebanese and In-
dian traders. The Fula immigrants were employed in occupa-
tions disdained by urban dwellers; they served as domestic
servants, shop boys, cooks, and watchmen (night security), and
a large number of them were self-employed as worok in the
major markets of Freetown. It was from these menial jobs that
many of them saved their start-up trading capital, which
allowed them to make a transition to self-employed merchants.
These Fula immigrants were economically ambitious, low-key,
well organized, self-condent, and practical.
26
Colonial Reaction to Fula Migration and Settlement
By the end of World War II the Fula population in Freetown
had increased substantially because of migration from Guinea.
Most of the Fula immigrants were undocumented aliens who
were motivated by economic opportunities. The extent of Fula
migration was such that the colonial administration responded
by enforcing a strict immigration policy that called for repatri-
ation of undocumented Fula to Guinea. In May 1945 the com-
missioner of police acknowledged that the Fula were a serious
immigration problem.
27
In addition to the Police Department, the Labor Depart-
ment was also involved in the concerted eort of the colonial
administration to check Fula immigration to Freetown. But
there was disagreement among colonial ocials regarding the
immigration status of the Fula. In November 1943 the assis-
tant police magistrate ruled in a court case that the Fula were
natives of French Guinea and were therefore not liable to be
repatriated to the protectorate in accordance with the Defence
Regulations of 1943, which covered the repatriation of unem-
ployed protectorate natives.
28
Yet it was the impression of the
commissioner of labor that at the time of drafting the Defence
Regulations the Fula would come within the scope of these
Regulations.
29
It was also the opinion of the acting attorney
general that Foulahs [Fula] are Natives of the Protectorate
within the meaning of the Regulations (Defence Act, 1939).
Both the commissioner and the attorney general therefore dis-
agreed with the position of the assistant police magistrate.
30
Despite ocial dierences over the immigration status of
the Fula, the deportation of illegal Fula immigrants to Guinea,
especially those who were unemployed, continued for the rest
of the colonial period. The Fula chief Almamy Jamburia and
his successor, Alhaji Allie, cooperated with the colonial admin-
istration in deporting illegal Fula immigrants to Guinea. The
deportees were put on board launches that transported them
across the Sierra Leone River to the Guinea border. Whatever
the anxieties and distresses of life in Freetown, the Fula immi-
grants in their correspondence with their families in their
home countries usually minimized the obstacles confronting
them, preferring instead to report all that was good in their
new environment. By 1957 there were over ve thousand Fula
in Freetown. Of these, 70 percent were immigrants who were
mostly cattle traders, butchers, and hawkers.
31
Fula Social Structure and Freetown Society
Within the male-dominated Fula immigrant community there
was a patron-client relationship grounded in kinship ties be-
tween settled, wealthy Fula julaabe (merchants) and newly
arrived, poor Fula in Freetown. As patrons, the julaabe pro-
vided their kinsmen clients with free food and lodging. They
also obtained valid immigration documents for some of them
and gave them opportunities to acquire commercial skills as
assistants in their various trading undertakings. Eventually
they would provide their clients with nyamande (credit) in cash
or goods to launch their own julaagol (trading career). In keep-
ing with their Islamic faith, the recipients repaid the cash at
their convenience, without riba (usury). The Fula clients often
reciprocated with remunerative labor and loyalty, which tran-
scended commerce and had signicance for politics and the so-
cial domain. They also would give their patrons fanda (gift) at
social events such as dennabo (child-naming ceremony).
Wealthy Fula julaabe served as landlords to jananbe (new-
comers) outside their kinship groups, as well as to their fellow
kinsmen. They provided the new immigrants with free lodging
or below-market rents until they could save enough money to
start their own trading enterprises. Often the landlords pro-
tected their tenants rights and were accountable for their clients
actions toward others. This patron-client relationship facili-
tated the entry of many Fula into the commerce of Freetown.
In addition, the Fula clients expanded the commercial and po-
litical networks of their landlords; this was especially the case
during chieftaincy elections.
32
Some even attempted to tie their
prosperity to their landlords by marrying their daughters. Not
only did the role of landlord increase the baraka (blessing; gift
of grace)
33
of the wealthy Fula merchants, it enhanced their so-
cial prestige in the Fula community and the larger multiethnic
Freetown Muslim community. The julaabe also served as cross-
cultural brokers, helping and encouraging trade between the
host society and the Fula population.
34
The Fula were only one element of the multiethnic Free-
town population, which included Temne, Krio, Mandinka,
35
Indians, Europeans, and Lebanese. Like the Fula, the Indians
were immigrants and formed an important mercantile group.
Nearly the entire Indian trading community was Sindhi, that
is, they originated from the province of Sindh.
36
They arrived
in Sierra Leone in the late nineteenth century and were con-
centrated in Freetown, especially in the central business dis-
trict, Kissy Street, and Kroo Town Road at the west end of the
city. Lebanese immigrants arrived in Sierra Leone in the late
nineteenth century from the former province of Syria that was
under Turkish rule. Most of the Lebanese immigrants were
Muslims, Shiite as well as Sunni. There were also Lebanese
Maronite Christians and members of the Greek Orthodox
Church, many of whom joined Protestant churches in Sierra
Leone. Like the Fula, the Lebanese started out as poor, mar-
ginalized immigrants and gradually exploited commercial op-
portunities in the Sierra Leonean economy to make a transi-
tion from hawkers to successful businesspersons. They were
concentrated in Freetown, where they owned several shops
and competed mostly with the Indians in the retailing of im-
ported merchandise.
37
The Krio were immigrants who came from the New World,
West African countries like Nigeria, and the interior of Sierra
Leone. A great deal has been written about the Krio; therefore
their history will simply be outlined here. As noted above, in
1787 the Sierra Leone peninsula became the home of emanci-
pated Africans, the black poor, who were living in England; this
was largely due to the eorts of British humanitarians like
Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce. Between 1792 and
1800 the settler population was increased with the arrival of
Nova Scotians, emancipated blacks who had settled there after
the American War of Independence, and Maroons, who were
former fugitive slaves in Jamaica, mainly from the Ashanti in
Ghana. This settler population was increased by the arrival of
Recaptives, who were set free following the British Parlia-
ments declaration of the slave trade as illegal in 1807. The Re-
captives, Liberated Africans, were mostly Yoruba, but others
came from dierent areas of West Africa, like Senegal and the
interior of Sierra Leone. It was the gradual genetic and cultural
fusion of these groups that produced a Krio society in the nine-
teenth century. Krio society, which consisted of European and
African cultures, was heavily inuenced by Western values and
Christianity. For several decades the Krio exercised elite inu-
ence over the economy, politics, and social life of Freetown.
38
As a Muslim immigrant population, the Fula maintained a
large degree of cultural exclusiveness with few cross-ethnic
marriages in the multiethnic society of Freetown. This may be
explained by the strong Fula adherence to Islam and their
assumed cultural superiority over the rest of the Freetown
population. The Fula were residentially segregated in colonial
Freetown. While the Europeans lived in the western and cen-
tral wards of the city, the Fula immigrants, like most Muslim
immigrants, like the Mandinka, were concentrated in the east-
ern area. The Fula also lived alongside indigenous Muslims,
like the Temne. The cross-ethnic Freetown Muslim commu-
nity was based in the eastern part of the city.
39
Although Fula traders were well respected by the Muslim
community in colonial Freetown, they occupied a lower posi-
tion in the general social hierarchy. This resulted primarily
from their lack of Western education, which was heavily inu-
enced by Christianity. Western education rather than wealth
was the chief criterion for entry into the social elite of the city.
The vast majority of the Fula immigrants showed no inclina-
tion to acquire even rudimentary Western education because
they held the conviction that it would compromise their Is-
lamic faith. These Fula believed that Western education was
not recognized by Allah and only served a secular purpose. Is-
lamic education, on the other hand, prepared an individual for
paradise after death. Most of these immigrants dissuaded their
ospring, especially women, from attending Western schools
for fear that they would murtude (rebel by becoming Western-
ized) and therefore turn away from Islamic values and Fula
cultural practices, such as prearranged marriage and absten-
tion from alcohol. Moreover, the humble origins of many Fula
traders and the stigma attached to their occupation weakened
their claim as a group to elite status in the eyes of many Free-
town residents, especially Western-educated Krio.
40
Postcolonial Fula Migration and Settlement
After independence, which was achieved on 27 April 1961,
many Fula who planned to return home after reaping a quick
prot never did so. This may be explained by their accumula-
tion of properties in Freetown, their raising of families, and
the relatively poor economic conditions in their homelands.
41
Between 1961 and the 1970s the Fula population in Freetown
increased substantially. In 1963 it was estimated at 6,533 out
of a total population of 161,258.
42
In 1974 it rose to 13,290 out
of a total of 276,247, or nearly 5 percent.
43
These gures do
not accurately reect the total strength of the Fula population,
since those without valid travel documents like passports con-
stituted the bulk and evaded being counted by census ocials
for fear of deportation to their homelands. In fact, deportation
was a frequent recourse for government ocials dealing with
the problem of Fula immigration. In one deportation court
hearing in Freetown in 1963 involving a Fula who entered
Sierra Leone without a passport, Mr. Livesey Luke, the defen-
dants lawyer, pleaded with the acting senior police magistrate,
J. B. Short, that deportation of the Fula was contrary to the
spirit of the African Unity Charter, which had been signed by
thirty African heads of states that year at the rst meeting of
the Organization of African Unity in Addis Ababa.
44
A major factor leading to the growth of the Fula commu-
nity was the political persecution of the Fula in postindepen-
dence Guinea under the rule of President Skou Tour, who
was of Mandinka ancestry. In September 1958 Guinea rejected
the Franco-African community proposed by the French colo-
nial government and opted for independence with Skou Tour
as its rst president. President Tour then established one-
party rule under the Parti Dmocratique de Guine (PDG),
which had a socialist ideology and drew heavily on a Marxist-
Leninist doctrine of political organization and the role of the
party in the state. Under this political system the Fula, who
were the largest ethnic group and whose aristocratic tradi-
tional rulers had exercised considerable political power in the
precolonial period, were underrepresented and denied political
privileges.
45
Political persecution of the Fula under President Tours
socialist one-party rule became widespread in the 1960s and
1970s. Between 1962 and 1976 President Tour dismissed and
arrested Fula government ministers such as Ibrahima Barry
and Diallo Telli, the former secretary general of the Organi-
zation of African Unity (OAU), and purged the army of Fula.
The Fula were perceived by President Tour and his PDG as
a serious political threat. The persecution of Fula political
leaders convinced many Fula that their personal safety could
not be guaranteed under President Tours one-party state.
Furthermore, the abortive Portuguese invasion of Guinea in
1970 led to additional severe persecution of the Fula as Presi-
dent Tour accused them of collaborating with the Portuguese
invaders. The result was a rapidly increasing emigration of the
Fula, mostly males, from Guinea to neighboring countries,
including Sierra Leone. These newcomers, like the older im-
migrants, were largely unassimilated; but unlike their prede-
cessors, they came not just from Fuuta Jalon but other areas in
Guinea, like Conakry, the capital city.
46
The testimonies of these recent Fula arrivals also reveal
that they migrated to Freetown because of their opposition to
the economic ideology of President Tour.
47
The Guinean econ-
omy, which was based on socialism, denied enterprising Fula
the opportunity to engage in private enterprise. Between 1958
and 1961 the PDG nationalized banks, insurance companies,
and foreign trade companies. The PDG introduced state-owned
enterprises, which monopolized most of the internal and ex-
ternal wholesale trade. These businesses bought products
from local merchants at xed prices, which were generally
lower than market prices. In order to consolidate private trade
in fewer hands, the PDG in 1964 imposed stringent controls
on retail trade that required shop owners and merchants to de-
posit large sums of money in government banks in order to be
entitled to engage in commerce. This law severely disrupted
the distribution of goods. In 1972 Guinea withdrew from the
franc zone and created its own currency, the syli. The net re-
sult was the creation of a ourishing black market and the
smuggling of goods to neighboring countries, like Sierra Leone,
where prices were higher.
48
It is dicult to document statistically all the Fula who en-
tered Sierra Leone during this period because many of them en-
tered the country as undocumented aliens. However, the 1974
census reveals the preponderance of Guineans, most of whom
were Fula, among the foreign nationals in Sierra Leone. It is
registered that between 1963 and 1974 the number of Guineans
in Sierra Leone rose from 30,671 (51.6 percent of the total for-
eign population) to 44,504 (56 percent of the total foreign pop-
ulation), a 45 percent increase.
49
According to another estimate,
between 1960 and 1975 there were 41,000 Guineans out of a
total of 71,000 immigrants in Sierra Leone.
50
The evidence
suggests that these gures do not reect the true demographic
picture of the Fula immigrants, who made up the majority of
the Guinean immigrants, since many of them did not register
with the Sierra Leonean government. The evidence further sug-
gests that the bulk of these Fula newcomers settled in Free-
town, where they took up trading. However, some rst settled
in the diamond-mining areas of Kono, where they accumulated
capital before resettling permanently in Freetown to invest in
commerce; others settled temporarily in the Bombali, Tonkolili,
and Koinadugu districts, where they traded in cattle and accu-
mulated some capital before resettling in Freetown. These new
immigrants were quickly integrated into the existing social and
commercial networks of the Fula community.
Government and Public Reaction to Fula Immigration
In 1975 the Fula chief, Alhaji Momodu Bah, held several dis-
cussions with the prime minister (who was also minister of the
interior), C. A. Kamara-Taylor, on the issue of Fula migration
to Freetown. He made four recommendations to the govern-
ment. First, the government should start immediate registra-
tion of every male Fula resident in Freetown twenty-one years
of age and older. Second, all the Fula resident in Sierra Leone
since 19 April 1971, when the country became a republic, should
be registered as Sierra Leonean citizens. Third, all the Fula
who entered Sierra Leone after the declaration of a republic
should be registered as noncitizens. Fourth, the Fula chief
should appoint twenty section chiefs, who would ensure that
all current Fula residents as well as new immigrants were reg-
istered. According to the Republican Constitution Citizenship
Act, every person who, having been born in Sierra Leone be-
fore the nineteenth day of April, 1971, or who was resident in
Sierra Leone on the eighteenth day of April, 1971, and not the
subject of any State shall on the nineteenth day of April, 1971,
be deemed to be a citizen of Sierra Leone by birth, provided
that his father or his grandfather was born in Sierra Leone or
he is a person of negro African descent. Although many Fula
qualied as Sierra Leonean citizens under this constitutional
provision, a large number of non-Fula Sierra Leoneans consid-
ered Fula as foreigners from Guinea. This widespread per-
ception did not exist for similar ethnic groups with a Guinean
background, like the Soso.
51
By 1976 the Fula population had grown to such an extent
as to cause public alarm among Sierra Leoneans. This concern
was expressed in a local newspaper in a section titled What
the Public Say: Halt the Inux of Foulah [Fula].
52
The ex-
pression of public concern over the increased Fula immigrant
population did not go unnoticed by the Fula chief. He met with
the commissioner of police to assure him that he would work
with the government to regulate Fula immigration to Free-
town. Alhaji Bah held several private meetings with his sub-
chiefs over this issue.
53
The problem of unregistered Fula immigrants, which had
plagued the British colonial administration, was faced by the
postindependence Sierra Leonean government. In 1978 the
government established the National Registration Secretariat,
with its headquarters in Freetown, to document Sierra Leon-
eans as well as foreign nationals living in Sierra Leone. In
addressing members of the Freetown West II Constituency,
Prime Minister C. A. Kamara-Taylor, who was also secretary-
general of the APC Party, spoke about the importance of the
national registration and stated that government was gravely
concerned about the illegal inux of strangers.
54
Only 109
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula registered, and 32 of those were
traders. Of the 2,576 Guinean-born Fula who registered, 1,229
were traders. Nine of the 12 Fula from Senegal who registered
were traders; of the 9 from Gambia who registered, 3 were
merchants; and 2 of the 5 from Mali were merchants.
55
The evidence suggests that the bulk of the Sierra Leonean
born Fula as well as those who were non-Sierra Leoneans did
not register with the secretariat. This may be explained by two
factors. The rst is that the Fula, both nationals and foreign-
born, wanted to avoid the payment of government business
taxes, which they considered too high. The second is that un-
documented Fula were apprehensive of deportation to their
countries of origin. The Fula who came from Guinea were ter-
ried by the prospect of returning to a country whose political
leadership was oppressive and whose economy was depressed,
with few employment opportunities and low wages.
56
The rst-, second-, third-, fourth-, and even fth-generation
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula were the ospring of Fula immi-
grant parents and interethnic marriages between Fula and
members of indigenous ethnic groups, like the Temne. In con-
trast to their immigrant parents, some of the Sierra Leonean
born Fula, like the children of Almamy Jamburia, were assim-
ilated into Freetown society, in which they received Western
education and competed for social mobility through profes-
sional success.
57
But it was extremely dicult to dierentiate a Guinean-
born Fula from a Sierra Leoneanborn Fula when a birth cer-
ticate was not available, as was the case for many Fula born
in the provinces. This posed a major problem in determining
citizenship status for many Fula in postindependence Sierra
Leone. The Fula, even when born in Sierra Leone, were ex-
pected to demonstrate uency in Krio to be socially considered
bona de Sierra Leoneans. This was not the case for other im-
migrant groups, like the Soso or Yalunka. According to the in-
dependence constitution, the ospring of a Fula father and a
Sierra Leonean mother were citizens, as were third-generation
Fula immigrants. The Sierra Leone Citizenship Act passed by
Parliament in April 1973 conrmed the citizenship status of
Fula whose mothers were Sierra Leoneans. A large number
of rst-generation Fula immigrants, including Alhaji Bah,
became Sierra Leonean citizens through naturalization. The
problem of determining Fula citizenship in Sierra Leone was
similarly faced by a large number of African immigrants in
several host countries in West Africa.
58
Despite the legal status of many Fula immigrants and their
ospring as Sierra Leoneans, there was a prevalent public per-
ception of them as strangers who belonged to Guinea. This
image was reinforced by the refusal of many Fula immigrants
to consider themselves Sierra Leoneans despite their long resi-
dence in the country. The Fula immigrant psychology that held
Freetown to be only a temporary residence prevented them
from fully integrating themselves into the city, and conse-
quently limited their ability to assert their rights as citizens
and prevent harassment, prejudice, and discrimination. Corrupt
police ocers and politicians often exploited the ignorance and
fear of deportation of many Fula immigrants, even those who
were citizens and legal residents, and took money and mer-
chandise from them unlawfully. In fact, the Fula were frequent
targets of arrest by law enforcement ocers during stranger
drives. Even when the Fula found employment and made
peace with their new environment, they still faced distrust and
animosity from some Freetown residents. They encountered
the hatred of those who blamed them for displacing Sierra
Leoneans in jobs like tailoring and taxi driving, for low wages,
or for urban problems like crime. Despite frequent abuses of the
Fula and repeated complaints from the Fula community, most
of those who were responsible were not held accountable.
59
The harassment and discrimination against the Fula and the
demand in the local press by some urban residents, especially
the Krio, for their repatriation to Guinea brought about a sharp
response from the Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn Fula.
They contended that the Fula were not strangers in Freetown,
given the fact that their presence predated the establishment
of Krio society and the founding of the city. Moreover, they
demanded that the government put an end to the indiscrimi-
nate lumping together of all Fula as foreigners and recognize
those who were born in Sierra Leone with full citizenship
rights. It was suggested by the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula that
the indiscriminate and long-standing attack on the Fula pop-
ulation was brought about by envy of their commercial suc-
cess.
60
The Fula were not the only African immigrants to suer
discrimination, harassment, and even expulsion in West Af-
rica. In the 1980s in Nigeria, for example, thousands of Gha-
naian immigrants from various backgrounds, including doctors,
engineers, teachers, and taxi driversalmost half the alien
inuxhad a similar experience. The Nigerian governments
position for the expulsion of Ghanaians was that they were il-
legal aliens. But the evidence suggests that the economic suc-
cess of the Ghanaian immigrants aroused envy among many
Nigerians, as was the case with immigrant Fula merchants in
Sierra Leone. The Ghanaian aliens were also accused of taking
jobs from local Nigerians. Like Fula immigrants in Sierra Leone,
many West African immigrants, including Ghanaians, crossed
national boundaries in search of better-paying jobs and com-
mercial opportunities.
61
Postcolonial Fula Social Structure
Within the emergent male-dominated Fula trading sector
comprising older immigrants and newcomers as well as Sierra
Leoneanborn Fula, not only was wealthwhich included
cash, property, and cattlea status symbol, it was also an av-
enue for social mobility. While some of the earlier immigrants,
like Alhaji Allie, came from aristocratic backgrounds, many, es-
pecially the newcomers, occupied a low ascriptive status. For
Fula who came from the lowest social stratum in their home-
lands, commerce provided opportunities to become wealthy
and achieve social recognition in postcolonial Freetown. Exam-
ples of upward social mobility among the merchants are legion.
An industrious unknown could through hard work, accumula-
tion of capital, marriage and kinship, and a bit of luck work his
way into the respectable upper group of the Fula merchant
class. Personal achievement allowed for social mobility and
produced a society in which there was a constant ltering of
members in and out of the middle and upper merchant groups.
The traditional Fula class divisions based on ascriptive values
were weak among the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula and the new
Fula immigrants in the multiethnic city. The evidence also sug-
gests that many successful Fula merchants remembered their
humble origins and were willing to help worthy young Fula re-
peat the same process of upward social and economic mobility.
Commercial networking across generational lines among the
Fula in Sierra Leone was not unique. It existed in similar ethnic
diaspora communities elsewhere in West Africa, like those of
the Hausa in Ibadan and the Yoruba in northern Ghana. Fac-
tors like kinship ties, limited formal credit options, the need for
start-up capital, intergenerational business continuity, the need
for clients to support commercial activities like business expan-
sion, and trading competition from other ethnic groups led
many West African immigrants, including the Fula, to develop
extensive commercial networks in their host societies. Such
networks also often served the social and political activities of
the mercantile immigrants in their local communities.
62
Status in the Fula mercantile community was determined
by style and quality of clothing, as well as by wealth. Upper-
class Fula traders symbolized their class position by wearing
braided, three-piece gowns made from expensive imported
cotton. This form of dress was one of the visible dierences
that separated the elite from those at the social periphery of
the Fula community. That the successful Fula merchants did
not wear Western-type dress such as woolen suits, which were
considered prestigious by Western-educated Sierra Leoneans,
is further evidence of the degree to which they sustained their
culture in the plural society of Freetown.
The Fula merchant beynguure (family) was traditional, with
the moodi (husband) as the head who made all the major deci-
sions. Inheritance was through the male line. In addition,
these households were mostly polygamous; it was common for
a Fula trader to have two, three, or four beynguly (wives). Mar-
riages were often prearranged and were the products of family
agreements. With a favorable match a family gained prestige
or wealth through its new tie to a family of equal or greater
reputation and resources. The happiness of the bride and
groom was a lesser consideration, and marriage for love alone
was unthinkable. Women were expected to be subservient to
their husbands and children to their parents. According to
Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, registrar of marriages and divorce of the
Fula mosque in Freetown, most Fula merchants were married
and practiced polygamy.
63
By embracing polygamy, the Fula
merchants were following traditions of marriage that were
consistent with their Islamic faith.
64
Fula polygamous marriages are recognized by the Moham-
medan [Islamic] Marriage Act, which deals with marriage,
divorce, and intestate succession under Islamic law and cus-
tomary law. This act is one of the components of the Non-
Customary Family Law of Sierra Leone. The others include
the Christian Marriage Act, which provides for monogamous
marriage services conducted in church, and the Civil Marriage
Act, which provides for marriages that take place before a reg-
istrar. There are various customary laws reecting the ethnic
diversity of the country that form a single body of laws, the
Customary Law of Sierra Leone.
65
While the male Fula mer-
chants ruled the beynguure, their wives managed them. Most
beynguure had a beyngu aranoh (rst wife) who supervised the
running of the household and assigned various roles to other
wives married after her. The overwhelming majority of women
in the Fula households were housewives. The male children
were expected to help their fathers in their occupational en-
deavors while the female children were expected to be with
their mothers and learn their social roles, such as cooking.
Children were regarded as assets and were often considered as
belonging to a kin group. As a result they were cared for by
many Fula, who taught them the norms and values of Fula
society. Through this extensive form of interaction children
learned how to become Muslims, be responsible and hardwork-
ing, and respect the mawbe (elders), the latter of which is greatly
emphasized in Fula households. For women there was a deep-
rooted belief that if they fullled their obligations to their hus-
bands, such as being submissive and respectful, they and their
children would have barki (the Fula term for baraka), which
brought about long life, prosperity, and harmony within the
family. There was also the entrenched belief that a fathers kata
(curse) on his wives or children could lead to misfortunes like
poverty and illness in their lives. The parent-child relationship
was largely authoritarian. Parents seldom listened to their chil-
dren, and in most cases they would demand absolute obedience
and submission from them. Children who went along with this
practice were said to have barki.
66
Practical considerations also led the Fula traders to em-
brace polygamy. Since many of these merchants traveled fre-
quently between Freetown and the provinces and within the
provinces, they married two, three, or four wives who resided
in Freetown and in the provinces. This practice enabled Fula
merchants to focus on their trading careers and to expand their
social and commercial contacts. Moreover, it provided them
with home environments while they were away for long peri-
ods of time conducting business, and it allowed them to abide
by the Islamic injunctions against fornication and adultery.
67
Within the Fula immigrant community a large number of
males constituted an endogamous subgroupthat is, they nei-
ther gave their biddo wrewbe (daughters) to members of other
ethnic groups nor took wives from those groups. These Fula
tended to marry women from their own ethnic group, espe-
cially those from their clan or hometown. In fact, it was a com-
mon practice among the Fula to marry their rst cousins.
These Fula practiced endogamous marriages for psychological
and cultural reasons. Moreover, kinship anity, religious com-
patibility, language commonality, and a shared cultural home-
land led these Fula to marry immigrant beyngu instead of
those born in Sierra Leone or indigenous women. This re-
sulted in intensive social interaction within this subgroup.
68
But there is also evidence that some Fula traders married
indigenous women like the Temne in addition to their immi-
grant beyngu, and a sizable number married indigenous
women exclusively. As noted above, some of these marriages
were consummated in the provinces before the Fula merchants
settled in Freetown. The desire to acquire citizenship status or
legal alien status as well as to have access to prominent Sierra
Leonean families for business opportunities contributed to the
frequency of such interethnic marriages in Freetown. Despite
these cross-ethnic marriages, these Fula did not lose their cul-
tural distinctiveness.
In the postindependence period there was a signicant in-
crease in interethnic marriages as the Sierra Leoneanborn
Fula merchants raised in a uid ethnic pluralistic society en-
tered into cross-ethnic conjugal relationships. The considera-
tions that restrained many Fula immigrant merchants in their
choice of marriage partners, such as identical clan and ethnic
identity, were peripheral to many Sierra Leoneanborn Fula.
The legendary Alhaji Mohammed Bailor Barrie, for example,
married Lebanese, Kono, and Fula wives (he had four spouses).
69
Although the quantitative data on the eects of polygamy
on Fula capital accumulation are incomplete, they suggest the
frequent diversion of business capital to social expenses cre-
ated by polygamous marriages. Such costs included monetary
and material gifts by the Fula merchants to their wives, in-
laws, and members of the extended family; pilgrimage ex-
penses for their wives and relatives to Mecca; and maintenance
of separate households for their wives. Attempts to re-build
the fortune of the founding merchant of a Fula polygamous
family lost through the above expenses met with varying de-
grees of success. At times a son or son-in-law continuing in
commerce was able to amass a fortune equal to or greater than
that which had been made by the older merchant. But other
Fula merchants were unable to recoup the fortunes of their
merchant fathers or fathers-in-law, in part because the original
estate was too decimated by polygamous inheritance to with-
stand the vicissitudes of commerce.
The size of a household was an index of wealth and social
standing among the Fula traders. A large household made up
of multiple wives, children, and extended family members was
seen as a manifestation of wealth and social prestige. Conse-
quently, many of the Fula traders had large households and
polygamous marriages. The government survey of households
between 1966 and 1968 shows that the Fula had some of the
largest households in Freetown.
70
There was a high degree of consanguineous and aned kin-
ship among members of the Fula merchant class. Individual
merchants sought to solidify their social and business posi-
tions through the use of the kinship system. Close relations
and aned ties produced groups of merchants who, if not in
actual partnership, were loyal to each other and interested in
each others prosperity. It was not uncommon for a powerful
merchant to have sons, sons-in-law, brothers, brothers-in-law,
nephews, cousins, and grandsons tied to each other not only
by blood and marriage but by an ever-expanding net of com-
mercial interests. Important merchants like Alhaji Barrie
strengthened their own social and business positions by creat-
ing such kinship groups.
Moreover, there was a high degree of class endogamy dem-
onstrated by the Fula merchants, which gave continuity to their
mercantile enterprises. Through the marriage of his daughter
to a younger merchant, a Fula trader cemented old partner-
ships and formed new ones, gaining the added promise of con-
tinuation of the family business, introduction of new energy
and capital, and a decent life for his daughter, as well as a son-
in-law whose behavior he could understand and predict. To
the Fula groom, his marriage to the merchants daughter her-
alded an alliance with an established tradesman, extension of
business and personal contacts through the oces of his
father-in-law, access to goods and lending capital, and accep-
tance by fellow merchants.
The Fula merchants were integrated by jokereendhan (social
solidarity), a cultural practice that brought together the Fula
irrespective of social class to help one another in diverse ways.
This was demonstrated both in dicult times, such as unem-
ployment, and in celebrations, such as naming ceremonies. In
the context of commerce, jokereendhan led many wealthy Fula
merchants to give interest-free loans as well as nonrepayable
start-up capital to needy recent arrivals in order to help them
undertake trading. In contrast to some mercantile groups like
the Temne, the Fula urban migrants did not have credit mech-
anisms like the esusu (rotating-savings-credit association). Place
of origin was of great importance in Fula interpersonal rela-
tions, jokereendhan notwithstanding. A new migrant expected
more help from Fula from his own settlement of origin than
from others, and there was also more trust among Fula com-
ing from the same place. New immigrants tended to do busi-
ness with landlords from their settlements of origin, and
similarly, landlords tended to recruit clients from their home
settlements when possible.
71
While there was considerable solidarity in the postinde-
pendence Fula mercantile community, many of the Fula immi-
grants remained largely unassimilated into the Christian-based,
plural society of Freetown. They were still averse to Western
education, which remained a prerequisite for integration into
the host society. Islam was still a primary factor that deter-
mined the degree of incorporation of the Fula immigrant mer-
chants into Freetown society, since their faith still led them to
perceive the dominant Christian Krio culture as a threat to their
way of life. Moreover, an immigrant psychology prevailed, which
saw Freetown as only a temporary residence where the Fula
could accumulate trading capital and purchase merchandise,
mostly imported, before returning to their homelands. Para-
doxically, the evidence shows that many of the older Fula immi-
grants died in Freetown.
72
Dierences also existed between the Fula settlers and new-
comers, on the one hand, and the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula,
on the other, over degree of Islamization, knowledge of Pulaar
and of Fula culture, extent of acquisition of Western educa-
tion, and identication with Fula homelands. The Fula immi-
grants, especially those from Guinea, tried to reproduce their
culture and social system in Freetown. Moreover, many of
these immigrants described the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula
derogatorily as Fula Krio, suggesting that they had aban-
doned their Fula culture. While the Fuuta Jalon immigrants
viewed themselves as belonging to groups based on place of
origin, the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula opposed the re-creation
of these homeland cultural divisions in the ethnically hetero-
geneous Freetown society. They viewed such divisions as
politically divisive and leading to weakened intra-Fula cooper-
ation. Although the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula retained their
cultural identity, they did not emphasize their cultural exclu-
siveness in the social milieu of Freetown, in contrast to the
older immigrants and newcomers.
Although wealth and Islamic learning remained the pri-
mary indices of social standing in the postcolonial Fula mer-
cantile community, Sierra Leoneanborn Fula, unlike most
immigrants, now recognized that their private enterprise would
be enhanced and their childrens social mobility facilitated if
they received Western education in addition to Islamic educa-
tion. But this was a slow process that required the example of
the Fula chief whose children received Western education and
the constant plea of Sierra Leoneanborn Fula elders like
Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh. Even when some Fula merchants sent their
children to Western schools, it was mostly the sons rather than
daughters who attended. Some of the sons not only received
high school education but also pursued higher education at
Fourah Bay College in Freetown. It was these Western-educated
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula who provided professional leader-
ship for the Fula community.
73
Despite their internal dierences and minority status, in
postcolonial Freetown the Fula merchants, as a class, experi-
enced considerably more upward social mobility than they had
in the colonial period. Many Fula merchants became members
of the social elite because of their wealth. Some of these Fula
came from well-established merchant families like the Allies.
Although ascriptive values, family name, and titles continued
to be important in determining an individuals social position,
wealth, regardless of how it had been acquired, rather than
Western education now became the chief criterion for entry
into the social elite of the multiethnic city. While many Fula
merchants became successful (i.e., had nancial independence
and high incomes, owned property and cattle, made the hajj,
and had a polygamous household), a large number made only
modest economic gains. For many of these Fula advancement
meant moving from wage employment or menial jobs to own-
ing retail shops in Freetown.
The migration of the Fula from dierent areas of West
Africa to Freetown during the colonial and postcolonial peri-
ods did not lead to a dissolution of their social ties with their
homelands. Many of them, especially Guineans, returned home
for periodic visits to reinforce their kinship links made weaker
by distance, and they also sent remittances to their kinsmen.
The Fula immigrants had widely extended kinship networks
that extended to their homelands. These networks were linked
to those elsewhere in Sierra Leone, forming part of an even
larger network extending over much of West Africa, espe-
cially Guinea. These kinship networks were an important as-
pect of the organizational structure of Fula commerce, which
is covered in the next three chapters.
74
2
The Livestock Trade
Fula dominated the livestock trade and its related butcher-
ing business in the postcolonial Freetown economy. This was
evidenced by the entrepreneurial career of Alhaji Momodu
Bah, which spanned the colonial and postcolonial periods. The
livestock trade was vertically integrated, with the Fula re-
sponsible for raising, purchasing, transporting, distributing,
and slaughtering livestock. Besides high beef prices, the suc-
cess of the Fula in the livestock business of Freetown can be
attributed to ve factors. First, they controlled most of the
supply networks originating in Guinea and the northern
province, especially the Koinadugu and Bombali districts. Sec-
ond, they controlled most of the retail distribution networks
through extensive kinship ties in the city. Third, through em-
ployment of kinsmen their operations were cost-eective.
Fourth, they had the ability to transport large numbers of
livestock legally or by smuggling across the Guinea-Sierra
Leone border to the major markets in Sierra Leone, such as
Freetown. Finally, the favorable economic environment in
31
Freetown that oered many employment and business op-
portunities attracted a large beef-consuming population, which
expanded the meat market. This high public demand for
meat was complemented by large government contracts for
meat.
The Early Livestock Trade
The Fula livestock trade was built on an earlier trade dating
back to the seventeenth century, when the Fula brought with
them slaves, livestock (cattle, goats, and sheep), gold, and
handwoven cloth to exchange mostly for salt and European
manufactures. This trade, which was central to the economy of
colonial Freetown, as noted in chapter 1, was part of an inter-
regional commercial system that linked Freetown with the
provinces and Guinea. A number of scholars have examined
this interregional trade during the precolonial period. Using
spatial analysis, Allen M. Howard, for example, has provided a
detailed case study of the Sierra LeoneGuinea interregional
commercial system during the second half of the nineteenth
century. In addition to stressing the geographic complemen-
tarity of Sierra Leone and Guinea and its impact on trade,
Howard describes the various products and trade networks in
this vast commercial system.
1
C. Magbaily Fyle has further
expanded understanding of commerce in this region during
the nineteenth century by focusing on the state of Solima, cen-
tering on Falaba, the capital, as well as the Temne and Limba
commercial systems. As he notes, this commerce drew exten-
sively on indigenous commercial networks and markets that
predated the arrival of European trading activities in the
Sierra Leone hinterland, which extended to Kankan and Fuuta
Jalon.
2
Organization of the Livestock Trade
Sources of Cattle outside Sierra Leone
A major organizational feature of the livestock trade was
cattle supply, since this was essential to the business success of
wholesale butchers not only in the Freetown economy but also
throughout Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West Africa, for ex-
ample, in Ghana and Nigeria.
3
But access to cattle supply was
uneven among Freetown butchers. The dominance of a few
large butchers such as Alhaji Allie during the colonial era and
Alhaji Momodu Bah in the postcolonial period may be ex-
plained in large measure by their privileged access to vast cat-
tle supplies from Fuuta Jalon in neighboring Guinea through
their status as almamy and their wealth and extensive kinship
ties.
From the colonial period to the postcolonial period over 60
percent of the cattle traded in Sierra Leone came from Fuuta
Jalon, which was the linchpin of the Fula cattle trade with
Freetown from a supply perspective, and the Fula played a
pivotal role as julas (cattle traders).
4
Fuuta Jalons mountain
ranges made it possible for the Fula to raise large herds, many
of which were sold to neighboring countries like Sierra Leone,
which is why the Fuuta Jalon Fula were considered in West
Africa as cattle suppliers par excellence. Fula-owned nagge
(cattle) were of the Ndama type, which have no hump, in con-
trast to the large Zebu cattle kept by Fula in Senegal, Mali,
Burkina Faso, and northern Nigeria. Ndama cattle are also
resistant to the deadly disease trypanosomiasis (frequently
called sleeping sickness), spread by the tsetse y. These cattle
are small, about four hundred pounds when fully grown. They
are raised primarily for meat, since they do not produce much
milk.
5
Since the colonial period the Fula cattle trade was important
The Livestock Trade / 33
to Freetown. The British colonial administration was commit-
ted to maintaining low-cost meat to the rapidly growing Free-
town population and its troops, both indigenous and British,
that were stationed in the colony during the two world wars.
This was revealed in a secret memorandum from 1945, in which
the governor stated that the [Fula] cattle trade is essential to
the maintenance of meat supplies in Sierra Leone.
6
To pro-
cure meat and other food supplies for British and indigenous
troops stationed in Freetown during World War II, the colo-
nial administration created the Oce of Food Controller at the
wars outbreak. This position was held by a British ocial
throughout the colonial era. It was the food controller who
awarded meat contracts to butchers after reviewing their ten-
ders and was also responsible for authorizing payment to meat
contractors.
Because Fuuta Jalon was the largest source of cattle supply,
the colonial administration continuously frustrated French ef-
forts to control the cattle trade and to prevent the smuggling
of livestock across the boundary. Fula smugglers were moti-
vated by higher prices in Sierra Leone and the desire to avoid
oppressive French taxation. Smuggling of livestock, which the
Fula continued into the postcolonial period, was a major as-
pect of the structure of their trade and helps explain their dom-
inance of the cattle trade.
7
Despite French ocial protests, the
British colonial administration remained opposed to the French
eorts to regulate the cattle trade.
8
Notwithstanding its frustration of French regulatory at-
tempts, the colonial administration negotiated the Cattle Pur-
chase Scheme with the French in 1944. According to article 5
of the trade agreement, the cattle oered by the French should
be at least four years old and should be accompanied by a vet-
erinary certicate of health when delivered to British frontier
stations. Anglo-French cooperation on the cattle trade contin-
ued in January 1952, when a conference was held in Vom,
Nigeria, following a French initiative, which was attended by
the governors of Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Gambia, and
Nigeria. It was agreed at the conference that there was an
equal desire on the part of British and French authorities to
see an increase and improvement in the cattle trade between
their respective territories, but it was emphasized that the trade
must remain in private hands.
French authorities expressed great concern at the large
number of cattle of French origin that they claimed were
smuggled across the frontiers into British territories. But the
French and British authorities realized that it was dicult to
control smuggling along hundreds of miles of frontier, espe-
cially as illegally exported herds, when discovered, were often
fty to sixty miles inside British territory. The French took
the view that if examples were made of some of the smugglers
by forcing them to drive back their cattle to a French control
post, the news would soon spread and act as a deterrent to
other would-be smugglers. In the end, it was mutually agreed
that further discussion on the subject of smuggling should be
left for the nal conference of directors of veterinary services.
9
To regulate the movement of cattle from French Guinea
into Sierra Leone, the British colonial administration estab-
lished frontier inspection stations at Kabala, Mateboi, and
Makeni in the northern province, the largest province in
Sierra Leone and the center of the cattle industry in the coun-
try. Animals that had symptoms of disease were quarantined
at inspection posts for fourteen days. Those found free of
symptoms of disease at the end of the quarantine were allowed
to proceed under permit to their destinations. The governor
was vested with power under the Animals Diseases Ordinance
(chapter 13 of the laws of Sierra Leone, 1946) to control the
movement of cattle in a specied area in case of outbreaks of
disease.
10
Despite independence in 1958, Guinea remained the single
largest source of cattle slaughtered in Sierra Leone, most of
which had been smuggled from Guinea by Fula julas who were
motivated by higher prices and the desire to avoid payment of
taxes to Guinean and Sierra Leonean authorities. The Guinean
governments failure to stop the Fula from smuggling cattle
into Sierra Leone resulted in the loss of considerable tax
revenue, but in the 1970s border patrol was increased, which
reduced the illegal movement of cattle by the Fula and conse-
quently aected cattle supplies in Sierra Leone.
Once they crossed the border the Fula took their cattle to
the major markets in the northern province, which included
Bindi, Gberia Fotombu, Masadugu, Gbentu, Kabala, Kukuna,
and Kamakwie. From these areas cattle were transported to
Table 2.1
Estimated Trade Cattle Crossing from Guinea into
Sierra Leone, 19611978
Year Total Year Total
1961 80,000 1970 120,000
1962 87,000 1971 100,000
1963 80,000 1972 90,000
1964 81,000 1973 87,000
1965 88,000 1974 97,000
1966 84,000 1975 90,000
1967 90,000 1976 86,000
1968 100,000 1977 75,000
1969 135,000 1978 60,000
Sources: Veterinary Department, Freetown; business records of Alhaji Momodu
Bah, Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, Alhaji Baba Allie, and Agibu Jalloh; Josie A. Beckley,
The Northern Province: The Livestock in the Northern Province of Sierra
Leone, B.A. (Hons) thesis, Fourah Bay College (University of Sierra Leone),
1973; Aerial Survey of Livestock and Resources in Sierra Leone (London: Hunting
Technical Services, 1979); and National Livestock Policy and Programme Workshop
(Freetown: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, 1991).
markets in the eastern and southern provinces, such as Kom-
bayende and Koindu, respectively, as well as Freetown. Most
of the Fula julas had well-established business and kinship
networks with Fula settlers in these markets. The livestock
markets in the northern province attracted buyers from dier-
ent areas of the country, including Kono, where demand for
meat was high because of the large population involved in the
diamond-mining industry in this area. But Freetown, with the
highest population in the country, accounted for over 60 per-
cent of the cattle market and had the most developed networks
in the country.
11
Domestic Sources of Cattle
Also critical to the success of Freetown butchers was live-
stock raised within Sierra Leone, which accounted for roughly
30 percent of the cattle slaughtered in Freetown in the post-
colonial period. The dominance of the large-scale Fula butch-
ers such as Alhaji Bah may also be explained by their access to
a large share of the local cattle supplies. The major source of
cattle in Sierra Leone was the northern province, which shares
a border with Guinea in the northwest, north, northeast, and
east. The province comprises ve districts: Bombali in the cen-
ter, Kambia and Port Loko in the west, Koinadugu in the east,
and Tonkolili in the south. The northern province is ideal for
cattle rearing because it has the most vast savanna grasslands
and a favorable climate with the longest dry season in the coun-
try. This province may be divided into three physiographic re-
gions: the interior plateaus and hill region, which is the largest
and is part of the Guinea highlands and also runs north and
south from Guinea to the Liberian border in the east of the
province; the interior plains, above which mountains such as
the Loma rise; and the coastal swamps and beach bar region.
Despite the importance of the cattle industry, no govern-
ment census of the cattle population in Sierra Leone had been
conducted.
12
The cattle industry was part of the livestock divi-
sion of the Ministry of Agriculture and Natural Resources,
which was created in the latter part of 1978 to cover both ani-
mal health and production. Available gures, which were often
provided by academic researchers and private consultants, were
incomplete, and often unreliable because of poor record keep-
ing by the government and cattle owners. The estimates of
trade cattle from Guinea are also not reliable because most of
the cattle brought by the Fula illegally across the border were
not documented by customs ocials or ocials of the Ministry
of Agriculture. Poor record keeping, lack of government fund-
ing for a statistical databank for the cattle industry, insucient
personnel, and bribery and corruption by government ocials
are the main reasons for the absence of comprehensive and
accurate gures for the total number of cattle in postcolonial
Sierra Leone. Below are the estimated total cattle population in
Sierra Leone from 1961 to 1978 (table 2.2) and the estimated
total number of cattle raised in Sierra Leone for those years
(table 2.3).
13
Most of the cattle in the northern province were in warehs
(cattle ranches) owned by Fula. In addition to Fula who owned
cattle and practiced farming, such as the Teliko, there were no-
madic Fula, such as the Kebu, who grazed their cattle in one
area and then moved to new grazings later. Often the Fula
grazed their cattle by permission of the chiefs in those areas.
They practiced a form of transhumance, grazing the valley
bottoms and swamps in the dry season and the hills in the wet
season. But because the northern province is a predominantly
agricultural region, the Fula often had to pay nes to local
farmers for damage to their crops, a common occurrence dur-
ing the rainy cropping season. Fula cattle herds were divided
into units and managed by the family and kinsmen of the
owner. Each unit had from 30 to 150 cows. Besides slaughter
cattle, the Fula also produced Fula butter and manonor (cows
milk). These products, produced by Fula women assisted by
their children, were usually sold or consumed by the Fula
themselves.
14
Fula-owned warehs were also found in Freetown, but only
the few wealthy wholesale Fula butchers, such as Alhaji Allie
and Alhaji Bah, owned them. During the colonial period Alhaji
Allie had eighteen warehs in dierent areas of Freetown, such
as Calabar Town and Hastings; at the height of his butchering
career, during World War II, Alhaji Allie had as many as eight
hundred cows in one wareh alone. During the postcolonial
Table 2.2
Estimated Cattle Population in Sierra Leone, 19611978
1961 100,500125,000 1970 200,000220,000
1962 120,200127,000 1971 220,000230,000
1963 127,000129,000 1972 230,000240,000
1964 130,500132,000 1973 240,500250,000
1965 135,200137,000 1974 250,000270,000
1966 139,200140,000 1975 275,500285,000
1967 145,000150,000 1976 285,000290,000
1968 160,000170,000 1977 290,000300,000
1969 181,500200,000 1978 300,000350,000
Bah, Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, Alhaji Baba Allie, and Agibu Jalloh; National Livestock
Policy and Programme Workshop (Freetown: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry,
and Fisheries, 1991); R. A. A. Kumpayi, The Livestock Industry in Sierra Le-
one, B.S. (Hons) thesis, Fourah Bay College (University of Sierra Leone), 1966;
Josie A. Beckley, The Northern Province: The Livestock in the Northern
Province of Sierra Leone, B.A. (Hons) thesis, Fourah Bay College (University of
Sierra Leone), 1973; and Aerial Survey of Livestock and Resources in Sierra Leone
(London: Hunting Technical Services, 1979).
period Alhaji Bah had a wareh at Aberdeen where he kept
some of his cattle, but despite this, he continued to buy cattle
from Fula julas. He saw the cattle in his wareh as representing
wealth and security, consistent with Fula traditions. It was
only when there was a severe cattle shortage in Freetown did
Alhaji Bah slaughter some of the cattle in his wareh to fulll
his contractual obligations with the government.
As cattle owners the Fula faced a number of problems.
Some of these involved diseases, which included trypanosomi-
asis, rinderpest, bovine pleuropneumonia, calf diphtheria, an-
thrax, and red water fever. With limited available vaccines,
these diseases have killed many cattle in Sierra Leone and
Table 2.3
Estimated Cattle Raised in Sierra Leone, 19611978
1961 45,000 1970 100,000
1962 40,000 1971 130,000
1963 49,000 1972 150,000
1964 51,000 1973 163,000
1965 49,000 1974 173,000
1966 56,000 1975 195,000
1967 60,000 1976 200,000
1968 70,000 1977 220,000
1969 65,000 1978 290,000
Sources: Veterinary Department, Freetown; Business records of Alhaji Momodu
Bah, Alhaji Baba Allie, Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, and Agibu Jalloh; National Livestock
Policy and Programme Workshop (Freetown: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry,
and Fisheries, 1991); Josie A. Beckley, The Northern Province: The Livestock in
the Northern Province of Sierra Leone, B.A. (Hons) thesis, Fourah Bay College
(University of Sierra Leone), 1973; and Aerial Survey of Livestock and Resources in
Sierra Leone (London: Hunting Technical Services, 1979).
caused great economic loss to owners. Other problems arose
because the Fula did not own the grazing lands; rather, they
were communally owned by ethnic groups, clans, or families.
Under this system of land ownership, it was dicult for Fula
to acquire a large piece of land for cattle grazing. Often their
attempts to move cattle from one grazing area to another was
limited by their land-leasing agreements with paramount chiefs
or the heads of families. Since the northern province was pre-
dominantly an agricultural economy, the movement of cattle
by Fula in search of good grazing land often led to their cattle
destroying farmlands and crops. This resulted in Fula cattle
owners being ned heavily by local courts. Another problem
Fula cattle owners had to deal with was the limited supply of
vegetation during the long dry season. This led to overgraz-
ing of farmlands, soil erosion, and infertility.
15
Fula cattle owners were usually reluctant to sell o their
herds because for them cattle raising was the basis for security
and a way of life. Historically, throughout West Africa Fula
used cattle as an item of trade as well as a store of value. This
Fula reluctance contributed to the cattle shortage in Free-
town, especially during the 1970s. In fact, the problem was so
serious that in September 1971 the minister of agriculture and
natural resources, Mr. Sembu Forna, convened a meeting in
Freetown with ocials of his ministry and members of the
Animal Science Department at NJala University College. A
committee was established to study the present state of the
livestock industry and to advise the minister on practical mea-
sures to improve beef and dairy production for domestic con-
sumption and future export.
16
A primary reason for the shortage of beef cattle in Free-
town was its sale across the border in Liberia. Since Liberia
did not raise its own cattle, it depended on supplies from
Sierra Leone and Guinea. Liberian middlemen in the major
cattle markets in the provinces facilitated the export of cattle
from Guinea to Liberia through Sierra Leone. The delinking
of the Sierra Leonean currency, the leone, from the British
pound in 1978 made the leone weaker compared to the Liber-
ian currency. United States dollars were legal tender in
Liberia, which made the Liberian currency premium when ex-
changed against other currencies in unocial transactions.
The Liberian middlemen therefore had an advantage in pur-
chasing cattle in Sierra Leone. Fula cattle traders were at-
tracted to major markets at the LiberiaSierra Leone border
such as Koindu, and some even crossed the border to Mon-
rovia, the capital city. The result was that fewer cattle were
sold in the Freetown market.
17
In addition, the government proposal in its 197879 bud-
get to impose a Wareh Tax (the Cow Tax) contributed to the
shortage of beef cattle. According to the tax proposals, owners
of cattle would pay taxes on their cattle according to the size
of their wareh: class 1: Le2,000; class 2: Le1,000; class 3:
Le500. The experts at the Ministry of Agriculture and Nat-
ural Resources who initiated the Cow Tax did not spell out the
mechanisms for collecting the tax, which some Sierra Leon-
eans felt would be logistically dicult because the Fula cattle
owners were nomadic. They also opposed the Cow Tax on the
grounds that butchers would pass on the tax to the consumers,
thus increasing the cost of living in Freetown.
18
The proposal of the Cow Tax coincided with President
Skou Tours initiatives to liberalize the economy and politi-
cal system of Guinea. These developments resulted in the re-
duction of cattle stock in Sierra Leone, which depended on
Guinea for over 60 percent of its cattle, as Fula traders trans-
ferred their warehs across the boundary to Guinea. The Fula
in the northern province crossed ten thousand head of cattle
over to Guinea immediately following the proposal of the Cow
Tax. In all, it is estimated that the Fula transferred about ten
warehs to Guinea, each consisting of from fty to as many as
three thousand head of cattle.
19
Organization of Cattle Supply to Freetown
Cattle entered the Freetown market through several points.
A large number of the cattle from Guinea passed through the
northern province and were trucked through Makeni to Free-
town. Those that entered through Kambia were loaded onto
launches at Gberie, Kassiri, and Rokupr and transported down
the Sierra Leone River to Cow Yard, an abattoir in a dense
residential area on the sea front at Magazine. Many cattle from
both Guinea and the northern province were also transported
by train to Freetown before the closure of the railway by the
government in the 1970s because of rising costs. With the ex-
pansion of road services between Freetown and the provinces
in the 1970s, the number of cattle transported by trucks in-
creased greatly. This means of transportation was quicker al-
though expensive; for example, the twelve-hour journey from
Kamakwie to Freetown cost about Le5 per head. There is also
evidence that Fula julas brought cattle on foot from the north-
ern province to Freetown. This means of transportation was
cheaper, costing about Le2 per head of cattle in the 1960s
and about Le3 in the 1970s; however, it took approximately
twenty-one days for a journey from Kabala to Freetown.
20
The Fula butchers in Freetown obtained their cattle mostly
from Fula julas from Guinea and the northern province, some
of whom were Mandinka, Soso, and Temne. When the julas
arrived in Freetown they lodged free of charge with their usual
landlords, who were butchers, brokers, or julas who had estab-
lished permanent residence in the city. The vast majority of
the landlords were Fulasuch as Moodi Tija Jalloh-Jamburia
and Alhaji Abdulai Jalloh, immigrants from Fuuta Jalonand
many had extensive kinship ties with the julas who brought
cattle to Freetown. One such kinship tie was between Moodi
Tija Jamburia and his nephew Alhaji Malal Jalloh (my father),
who traveled regularly from Freetown to Kamakwie (where he
later settled permanently in the late 1940s) to buy cattle for
sale to his uncle, who resided at Jenkins Street in the east end
of Freetown. Besides owning family houses in which they
lived, some of the landlords owned additional homes in which
they accommodated julas. The landlords also provided three
meals a day for the julas and entertained them in the eve-
nings.
21
In addition to playing the role of middleman who mediated
between julas and butchers, the landlord also served as in-
surer, a crucial entity in the operation of the whole market. Be-
cause the sale of cattle was based on credit, the landlord was
the guarantor that the money would eventually be paid and
that if a butcher should default, he would pay the full amount
to the jula himself. This obligation meant that the landlord
had to be well acquainted with butcher buyers through their
social background and past business conduct. He had to know
not only where a buyer slaughtered the cattle, or where he had
a shop or market stall, but also where he lived, who his rela-
tives and associates were, what the size of his business was,
and how honest and trustworthy he had proved himself to be
in past dealings. Credit was often given for a period of two to
four weeks. Misjudgment on the part of landlords could ruin
their businesses, as was the case with a few Fula and Mandinka
landlords in Freetown.
While some julas brought their cattle directly to Fula land-
lords, others went through the Soso, who served as landlords
and brokers in the coastal town of Bullom in northwestern
Sierra Leone. In return for introducing the julas to butchers
(many of whom they knew well through previous business
deals), ensuring fair prices in oral negotiations between the
julas and butchers, and providing free food and lodging, the
Bullom brokers received a negotiable commission from the
julas. The julas were often paid between two and four weeks
after reaching an oral price agreement with the Freetown
butchers.
22
Some Fula butchers received julas directly instead of going
through cattle landlords. These butchers provided lodging
and food free of charge to the julas until they returned to their
homelands. In addition, they showed the julas around Free-
town as they shopped for merchandise, mostly imported cot-
ton fabrics and provisions, to take to their families. It was
cheaper to purchase cattle directly from julas than it was from
cattle brokers or competitors since no commissions were in-
volved. Alhaji Bah, for example, bought cattle directly from
julas whom he accommodated free of charge in his houses in
Freetown and was thus able to negotiate lower prices for the
julas cattle.
Wealthy wholesale butchers like Alhaji Ibrahima Allie (son
of Alhaji Momodu Allie) and Alhaji Bah had Fula jorkal (cattle
middlemen) whose responsibility was to travel to dierent
parts of Guinea and northern Sierra Leone to purchase cattle.
The butchers would provide them with cash to purchase cattle
directly from the owners or, in cases where trust had been es-
tablished over several years, to purchase cattle on credit until
they returned the payment at an agreed time. These jorkal,
who were mostly kinsmen, were paid a commission or worked
without pay until their patrons gave them start-up capital in
the form of cash, meat, or cattle to start their own butchering
business or other form of private enterprise. The cultural and
religious anity between the butchers and jorkal translated
into low labor cost and dependability, two crucial factors for
success in this sector of trade.
Usually a jula had one landlord to whom he was accus-
tomed to entrusting the sale of his cattle whenever he came to
Freetown. This attachment of a jula to one landlord often
lasted for years and sometimes continued to hold between
their sons when they died. But while a jula was attached to one
landlord at a time, the butcher was free to buy cattle through
any landlord, and he usually made his purchases through
many. Landlords did much to keep their julas attached to them,
oering them various services, some of which had nothing
to do with the cattle business, including showing the julas
around the city to shop for their wives and relatives. The land-
lord did not receive any direct reward from the jula for accom-
modation, food, mediation, or risk taking; on the contrary, he
gave the jula not only the earning from the sale of his cattle
but also presents. The landlords remuneration was ous moni
(house money, or commissions) ranging from Le5 to Le50.
Sometimes landlords sent their assistants as far as Guinea to
meet julas, oer them presents, and direct them to lodge with
their employers.
But some julas did change their landlords for one reason or
another: common reasons were late payment and default by
landlords. Often it was the default of butchers who owed land-
lords money that caused them to lose their julas. The landlord
and butcher Moodi Amadu Wurie Jalloh almost ended his
butchering career in 1970s because he was unable to pay julas
and Freetown butchers like Alhaji Bah, who had credited him
with cattle. The reason was that some of his meat sellers had
left for Guinea with his money and others had refused to pay
him, claiming losses. For over a year Moodi Jalloh could not
obtain cattle from julas or Freetown butchers who had de-
cided that he was a bad debtor. This resulted in serious nan-
cial diculties that prompted him to send some of his wives
and children to his homeland at Lab, in Guinea, until his
nancial situation improved. It was Moodi Jallohs relative Al-
haji Abdulai Jalloh, a wholesale butcher, who credited him
with some cattle, which he used to restart his failing butcher-
ing career and pay o all his debts. It was only after Moodi Jal-
loh had paid o his debts with julas and other Freetown butch-
ers that he was able to get cattle credit from them.
23
Usually a landlords business risk was distributed among
several individuals because a butcher was usually indebted not
to one landlord but to many, and a julas cattle was sold not to
one butcher but to many. Thus, if a butcher defaulted, the loss
would be shared by the several landlords who gave him credit.
Usually an arrangement was reached as a result of arbitration,
by which the butcher undertook to pay his debt by installments
over several months. During these months the butcher was al-
lowed to buy from the market. Unless a butcher was prepared
to go out of business altogether, he was forced to abide by such
an arrangement or face the prospect of being cut o from cat-
tle supplies. This was especially so if the butcher was a non-
Fula who owed money to a Fula landlord or Fula jula. The
butcher could not evade payment by buying cattle elsewhere
since the Fula, through national and cross-boundary networks,
controlled the sale of cattle. Thus, when the Fula landlords in
Freetown decided not to sell to a defaulting butcher, they usu-
ally sent word to other Fula in the northern province and
Guinea about him, and if he ever appeared there no one would
sell to him. In addition, sometimes when a butcher showed
signs of nancial diculties, some of his colleagues would cau-
tion their landlords and julas not to sell to him. Thus, the
butchers on their part watched each others business conduct
and could exert a great deal of pressure on potential defaulters.
It was cheaper to buy cattle with cash since julas were
often willing to lower cattle prices so that they could return
to their families rather than wait weeks or sometimes months
for their payments. In fact, the delay in paying julas led some
to register their complaints with the Fula chief, the Butchers
Association, or other ethnic chiefs in the city. This was a long-
standing problem dating back to the colonial period. Only a
few well-established wholesale butcherssuch as Alhaji Bah,
Alhaji Allie, Alhaji Boie Kamara (a Mandinka), and Alhaji
Kuda Mansaray (a Mandinka)were in a position to pay cash
for the cattle. Even when butchers had the cash, they pre-
ferred to obtain cattle on credit to spread their risks. Most
Fula butchers continued the earlier practice of kerebe (cattle
credit) in purchasing cattle. This was how it worked: if a Fula
butcher had cattle and another butcher did not have either
cattle or cash, the rst butcher would ask the second butcher
to state how many cows he wanted and to oer prices for
them. If the prices were agreeable, the rst butcher would
loan the cattle to the second after weighing and listing them,
and would issue a receipt to the second butcher while keeping
a copy. An oral agreement would be reached between both
butchers with regard to when payment would be made. In
some instances, the rst butcher would accept cattle of com-
parable live weight instead of cash from the second butcher.
24
In negotiating cattle prices, the julas and the butchers had
to agree whether the price of a cow would be based on dead
weight or live weight. In either case the cow had to be
weighed on a scale that had earlier been provided by Alhaji
Momodu Allie. The butchers were skilled in distinguishing
dead weight from live weight. A butcher would visually deter-
mine whether a cow would be protable after it was slaugh-
tered and its meat sold in Freetown markets. Before a cow was
slaughtered, butchers would calculate the market price of the
cows meat and entrails. Experience and correct guessing were
prerequisites for successful negotiations with julas. Butchers
occasionally suered a loss after slaughtering a cow because of
inaccurate assessment of the dead weight of the cow.
25
Many of the characteristics of Fula cattle trading in Free-
town, including those discussed above, were similar to those of
other West African cattle traders from various ethnic groups.
The Hausa cattle dealers in Ibadan, for example, conducted
their business within the framework of indigenous institu-
tions. All cattle sales were on credit, which was based on in-
formal arrangements. There were no signed documents, no
use of bank services such as loans, or resort to ocial courts to
settle debt default or business problems among themselves or
with non-Hausa trading partners such as the Yoruba. The en-
tire organization of the Hausa cattle trade, like that of the Fula
in Sierra Leone, was indigenous. A striking similarity is that
Hausa cattle dealers, like their counterparts in Freetown such
as Alhaji Allie and Alhaji Bah, dominated the local community
politically and economically.
26
The Butchering Business
The butchering business, which involved the purchase of cat-
tle to slaughter for sale of the beef in the Freetown market,
reected the ethnic diversity of Freetown society. The ethnic
groups represented included Fula, Aku, Christian Krio, Man-
dinka, Temne, and Soso. Of these the Fula formed the majority.
The Fula butchers, who were mostly Fuuta Jalon immigrants,
came from dierent socioeconomic backgrounds and had var-
ied sources of capital. Organizationally the butchering business
included meat sellers on the streets, sellers of oal and hides,
and small-scale retail butchers, who were the clients of the
wholesale butchers. Usually the wholesale butchers recruited
clients from their own ethnic groups, or mostly Fula. Entry
into wholesale butchering was limited to butchers with a long-
standing reputation for providing and managing credit, wealth
to purchase large numbers of cattle, and established business
contacts to market meat on a large scale. Therefore, there were
only a small number of wholesale butchers, which explains the
domination of the butchering business by a few. During the
colonial period an estimated one hundred people were involved
in the butchering business, of which only about fteen were
wholesale butchers and the rest were their clients.
Among the wholesale butchers there was intense intra-
ethnic and cross-ethnic competition to secure the meat-supply
contract with the colonial administration and to sell meat to
the multiethnic public, but ethnic solidarity also existed. The
Muslim Fula butchers, for example, exploited their ethnic and
religious anity with Muslim Fula julas to succeed over
butchers from other ethnic groups. But there was also some
degree of business cooperation among large-scale butchers of
dierent ethnic groups who were Muslims. Some Fula whole-
sale butchers such as Alhaji Momodu Allie and Alhaji Abdulai
Jalloh formed business relationships with Mandinka, Temne,
and Aku butchers like Alhaji Yikiba Kamara in the areas of
cattle supply, credit, and marketing of meat. Another example
of cooperation was between Aku, living in Aberdeen, on the
peninsula southwest of Freetown, who bought cattle from
Mandinka and Fula julas and would then fatten the animals on
the grassland around Aberdeen before nally selling them to
Fula, Mandinka, or Aku butchers in the city.
27
In colonial Freetown the wholesale butcher who dominated
the business was Alhaji Momodu Allie. He developed an elab-
orate commercial organization that had three dimensions: the
purchase of cattle from Guinea and the Sierra Leone interior;
the supply of meat to Freetown consumers and the colonial
administration; and the investment of business prots in real
estate in Freetown. In addition to his employment of several
jorkal, who were mostly Fula, to purchase cattle, Alhaji Allie
had eighteen warehs in Freetown where he kept his cattle for
grazing before they were slaughtered. He is also credited with
introducing kerebe in the butchering business of Freetown.
Through his butchering business, Alhaji Allie developed ex-
tensive commercial and social networks, which brought him
vast wealth and prestige in Freetown and as far as Senegal. He
was the wealthiest Fula butcher in colonial Freetown and was
recognized by the multiethnic population and the colonial ad-
ministration as a merchant elite.
Following the death of Alhaji Allie in 1948, there was in-
tense competition among butchers from various ethnic groups
to secure his meat-supply contract with the colonial adminis-
tration and to increase their share of the public meat market in
the colony. It was during this period that the colonial adminis-
tration introduced the Tender Board to regulate the competi-
tion among butchers. The Tender Board would request meat
tenders from butchers by advertising in local newspapers. After
receiving tenders, the Tender Board would award the meat
supply contract to the bidder with the lowest prices. In con-
trast to previous years, the meat supply contract had to be re-
newed every six months. Although the idea of contracting with
bids was not new in the Freetown economy, the Tender Board
centralized the process and ensured fairness through group
voting. It also limited the competition to a few wealthy whole-
sale butchers who had the capital to supply large quantities of
meat and could aord to go unpaid for months while still sup-
plying meat and waiting for their payments to be processed by
the colonial administration.
28
Despite independence in 1961 the Fula still dominated the
butchering business of Freetown because of their control of
most of the sources of cattle supply from Guinea and within
Sierra Leone as well as their extensive kinship networks in all
aspects of the business, such as transport, slaughtering, and
marketing of meat. In fact, cattle remained the largest aspect of
the Fula livestock business. Earlier organizational features of
the butchering businesssuch as intense competition for con-
trol of the meat contract with the state; competition for control
of cattle supplies; ethnic solidarity, especially by the Fula, to
control the supply and marketing aspects of the butchering
business; and business cooperation by some Fula butchers with
non-Fula butchers such as the Mandinkaalso continued in
the postcolonial period. In addition, although the number of
those in the butchering business increased to over two hun-
dred, there were only about twenty wholesale butchers, while
the rest were clients such as small-scale butchers, meat sellers,
and sellers of oal and hides. But competition for the meat
market in Freetown was mainly among three wholesale butch-
ers: Alhaji Bah, Alhaji Kamara, and Alhaji Ibrahima Allie.
Types of Meat Markets
From a marketing standpoint, the Freetown meat market was
comprised of government institutions and public consumers.
As in the colonial period, Freetown had the highest demand
for beef because of the citys increasing population. Over 60
percent of the cattle were slaughtered at Cow Yard and the
rest at concrete slaughtering pads at Kissy and in west Free-
town. The central slaughterhouse at Cow Yard, which was
built in the 1930s, was supervised by the city council, which
charged a fee to cover slaughter charges, insurance against
condemned meat, transport of the meat from the abattoir to
the market, and use of the market stall. Cow Yard had six sep-
arate stalls for slaughtering cattle, each with a hand-operated
hoist. The slaughtering of cattle was carried out in the pres-
ence of wholesale butchers who determined the number of an-
imals slaughtered and distributed the carcasses, oal, feet, and
hides to retail butchers each day. The meat was checked by
health inspectors before it was sold to consumers. The Min-
istry of Health, empowered by Public Health Ordinance no. 23
of 1960, was responsible for the control of slaughter facilities
and inspection of meat for public consumption. Table 2.4 shows
the number of cattle slaughtered in Freetown, their average
prices, and the average price of meat per pound.
Government Contracting
The Sierra Leone government contract for meat represented
about 30 percent of the meat market in Freetown. Contracting
was not limited to the meat business; it was commonly used by
Table 2.4
Estimated Cattle Slaughtered in Freetown, 19611978
Year Total Average Price Average Retail Price
per Cow of Meat (per lb.)
1961 4,111 6 8d
1962 4,608 9 10d
1963 5,009 12 10d
1964 5,785 Le 35 15 cents
1965 5,837 Le 40 15 cents
1966 6,404 Le 40 20 cents
1967 6,188 Le 45 25 cents
1968 7,295 Le 50 30 cents
1969 6,788 Le 70 40 cents
1970 8,222 Le 80 55 cents
1971 8,300 Le 80 60 cents
1972 8,700 Le 85 65 cents
1973 9,000 Le 100 70 cents
1974 9,300 Le 130 75 cents
1975 9,450 Le 130 80 cents
1976 10,000 Le 200 80 cents
1977 10,500 Le 250 96 cents
1978 11,500 Le 300 Le 1.60
Bah, Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, Alhaji Baba Allie, and Agibu Jalloh; National Livestock
Policy and Programme Workshop, (Freetown: Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry,
and Fisheries, 1991); and Aerial Survey of Livestock and Resources in Sierra Leone
the government in other sectors of the economy, such as the
merchandise trade. Besides meeting the written requirements
of a government contract, approval involved cultivating the
members of the groups awarding the contract, including the
permanent secretary and politicians such as the minister. The
politics of contracting that involved cultivating human rela-
tionships and oering gifts to decision makers in the meat busi-
ness was similar to that in other sectors of the economy.
In meat contracting the government retained the Tender
Board introduced by the colonial administration to regulate
the competition among butchers. However, the government
appointed Sierra Leoneans as members of the board. It was the
Tender Board that awarded the meat contracts, and at the end
of a contract, the board would advertise for new tenders in the
local newspapers. Interested butchers would obtain the forms,
ll them out stating their prices, and send them to the Tender
Board in Freetown. Board members would then meet to re-
view the applications and make a decision on who would win
the contract.
When a government institution wanted to purchase meat, it
would issue a requisition that would then be countersigned by
a senior government ocial before being sent out to the meat
contractor. In the case of government hospitals, the counter-
signatories would include the chief matron or the chief cater-
ing ocer. After supplying meat to a government institution,
the contractor would submit a bill for certication that the
meat had been received. The certied bill would then be sent
to the headquarters of the institution in Freetown.
In the case of government hospitals, the bill would be sent
to the Ministry of Health. The ministry would then prepare a
voucher for the said amount that would be signed by the meat
contractor, and the voucher would be sent to the oce of the
principal accountant and to the permanent secretary for their
signatures. Next, the voucher would be forwarded to the Min-
istry of Finance for payment to the meat contractor.
At the Ministry of Finance, the voucher would be processed
at the oce of voucher verication, where the yearly budget
allocation of the institution involved was veried. The voucher
would then be sent to the oce of payments, where it was
processed by the machine room and given a lodgment number.
Then the voucher was then sent to the accountant for his sig-
nature; to the senior accountant for countersigning; and to the
two senior administrative ocers and the minister for their
signatures. After all this the voucher would then return to the
oce of payments before it was sent to the Bank of Sierra
Leone, where it was processed and payment made to the meat
contractors account. The entire process might take between
one and two months.
If at the end of a nancial year a meat contractor was owed
money by a government institution because the budgeted
money of that institution was insucient to cover payments,
the contractor would submit a list of his debts to the ministry
responsible for that institution. The permanent secretary of the
institution would prepare a letter stating the debt and would
forward it with the vouchers to the nancial secretary in the
Ministry of Finance. The nancial secretary would examine
the documents and, if agreeable to him, issue an FS (nancial
secretary) letter indicating that the government would pay the
meat contractor the money owed him. The FS letter would be
sent to the minister of nance for his signature, and then to the
governor of the Bank of Sierra Leone, who would authorize
payments to the meat contractor. Previously when making pay-
ments to the meat contractor, the voucher would be sent to the
Income Tax Department for necessary deductions. However,
payments resulting from the FS letter were taxable later be-
cause of the emergency circumstances. A meat contractor was
required by the government to continue to supply meat to
government institutions even if he was owed money. Other-
wise the government would obtain its meat supplies from
other butchers and bill the defaulting contractor. The debt
owed to a meat contractor was considered by the government
an honest debt that would be repaid.
29
Public Demand
The public consumer market, on the other hand, was domi-
nated by the Krio, especially professionals, and the Lebanese.
The Krio usually purchased meat twice a week: Tuesday and
Saturday. Christmas was the peak season for the sale of meat in
Freetown, as Krio purchased large quantities to celebrate their
holiday. The Lebanese purchased meat mostly on Saturdays.
But consumption of meat in smaller amounts by various ethnic
groups such as the Temne was also widespread. The indige-
nous Muslim consumers purchased large quantities of meat
mostly on the Muslim holidays: id ul-tr (marking the end of
Ramadan), id ul-adha (commemoration of Abrahams sacrice
of a ram in lieu of his son), and maulid ul-nabiy (celebration of
the Prophet Muhammads birthday).
Retail butchers sold meat in sixty market stalls provided by
the city council in the three main markets in Freetown: Kissy
Road, Krootown Road, and Bombay Street. There were also
a number of meat stalls in other parts of Freetown that sold
small amounts of meat. The market stalls had simple equip-
ment such as hooks, scales, and cutting blocks. The meat was
hung for display, and the butcher chopped o a portion of meat
and bone or meat alone according to a customers request. The
whole animal was used, including the feet, hide, head, and
oal. Each stall handled about one-quarter of a carcass per day,
and meat not sold by the end of the day was usually kept in a
refrigerator for sale the next day at a discount. Meat was also
retailed outside the main meat markets, mostly by Fula who
traveled on foot with trays of meat to various homes in the
city.
Since the 1960s the major outlet for processed and imported
meat products was the Freetown Cold Storage Company, Ltd.,
a privately owned enterprise situated in the central business
district (CBD) of the city. It had subsidiaries in the major
towns of Bo and Kenema in the provinces. The company had
cold storage and cool rooms that were fully utilized to store
imported meat products and local meat that was purchased
from wholesale butchers. Meat products were also retailed to
the public through an adjoining supermarket. Most beef im-
ports were for the tourist and catering businesses, and the rest
were retailed to the public through the supermarkets, which
catered to mostly European expatriates.
30
The Career of Alhaji Momodu Bah,
Entrepreneur par Excellence
The butchering career of Alhaji Momodu Bah (g. 2.1) illus-
trates Fula entrepreneurial success in the postindependence
Freetown economy. As an entrepreneur, he competed, took
risks, and was the chief decision maker in his business. In a
business career spanning more than four decades, Alhaji Bah
developed an elaborate commercial organization with three di-
mensions: the purchase of cattle from as far away as Guinea to
be slaughtered for meat; the supply of that meat to Freetown
consumers and the Sierra Leonean government; and the in-
vestment of his butchering business prots in real estate in
Freetown.
Alhaji Bahs business career is illustrative of a Fula entrepre-
neurial model in which the cattle trade and its related butcher-
ing business constituted the rst step on the mercantile ladder
and the base of expansion into other sectors of the economy
such as real estate. The purpose of these steps was to spread
business risk, maximize prots, and employ more kin. This
pattern of capital accumulation, investment, and diversica-
tion was not only common among large-scale Fula merchants;
it dated back to the colonial period, when wholesale merchants
Fig. 2.1. Alhaji Momodu Bah (Fula chief and businessman)
FPO
80%
such as Alhaji Momodu Allie helped to establish such a busi-
ness model.
Alhaji Bah arrived in Freetown in 1928 from Timbi, in
Fuuta Jalon, with cows entrusted to him by Almamy Muktar
Bah (his uncle) of Fuuta Jalon, for delivery to Alhaji Momodu
Allie (a close friend) as fanda. While in colonial Freetown, Al-
haji Bah worked briey for Alhaji Allie as a meat seller before
becoming a shop-boy for Indian merchants at Water Street in
central Freetown from the 1930s to the 1950s. After accumu-
lating some start-up capital, Alhaji Bah reentered the cattle
trade in the 1950s as a small-scale butcher and quickly became
a wholesale butcher. His rise to wholesale butchering resulted
in large measure from exploiting extensive kinship networks
to obtain cattle supplies in northern Sierra Leone and Guinea.
By the 1960s Alhaji Bah was awarded government contracts
to supply meat to the Ministry of Social Welfare and Rural
Development, the Ministry of Education, the National Dance
Troupe, the Remanded and Approved Schools, The King George
VI Mental Home, and all the government hospitals in Free-
town: Connaught Hospital, Connaught Annex, the National
School of Nursing, Kissy Mental Hospital, Princess Christian
Maternity Hospital, Princess Christian Maternity Annex, Chil-
drens Hospital, Murray Town Convalescence Hospital, Hill
Station Hospital, and Lakka Chest Clinic Hospital. Besides
meat, he also supplied fresh produce, palm oil, sh, and re-
wood.
31
But Alhaji Bah faced strong competition for control of the
government and public consumer markets from butchers such
as Alhaji Ibrahima Allie and his younger brother Alhaji Baba
Allie (gs. 2.2 and 2.3), whose father, the legendary Alhaji
Momodu Allie, he had briey worked for during the colonial
period. Following their fathers death, the Allie brothers in-
herited properties, cattle, and cash. Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, for
example, inherited fteen properties worth Le100,000. Some
of the properties were sold for cash to nance their butchering
business, and the rental income from other properties was
plowed back into the business. Before becoming butchers fol-
lowing their fathers death, the Allie brothers had been spon-
sored by their father to pursue advanced Islamic studies at
Fula centers in Guinea such as Dinguiraye and Timbo, Sene-
gal, and Mauritania. Although they worked jointly, Alhaji
Ibrahima Allie was the primary decision maker in the business
because he was older.
Fig. 2.2. Alhaji Ibrahima Allie (son of Alhaji Momodu Allie
and businessman)
FPO
75%
In competing for the meat-supply contract with the gov-
ernment, Alhaji Ibrahima Allie argued that Alhaji Bah was not
a Sierra Leonean and that the contract should be awarded only
to Sierra Leoneans. Alhaji Allie was one of several prominent
butchers in Freetown who, as APC supporters, met with Prime
Minister Siaka Stevens to urge him to terminate Alhaji Bahs
Fig. 2.3. Alhaji Baba Allie (son of Alhaji Momodu Allie
and businessman)
FPO
80%
meat contract. They alleged that former prime minister Albert
Margai had favored Alhaji Bah as Fula chief in the competition
over the meat-supply contract. Since independence, political
patronage had been a major factor in the awarding of govern-
ment contracts. In 1968 Prime Minister Stevens authorized
that the meat-supply contract with the government be awarded
to Alhaji Allie, who was a strong APC supporter. Prior to the
APC electoral victory in 1967, Alhaji Allie had provided Siaka
Stevens with a two-story building in the east of Freetown to
use as an oce free of charge for seven years. In addition, on
the eve of the 1967 election, he accompanied Siaka Stevens to
Kono to meet with wealthy Fula diamond businesspeople from
Sierra Leone, Guinea, Mali, and The Gambia in order to raise
campaign funds. Alhaji Momodu Alfa, a close friend of Alhaji
Allie and the chief of the Fula community in the town of Sefa-
du, was instrumental in organizing the meetings. Mohammed
Cham, a relative and close friend of Alhaji Allie who served as
chairman for the meeting in Sefadu, recounts that Alhaji Allie
faced a lot of criticism for supporting an opposition candidate
instead of the incumbent, Albert Margai, who had a track
record of supporting the Fula. Despite some opposition, Alhaji
Allie was able to raise substantial money for Siaka Stevens and
his APC Party.
32
Alhaji Allie capitalized on the extensive business and kin-
ship networks of his father in positioning himself in the com-
petitive postindependence butchering business. His ownership
of several properties in Freetown facilitated his role as land-
lord to julas. Alhaji Allie competed aggressively with Alhaji
Bah for access to julas. Some of the julas who brought cattle to
Alhaji Allie from Fuuta Jalon and the provinces had previous
business dealings with his father. The long friendship and
trust that existed between the julas and his father facilitated
Alhaji Allies purchase of cattle on credit and gave him access
to a large number of cattle at competitive prices. Both Alhaji
Allie and his brother Alhaji Baba Allie drew heavily on the
kinship networks and clients of their father in obtaining cattle
supplies and marketing meat. The legendary nancial success
of their father also attracted many Fula to them as new clients.
Kinship networks were crucial to the business operations
of all the Fula butchers, including Alhaji Bah. There was a
patron-client relationship between wealthy, wholesale butch-
ers and their kinsmen clients in which the latter functioned as
meat sellers, cattle middlemen, and supervisors of warehs. Al-
haji Bah also relied on kinsmen to carry out his bookkeeping,
but he was the sole decision maker in his vast business. Most
of his kinsmen did not receive monetary compensation; in-
stead, he gave them food and lodging free of charge, and
promised them future help. A few of his kinsmen had Western
educations, such as Dr. M. Alpha Bah, who collected requisi-
tions from the ministries, prepared the bills at the end of the
month, submitted them to the ministries, and monitored them
as they went through the government bureaucracy until the
money was nally paid into Alhaji Bahs bank account. Al-
though Alhaji Bah was opposed to riba as a Muslim, he main-
tained an interest-bearing account with the bank of Sierra
Leone since that was a prerequisite for his meat supply busi-
ness with the government. This illustrates the dilemma that
Muslim Fula merchants faced in conducting business in the
Westernized economic environment of Freetown. For Alhaji
Bah, maintaining his protable business with the government
was more important than deferring to the Islamic objection to
interest-based banking.
33
In 1968 Alhaji Bahs meat contract was terminated by the
newly formed APC Party led by Prime Minister Siaka Stevens
following the general election of 1967. This resulted in large
measure from the chief s strong support for the defeated in-
cumbent SLPP led by Prime Minister Albert Margai. The
Fula chief and Margai were close personal friends. Not only
did the Fula chief provide nancial support to the SLPP, he or-
ganized wealthy fellow Fula merchants to contribute money
toward the SLPP reelection campaign.
In 1969 Alhaji Bah regained his meat-supply contract with
the government after he developed a rapprochement with
Prime Minister Stevens and pledged support for the APC. But
in 1971 Alhaji Bah was deported to Guinea by the APC gov-
ernment following an accusation by President Skou Tour, a
close friend of Prime Minister Stevens, that the Fula chief had
supported Guinean Fula immigrants in Sierra Leone in an at-
tempt to overthrow his government during the Portuguese in-
vasion. President Tour imprisoned Alhaji Bah until 1975.
During this period his butchering business suered thousands
of leones in losses because of two major factors. First, one of
his four wives, Iye, who took control of the meat-supply con-
tract with the government, did not have the management ex-
perience to run the business protably. Prior to her husbands
deportation, Iye had been marginally involved in the business.
Second, many of the Fula julas stopped bringing cattle to Al-
haji Bahs family for fear of arrest by the APC government as
coconspirators in the alleged attempt to overthrow President
Tour. Consequently, the Bah family had few cattle to slaugh-
ter for meat to supply to the government institutions. Both
Iye, who had some Western education and was raised in Free-
town, and her husbands kinsmen who worked for him as meat
sellers did not have his extensive and well-established trading
networks to purchase cattle on credit. They also could not ob-
tain cattle on credit from Alhaji Bahs Fula and Mandinka
competitors, who wanted to replace him as the meat-supply
contractor with the government.
34
Following his return to Freetown in 1975, Alhaji Bah, de-
spite failing health, took over his butchering business and
tried to restore it to its former prosperity. In pursuance of this
goal, Alhaji Bah received interest-free and nonrepayable capi-
tal from some wealthy Fula merchants in Freetown, such as
the legendary Agibu Jalloh.
35
He also won back the business
loyalty of many of the Fula julas who had previously sold him
cattle. As a business strategy to retain his meat-supply con-
tract with the government, Alhaji Bah maintained friendly re-
lations with President Stevens and inuential members of the
APC Party despite the presidents role in his deportation.
36
Two major factors help to explain the success of Alhaji Bah
in the butchering business. First, he had the ability to negoti-
ate lower cattle prices with Fula julas because of his privileged
Table 2.5
Estimated Government Meat Contract of
Alhaji Momodu Bah, 19641978
Year Volume (lbs.) Value (Le)
1964 520,650 78,975
1965 525,330 78,799
1966 576,360 115,272
1967 556,920 139,230
1968 NA NA
1969 610,920 244,368
1970 739,980 406,989
1971 100,000 60,000
1972 94,000 61,100
1973 90,000 63,000
1974 80,000 60,000
1975 85,000 68,000
1976 900,000 720,000
1977 945,000 907,200
1978 990,000 1,584,000
Source: Business records of Alhaji Momodu Bah, in the possession of the Bah fam-
ily in Freetown.
position as almamy, which was revered by Fula immigrants.
The julas were strongly inuenced by their traditional respect
for the position of almamy and their perception of Alhaji Bah
as a patron in a Westernized Freetown, where they did not un-
derstand the law and were regarded as strangers. Second,
Alhaji Bah capitalized on the increasing price of meat in the
1970s. This increase was due to the shortage of beef cattle.
The price of meat rose from 55 cents per pound in 1970 to
Le1.60 in 1978.
Trade in Goats and Sheep
Besides the cattle trade and its related butchering business, the
Fula also dominated the trade in goats and sheep in Freetown
during the colonial and postcolonial periods. This was a
smaller segment of the Fula livestock business, representing
about 15 percent. Like the cattle trade, this trade was multi-
ethnic. Besides Fula traders such as Moodi Juntu Jalloh, whose
career transcended the colonial and postcolonial periods, there
were a few Mandinka, Temne, and Soso traders in goats and
sheep. This trade was often connected with the trade in cattle,
and livestock owners would raise goats, sheep, and cattle to-
gether and transport them on the same vehicle or launch to
the Freetown market. However, some owners specialized only
in the goat and sheep trade.
As did the cattle, most of the goats and sheep came from
neighboring Guinea and the northern province of Sierra
Leone, where they were found in villages. Goats and sheep can
reproduce almost twice a year, and it is not uncommon for
sheep to produce twins and goats triplets. They are relatively
hardier than cattle in that they can graze very sparse vegeta-
tion. Goats, in particular, can live on browse alone during an
exacting dry season. Like the Ndama cattle, the West African
dwarf sheep and goat are trypanotolerant. The goats and sheep
from Guinea were often smuggled by Fula across the border
and then transported on launches along the Sierra Leone River
to Magazine Wharf in the east of Freetown, an area that was
close to Freetowns largest sheep and goat market at Magazine
Cut. Some livestock were brought by rail and on foot to Free-
town. Like the Fula in the cattle trade, those in the sheep and
goat trade also had extensive kinship networks with Fula sup-
pliers in Guinea and the northern province, giving the Free-
town Fula traders a competitive advantage over non-Fula
competitors in both price and supply. The evidence suggests
that over three hundred thousand goats and sheep were traded
in Freetown from 1961 to 1978. Sheep and goat meats were
rarely displayed for retailing, and, accordingly, little informa-
tion is available regarding retail price. Beef was the only ac-
tively traded meat in the markets of Freetown. The majority of
sheep and goats were bought on the hoof by individuals for
home consumption during ceremonial and religious occasions.
Sales were usually highest during the Islamic holiday of id
ul-adha, when Muslims from dierent ethnic groups sacrice
sheep, goats, or cows to symbolize the Prophet Abrahams
willingness to sacrice his son and Gods instruction to slaugh-
ter a ram instead. The Lebanese community also constituted
a large proportion of the demand for sheep and goats in the
city.
37
Fula Values and Trade
In conducting business in the livestock sector, the Fula drew
on Islamic values in addressing such issues as debt, business
partnership, and credit. Many of the Islamic values were
shared by other Muslim traders in West Africa, such as the
Hausa and Yoruba.
38
The vast majority of the Fula were
unwilling to borrow investment capital from banks to nance
their initial business activities because of religious opposition
to riba. This was an attitude shared by many Muslims in
Africa and elsewhere in the Muslim world. Also, most of the
Fula livestock traders did not have access to bank loans.
39
Unlike African countries such as Egypt, Tunisia, Guinea,
and Senegal, which have experimented with Islamic banks
that emphasize prot sharing, Sierra Leone did not have a
single Islamic bank. Islamic scholars have proposed Islamic
banking for the millions of Muslims in Africa who do not want
to participate in Western banking because it conicts with
their faith.
40
Faced with the reality of a Western banking envi-
ronment in Freetown, the vast majority of Fula in the live-
stock business decided to bypass banks and instead accumulate
capital through sources such as petty trading, working as do-
mestic servants and shop boys for Lebanese and Indian mer-
chants and Krio professionals, and working for kinsmen. The
Fula chief Alhaji Bah, for example, obtained some of his initial
capital from working for Indian merchants before launching a
successful butchering career. A few Fula butchers, such as Al-
haji Ibrahima Allie and Alhaji Baba Allie, came from well-
established merchant families.
41
The Fula julas and landlords had serious reservations about
submitting their disputes with butchers to the civil courts.
There were many reasons for this attitude. First, court proce-
dure was long and the julas, whose residence was usually far in
the northern province or in Guinea, could not wait in Free-
town indenitely. Second, there was the problem of language
and cultural dierences. Many Fula did not trust Western-
trained lawyers and the justice system. Third, many Fuuta
Jalon julas had entered Sierra Leone without valid immigra-
tion documents and had not paid the necessary border taxes
on their cattle in both Guinea and Sierra Leone and therefore
did not want to be prosecuted for these oenses. Finally, the
Fula believed that court rulings in cases of this nature were
not eective, since a butcher who pleaded that he had no
money could be asked to pay only a small amount to his credi-
tors until the full amount was paid. Cases involving Fula were
usually arbitrated by the Fula chief. This was prompt, conve-
nient, and eective. The ruling of the Fula chief was nal and
was nearly always honored. In instances where the ruling was
not honored, the Fula creditor would resign himself to Allahs
arbitration in the hereafter.
42
Landlords interacted extensively among themselves, since
it was the nature of their business both to compete and to co-
operate. They competed ercely over business, sometimes over
what they described as the stealing of julas, which cases were
arbitrated by ethnic chiefs such as the Fula chief or by the
Butchers Association. The landlords exchanged business in-
formation relating to the behavior of butchers and julas, cattle
prices, and beef prices through informal channels such as in-
teraction at the Cow Yard on Monday and Friday evenings,
preceding the major meat market days on Tuesdays and Sat-
urdays. In addition, the landlords had assistants who collected
information about defaulting butchers through informal gos-
sip at social events, meat markets, or after Muslim prayers at
the various mosques in Freetown.
43
Most butchers in Freetown purchased cattle on credit. But un-
like industrial Western societieswhere credit is highly devel-
oped and operates through formal, standardized arrangements
and procedures by which the solvency of the debtor is scruti-
nized, securities against possible default are provided, and the
conditions of the agreement are documented and endorsed by
the parties concernedcredit in the Freetown cattle market
was mostly based on trust grounded in Islam. For the Fula,
their cultural anity and strong Islamic faith provided the basis
for oral agreements on credit provision without requiring writ-
ten documentation. Because of the personalized relationship
and the common faith that the debtors and creditors had in
Allah, business contracts were seldom broken. When the un-
written terms of credit were not observed by a debtor, which
was a rare occurrence, a Fula merchant usually would turn to
Allah for justice. The Fula generally believed that Allah would
severely punish debtors who intentionally avoided their obliga-
tions by sending them to burn in the unending re of hell in the
hereafter. This was a powerful deterrent to debt default in the
Fula business community. There is also evidence that Fula
butchers and nonFula Muslim butchers sold their properties
or converted their nonliquid investments into cash to settle
their debts before they died. In fact, it was customary among
Muslims in Freetown, including the Fula, for the relatives of a
deceased person to inquire about his debt obligations in order
to settle them before he was buried.
44
Fula Culture and Investments
Despite Fula success in the livestock business, they did not
exploit the industrys full commercial potential. While there
was some degree of vertical integration, with individual Fula
merchants owning their own cattle, slaughtering them, and
marketing the meat to public consumers and government in-
stitutions, the Fula did not develop vertically integrated joint-
stock companies that supplied meat and processed meat-related
products in Freetown, the provinces, and export markets such
as Liberia. Those who had the most potential to develop such
companies were Alhaji Bah and the Allie brothers. Three rea-
sons account for the absence of vertically integrated beef com-
panies with national and foreign markets. First, this enterprise
required substantial capital beyond the individual capital of
most Fula butchers, which could only be obtained from West-
ern banks or the sale of shares to other Fula or the public. The
religious opposition to interest ruled out the option of bank
loans, and the intraethnic rivalry and strong business individ-
ualism of Fula made the second option of trading shares also
unworkable. Second, the business mentality of Fula butchers
that only family members and kinsmen could be trusted with
substantial capital in running a business prevented them from
employing non-Fula, Western-trained Sierra Leoneans to help
operate such meat companies. Third, it would have taken gov-
ernment support to help the Fula access foreign markets such
as Liberia, which was not readily forthcoming because of the
distrust of the Fula by President Stevens. According to Alhaji
Musa Jalloh, a well-respected Fula accountant with corporate
experience in Freetown, Fula clan rivalry, strong individual-
ism, and distrust of Western-educated individuals were the
biggest obstacles to forming joint-stock companies, such as
beef companies, to compete for the Sierra Leonean and foreign
markets such as Liberia.
45
From an investment perspective, Fula merchants in the live-
stock business constituted one of the major groups in Free-
town with capital to invest because of their control of liquid
capital combined with high prot margin. Much surplus capi-
tal was reinvested in commerce. But like earlier Fula entrepre-
neurs such as Alhaji Momodu Allie, Fula merchants invested
thousands of leones in urban property: one-, two-, three-, and
even four-story houses, houses with ground-oor shops, lots,
and rental rooming houses that adjoined a family house or
were scattered throughout the city. In fact, one of the most
valuable assets of the Freetown economy was its buildings and
lots. The prices of properties ranged from Le300 to over
Le10,000.
In investing in urban property, the Fula were continuing a
long-standing and widespread tradition among African busi-
nesspeople, as John Ilie notes in his survey of the growth
of African capitalism in sub-Saharan Africa.
46
This practice
became more widespread in the postcolonial period as more
Africans became businesspeople and their wealth increased
through trade. In Freetown, for example, the Krio had long in-
vested in urban property, as Christopher Fyfe documents.
Many of the sellers from whom the Fula purchased urban
property were Krio families such as Marke, Carew, and Jones.
For several decades before Fula merchants entered the real es-
tate sector of the Freetown economy, Krio had used their com-
mercial prots and professional income to purchase urban
properties that passed from one generation to another.
47
De-
spite its popularity, urban property investment in Africa has
been criticized as unproductive and an obstacle to the develop-
ment of capitalism since it encouraged rentier rather than pro-
ductive activity.
48
Fula investors shared the same reasons as other African
businesspeople for investing in urban property for personal or
commercial use. They saw property ownership as oering the
best security against ination in the postcolonial Sierra Leon-
ean economy, as collateral for interest-free business loans, and
as a source of steady income because of the high demand for
housing resulting from the rapidly increasing population of
the city. Urban real estate was also important to Fula mer-
chants because home ownership identied the merchant to his
colleagues as an established trader and to other members of
the elite as a member of the citys upper class. Urban property
was secure; it was not subject to abrupt price uctuations,
glutted markets, risks of loss at sea, or bad loanssome of the
many problems that beset commercial trade. Real property
was mortgageable and could be used, therefore, to expand
credit.
Some of the Fula properties were located in the CBD of
Freetown, which included Kissy Street, Kissy Road, Rawdon
Street, and Little East Street. These properties were rented to
indigenous business owners, West African immigrants, and
Lebanese traders, all of whom were mostly retailers of im-
ported merchandise. Ownership of a mansion that had stores
on its lower oor and was located in the CBD was a major in-
vestment goal of Fula merchants. The vast majority of the Fula
merchants obtained their properties through cash purchases
from the prots of their businesses. There was considerable
continuity of ownership among Fula merchant homeowners, as
well as a tendency to buy and sell to one another.
49
By the 1970s a growing number of Fula in the livestock
business were beginning to realize that even if they had to re-
turn to their homelands, they should invest in real estate in
Freetown for their childrens future. In fact, a large number of
the Fula immigrant butchers now considered Sierra Leone
home and therefore abandoned the immigrant psychology of
the colonial period that they should not invest in long-term in-
vestments such as real estate in Freetown. Alhaji Bah, for ex-
ample, bought thirteen properties worth over Le100,000 from
his prots from the butchering trade. Most of these properties
were houses and plots in the west of Freetown, which was fast
expanding and increasing rapidly in property value. Continu-
ing the business practice of earlier Fula immigrant butchers,
Alhaji Bah invested some of the prots from his rental proper-
ties in his butchering trade. That the average monthly salary
of a civil servant during this period was only Le200 is a testa-
ment to Alhaji Bahs wealth and success as a butcher. Alhaji
Ibrahima Allie bought seven properties worth over Le90,000
from his butchering prots while still owning over ten prop-
erties that he inherited from his father.
50
Some Fula merchant-landlords deserve to be called devel-
opers because of the contributions they made to the physical
splendor of Freetown. Not only did they construct ne build-
ings, they renovated existing property, especially rooming houses
for rental in the east, where population increase was the fastest;
the CBD; and the west, where property value was rising the
fastest. By the 1970s a growing number of Freetowns well-
paid professional class was residing in the west of the city,
which gave it an elite status and an investment attraction to
entrepreneurs such as the Fula. The examples of Alhaji Bah
and Alhaji Allie indicate that property values could rise if im-
provements were made. Both merchants acquired and im-
proved their urban holdings quite systematically.
Collectively, Fula merchants in the livestock business owned
more than one hundred properties in Freetown worth over
Le800,000. Most of these properties were rental real estate,
which generated considerable prots because of the increasing
demand for housing in the city. A large portion of the rental
income of the Fula merchants was plowed back into the
butchering and cattle businesses. As owners and renters, the
Fula exercised considerable inuence in the real estate sector
of the postindependence Freetown economy. They did not
dominate urban property but held a substantial share of the
market. They were members of a small elite of homeowners
and landlords who contributed to the housing of the citys pre-
dominantly rental population.
As investors, the vast majority of the Fula merchants in the
livestock business, unlike mercantile groups such as the Leba-
nese, did not deposit their prots in commercial banks because
of their religious objection to interest payment. This demon-
strates that the Fula were not merely motivated by prots in
their investment preferences. Because of the well-earned repu-
tation of the Fula as dependable and hardworking, some senior
banking ocials, including Europeans and Krio, were ready to
assist them in securing business loans to expand their private
enterprises. Most of the banks, such as Barclays or Standard
Chartered Bank, were established as subsidiaries of British
banks during the colonial period. The negative attitude of Fula
immigrant merchants toward Western banking also resulted
from their inadequate understanding of the operation of banks
and their distrust of Western-educated banking ocials. The
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula merchants considered interest rates
too high and were apprehensive of providing their properties
as collateral for business loans for fear of losing them. This
business attitude constrained Fula capital growth and denied
many the opportunity to expand their businesses and diversify
into emerging protable areas of the Sierra Leonean economy,
such as food processing, which required substantial capital.
Fula business expansion took place primarily by plowing back
prots from the livestock business.
51
3
The Merchandise Trade
The merchandise trade, which included the wholesale and
retail of imported and locally produced goods, made up per-
haps the largest segment of the Freetown economy from the
colonial period to the postcolonial period. This trade dates
back several centuries, when indigenous entrepreneurs ex-
ploited several local and regional commercial opportunities,
and has been examined in a number of studies of the early
commerce of Sierra Leone. It was during the colonial period
that this Freetown merchandise trade expanded substantially
as the British created a dependent market economy and as
more commercial opportunities arose in the colony. Not only
did the colonial administration emphasize merchandise trad-
ingbecause it provided a tax base through the use of custom
duties, which supplied the bulk of the revenue needed to sup-
port the administration and public services without expenses
to the British taxpayerbut in the postcolonial period mer-
chant capital remained a cornerstone of the Sierra Leonean
economy.
1
From an organizational standpoint, during the colonial pe-
76
riod the merchandise business was hierarchical and made up of
various groups: Europeans, Lebanese, and Indians dominated
the import-export trade and controlled a large share of the
wholesale and retail business. African traders like the Fula
were mainly retailers, involved with the commercial distribu-
tion of goods. There was inter- as well as intraethnic trading
rivalry in the merchandise trade. But both the ethnic makeup
and the hierarchies changed over time, as demonstrated in the
case of the Fula during the postcolonial period. Many of the
African, Lebanese, and Indian businesses were family owned
and relied on kinsmen for their operations. These characteris-
tics continued into the postcolonial period.
In the 1950s the government commissioned a study to
examine the problem of low Sierra Leonean participation in
commerce and make recommendations for promoting African
commerce. According to the author, the chief problems inhib-
iting trade included a climate of political uncertainty, lack of
capital and investment funds, bribery and corruption, a pre-
vailing attitude that did not view business as a vocation, lack of
business training, and individualism. The studys recommen-
dations addressed these problems and suggested a sustained
and active intervention by the government to promote African
entrepreneurship in all sectors of the countrys commerce. But
the present study of Fula traders contradicts the generaliza-
tions of the government study that Africans did not have a
business mindset, lacked training, and were individualistic. In
fact, there is considerable evidence showing African entrepre-
neurship dating back to the precolonial era in Sierra Leone.
2
In the 1960s the Bank of Sierra Leone commissioned a study
of the issues connected with the adequate supply of credit nec-
essary for increasing the quality and extent of Sierra Leonean
participation in trade and industry. This report made clear
that in general Sierra Leonean entrepreneurship was still con-
ned to small-scale trading and that wholesale and retail trade
The Merchandise Trade / 77
was still largely in the hands of nonSierra Leoneans. The
study reiterated many of the problems cited in the previous
study, emphasizing an educational tradition that did not en-
courage business as a profession among Sierra Leoneans,
inadequate business management training, and lack of capital.
In its recommendations, the study emphasized the need for
governmental guarantees for businesses against political un-
certainties, an active and expanded role for the National De-
velopment Bank, promotion of business management training
at the high school and tertiary levels, and governmental con-
trol of bribery and corruption. Despite the emphasis of the
Bank of Sierra Leone study on formal schooling and man-
agement, the present study demonstrates how Fula developed
informal but highly eective schooling and management train-
ing techniques within their rms and by other means outside
formal Western-style schools.
3
Not only did the government and Bank of Sierra Leone
studies point out the deciencies of Sierra Leonean entrepre-
neurship, they also emphasized the large role of Europeans in
the commerce of the country. The declaration of a British pro-
tectorate over the Sierra Leonean hinterland in 1896 and the
construction of a railway, which started in that year, encour-
aged and facilitated European trading in the country. While in-
dependent European traders were still in the majority around
1900, the company had become the typical form of European
enterprise by the 1920s, and this continued into the post-
colonial period. But some of these companies, like Paterson,
Zochonis and Company (PZ); G. B. Ollivant and Company
(GBO); Socit Commerciale de lOuest Africain (SCOA); Com-
pagnie Franaise de lAfrique Occidentale (CFAO), or French
Company; and the African and Eastern Trade Corporation,
were multinational. These big expatriate businesses traded in
various merchandise including produce, provisions, and man-
ufactured goods. They had their head oces in Europe and
operated in several West African countries. In Sierra Leone,
their main oces were in Freetown, but they had several
branches in the major towns in the provinces, such as Bo,
Kenema, and Makeni. The European companies employed
Africans largely as clerks. The vast majority of their managers
were Europeans.
4
The Lebanese, like the Indians, entered the merchandise
trade only in the twentieth century. Many of the Lebanese
merchandise businesses, such as Simon Aboud and Sons, N. R.
Hassaniyeh, and M. A. Basma and Sons, were concentrated in
the commercial center of the city and in the eastern part of
central Freetown, notably Kissy Street and Little East Street.
There were several Lebanese shops near the Garrison Street
market, which was the busiest market in Freetown. Lebanese
shops to the west of the city intermingled with European and
Indian businesses. Some Lebanese traders, like the Lakish
Brothers, owned multiple shops in Freetown and the major
towns of the provinces. Many Lebanese traders lived in two-,
three-, or even four-story buildings. The ground oor was re-
served for the shop and the upper oors for the living quar-
ters, since the Lebanese trader and his family usually lived
above the shop. Like Fula enterprises, Lebanese businesses
were family-owned and relied on kinship ties for their eective
functioning in a competitive business environment. But some-
times there were family tensions between old-fashioned fa-
thers, who wanted close supervision and loathed delegating
responsibilities, and young, aggressive sons, who wanted to
pursue business opportunities outside the family enterprise.
But strong family ties are a primary reason for the economic
success and continuity of Lebanese enterprise in Sierra Leone
today.
5
The Lebanese traders competed aggressively with the Indi-
ans in wholesaling and retailing imports, which included food,
drink, tobacco, manufactured goods, and electrical goods. These
products came from Europe, Hong Kong, India, Japan, and
other Asian countries. The Indian shops were found in the
CBD, Kissy Street, and the west end, mainly Kroo Town Road.
The largest Indian importers were J. T. Chanrai and Co., K.
Chelleram and Sons, and T. Choithram. In addition to owning
supermarkets and shops in Freetown and the provinces, they
had their own distribution network in the provinces. The dia-
mond boom in the late 1950s led to the expansion of Lebanese
and Indian businesses in Freetown because of the increased
demand for imported merchandise by diamond traders. But de-
spite their success in Freetown, Indian traders, unlike Leba-
nese traders, did not establish extensive trading networks in
the provinces. In 1966 Indian traders established the Indian
Mercantile Association to lobby the government on commer-
cial issues and to function as a public relations instrument of
the Indian community. For several years the association gave
scholarships to Sierra Leoneans.
6
Fula Merchandise Trading
Fula involvement in the merchandise trade dates back over
a century. Their scale of trading ranged from hawking to
wholesaling in the import-export business. This chapter ex-
amines Fula mercantile activities as shopkeepers of various
locally produced and imported goods, especially provisions and
textiles. Their enterprises ranged from small-scale to large-
scale. In addition, it discusses Fula wholesale and retail enter-
prise in the produce trade, focusing on export crops like palm
kernels, cocoa, and coee; and local foods, particularly rice
for several centuries rice has been the staple food of Sierra
Leone. Examination of these components of Fula trading can
further establish their importance and competitiveness in the
postcolonial Freetown economy.
The business careers of three Fula entrepreneurs par ex-
cellence who were both wholesalers and large-scale retailers
Alhaji Abass Allie in the textiles trade, Agibu Jalloh in the
produce trade, and Alhaji Bailor Barrie in the rice tradeare
used to illustrate dierences and similarities in the patterns of
Fula capital accumulation and diversication in the merchan-
dise business. Diversication was common among the large-
scale Fula traders because they wanted to spread business
risks, increase prots, and provide employment to kinsmen. In
addition, the business careers of these Fula merchants are used
to demonstrate vertical integration in Fula private enterprise
from production, through processing, to wholesaling and mar-
keting.
Shopkeepers
From the colonial to the postcolonial period Fula merchan-
dise trading was largely conducted in shops, including small,
large, and multiple stores, each owned by a single Fula. It was
the ambition of Fula small-scale shopkeepers to become im-
porters, a prestigious pursuit among merchants. Although the
vast majority of Fula shopkeepers were small-scale retailers,
some were also importers and engaged in wholesale and retail
trading. It is estimated that there were over forty Fula im-
porters by 1978.
7
Many of the small Fula shops were owned
by kootos (a title of respect in Pulaar), or retailers that bought
mostly provisions from predominantly European, Lebanese,
and Indian wholesalers to sell to consumers. These Fula shops
were concentrated in residential areas, and their customers
were drawn from the immediate neighborhood. This proxim-
ity to consumers enabled the Fula shopkeepers to make quick
prots. Although these Fula were at the end of the commercial
distribution of provisions, they provided a convenient and im-
portant service to consumers. Their customers were multi-
ethnic and included Krio, Temne, Fula, and Mandinka, who
bought products with cash or were given credit without inter-
est payment. Usually the credit was extended until the end of
the month, when many of the customers received their sala-
ries, mainly from the government. Of all the merchandise re-
tailed in Fula shops, provisions like bread, toothpaste, bottled
beverages, and cigarettes made up the bulk. Many of the Fula
shops were opened in the postcolonial period as more Fula ac-
cumulated capital from various sources, such as the diamond
trade, and as more Fula immigrants settled in the city.
8
Although Fula shopkeepers prospered during the postcolo-
nial period, the foundation of their retail activities was laid
during the colonial period. As early as the 1840s Fula immi-
grant hawkers sold leather sandals, straw hats, iron tools, and
provisions in the eastern part of Freetown. An early account
describes the typical Fula hawker walking the streets of Free-
town selling a few articles, such as pocket knives and kola nuts
on a tray. The Fula were conspicuous because the peddling of
imported goods had been rare in Freetown until then. Not
only were these Fula frugal, they were willing to work for
marginal prots to accumulate capital for trading. The ambi-
tion of these Fula hawkers was to become shopkeepers and
eventually importers-exporters.
9
Fula hawkers experienced a hard life: they would rise in
their rooms early every day of the week in the east of Free-
town, carry their stock on a tray to several streets in the city,
and return home late in the evening. Many had only one meal
throughout the day and to save money preferred to chew kola
nuts rather than buy food. As hawkers the Fula learned to
speak Krio, how to bargain, which streets were the best places
to sell to consumers, which articles appealed to passersby, and
which types of people bought from them. The experienced Fula
hawkers sold their stock quickly, went back for more, and re-
turned with a full tray. Quick turnover was the secret to prof-
its and the accumulation of capital. For these Fula immigrants
who arrived in Freetown with little or no money, hawking for
prot became the basis of their commercial careers. The Fula
hawkers competed with African peddlers and impoverished
Lebanese immigrants, who sold cheap imported goods, such as
coral beads, in the streets of Freetown. Because of this trade
item the Krio called the Lebanese hawkers corals. By the
1920s many Lebanese hawkers had made a transition to shop-
keeping after accumulating capital from their savings.
10
Besides accumulating capital by hawking, many Fula immi-
grants saved from their many years of menial employment as
domestic servants, shop boys, and watchmen (night security).
Their employers were mostly Krio professionals as well as
Lebanese and Indian traders. These occupations were dis-
dained by most urban residents. A large number of the Fula
shopkeepers were former self-employed worok in the major
markets of Freetown, such as Big Market, King Jimmy Mar-
ket, Dove Cot Market, Kroo Town Road Market, Bombay
Street Market, and Garrison Street Market, where they car-
ried goods on their heads for distances as long as ten miles.
Some Fula porters had omolankes (handcarts), which they used
to transport bulky goods over a long distance, usually from
one market to another. According to several Fula shopkeepers,
they suered indignities for years in their endeavor to save
trading capital from their wages from menial jobs. It was also
during such periods of menial employment that some Fula de-
veloped trusting relationships with Lebanese and Indian mer-
chants, who would later provide merchandise on credit. This
pattern of rising from being a hawker, worok, or omolanke dri-
ver represents an important model of Fula accumulation in
Freetown commerce and illustrates how patron-client ties be-
tween the Fula and non-Fula trading community were signi-
cant to Fula mercantile activities.
11
Following the Great Depression there was both a quantita-
tive and a qualitative change in Fula participation in the mer-
chandise trade of Freetown because of new commercial oppor-
tunities. From 1930 to 1960 it is estimated that the number of
Fula hawkers rose from one hundred to over ve hundred and
the number of shopkeepers increased from one hundred to
over three hundred. About 50 percent of the Fula shopkeepers
were small-scale retailers who each owned one shop with an
average capital of about 500. About 20 percent owned two
or more small shops with an average capital of about 5,000.
About 20 percent owned single or multiple large shops with
an average capital of over 15,000.
12
The rise of Fula shop-
keepers was paralleled by the decline of Krio shopkeepers
because of economic hardship resulting from the Great De-
pression. This crisis also led many large European companies
like the UAC to undertake extensive reorganization of their
businesses. The companies closed many branches in the prov-
inces and amalgamated others. They also undertook a system-
atic withdrawal from retail trade and transferred substantial
capital to manufacturing and services. These activities created
opportunities for entry and expansion in retail trading, which
the Lebanese and African traders, such as the Fula, exploited.
The Fula merchants were marginally aected by the Great
Depression because they were not, like Krio traders, for exam-
ple, dependent on European trade credit. Most small-scale
Fula shopkeepers used their rented homes as shops in order to
save money, thus facilitating the accumulation of more trading
capital.
The transition to a postcolonial economy was accompanied
by increased Fula participation in the merchandise trade as
small-scale shopkeepers as well as large-scale retailers and
wholesalers or merchants. The reasons for the rise of Fula
traders included more business opportunities as the city grew
spatially and as the population, aected by cross-boundary and
internal migrations, increased. Most of the internal migrants
were attracted to Freetown by the prospects of plentiful urban
wage employment. In addition, the Fula took advantage of a
vacuum created by Krio business losses, Lebanese and Indian
business patronage in the form of providing goods as credit,
and prots from the diamond business beginning in the late
1950s and the trade in consumer goods with Guinea. Fula
mercantile activities were enhanced by the development of
new commercial infrastructures by the postindependence gov-
ernment of Sierra Leone.
In 1968 the government conducted its rst survey of busi-
nesses in Freetown, excluding hawkers and peddlers; only
businesses with a xed place of operation were included in the
survey. Of the 1,491 small-, medium-, and large-scale busi-
nesses surveyed, 497 were owned by Fula merchants, who
were mostly immigrants. Of the Fula businesses about 60 per-
cent were small-scale shops with an average capital of about
Le15,000 owned mostly by Fula immigrants from Guinea who
retailed provisions in residential areas scattered throughout
the city.
13
About 40 percent were large shops with an average
capital of about Le60,000, owned by Sierra Leoneanborn and
immigrant Fula merchants involved in large-scale retailing
and wholesaling.
14
Along with their success in the 1960s came new challenges
for Fula traders as the government sought to curtail foreign
participation in commerce because of strong pressure from
Sierra Leoneans who felt that foreigners were controlling the
countrys trade. In 1965, 1966, and 1967 the SLPP govern-
ment introduced three Trade Acts (actually successive ver-
sions of the same act) aimed at excluding noncitizens from
retail trade and encouraging citizens to participate in it. These
trade restrictions prohibited noncitizens from opening new
shops and foreign merchants from retailing eight consumer
items: cigarettes, sugar, tinned tomato puree, salt, matches,
kerosene, tinned milk, and tobacco. But the traders were al-
lowed to sell these items at wholesale. The restrictions were
limited to Freetown and 150 towns in the provinces.
15
The evidence suggests that the Fula immigrant retailers in
Freetown were less aected by the SLPP trade restrictions,
which targeted Lebanese and Indian merchants as foreigners.
The emphasis of the Trade Acts was on the exclusion of non-
African foreigners. The government did not undertake a sys-
tematic identication of the nationality of African traders, who
included many immigrants like the Fula, in implementing the
trade restrictions. It was only in 1978 that the government in-
troduced national registration of citizens and noncitizens that
involved picture identication cards to aid their eorts in im-
plementing the trade restrictions of the 1960s. Many Sierra
Leonean traders felt that Lebanese and Indian traders rather
than immigrant Fula were the major obstacles to their prog-
ress in retail trading.
In 1969 and 1970 the APC government introduced Trade
Acts that, like the previous Trade Acts, prohibited noncitizens
from opening new shops. But these acts were broader in scope,
barring foreigners from trading in thirty-eight goods, includ-
ing the earlier eight under the SLPP trade restrictions. The
APC trade restrictions were directed against all foreigners,
not just those from overseas. This resulted largely from strong
lobbying from Sierra Leonean petty traders in Freetown, who
now viewed African immigrants, especially Fula, as a threat to
their commercial advancement in the city. In 1970 the Sierra
Leone Petty Traders Association in Freetown, which was dom-
inated by Temne petty traders, registered many protests with
the government, especially the Temne politician S. I. Koroma,
who had received their support, over the increasing takeover
of petty trading by African immigrants, especially the Fula.
The government responding by sending letters to a number of
shopkeepers, who were mainly Lebanese, requesting them not
to allow foreigners to trade in front of their shops. This eort
was largely unsuccessful because of the lack of support by
Lebanese shopkeepers.
16
Despite the governmental attempts to curtail foreign trade,
which were not strictly enforced, the number of Fula shop-
keepers continued to increase in Freetown. According to a
1970 government survey of small-, medium-, and large-scale
businesses (only those with a xed location were surveyed;
peddlers and hawkers were excluded) Fula traders owned 771
out of a total of 1,911 enterprises in Freetown. Of the Fula
businesses about 60 percent were small-scale shops with an
average capital of about Le30,000 and were owned by immi-
grants who retailed provisions. About 40 percent were large
shops owned by merchants with an average capital of about
Le60,000.
17
This expansion of Fula shops was paralleled by
heightened competition between Temne petty traders and Fula
immigrant petty traders whose average capital was about
Le15,000. Many Temne traders felt that the commercial surge
of the Fula, as that of the Lebanese, should be checked by the
government if they were to succeed in the competitive econ-
omy of Freetown. Not only were the Fula traders indiscrim-
inately characterized as aliens, they were accused of repatri-
ating their prots to Guinea to the detriment of the Sierra
Leonean economy, a charge that was contradicted by the sub-
stantial Fula investments in the Freetown economy.
18
Textiles
Not only did the trade in textiles provide a model of Fula
business diversication, as evidenced in the entrepreneurial
success of Alhaji Abass Allie (son of the legendary Alhaji Mo-
modu Allie), it was an alternative starting point for some Fula
traders, as the cattle trade was to many Fula in Freetown. Like
the trade in provisions, the textile business, which was com-
prised of mostly imported cotton fabrics, was dominated by
the large European companies and the Lebanese. Many Leb-
anese traders purchased textiles wholesale with cash or on
credit from European companies. Others imported cotton fab-
rics directly from suppliers in Europe or Asia. The Lebanese
textile shops were concentrated on Little East Street, Garrison
Street, and Kissy Street in the commercial center of the city.
The Lebanese customers were largely African petty traders,
many of whom were Fula who retailed their merchandise from
stalls in front of Lebanese shops along Kissy Street.
The life history of Alhaji Abass Allie (g. 3.1) provides one
model of Fula entrepreneurship in which real estate inheritance
was the rst step in capital accumulation and investment, fol-
lowed by diversication into the textile trade, diamond busi-
ness, and then expansion of real estate investment. Diversi-
cation in this case can be explained by the desire of Alhaji Allie
to spread business risk, generate more prots, and provide em-
ployment to kinsmen. His business career also illustrates a
pattern of rejection of the Islamic injunction against interest
by Sierra Leoneanborn Fula merchants in their search for
prot. Alhaji Allie also provides a folk model of entrepreneur-
ial success that other Fula use in talking about how to succeed
in business in Sierra Leone.
Unlike his brothers in the livestock trade, Alhaji Allie did
not pursue the butchering career of his father; he considered
the merchandise trade more protable. Prior to entering into
the merchandise trade in the mid-1960s, Alhaji Allie retailed
locally produced gara (tie-dyed) cloth made by his Mandinka
relatives in the provinces and in neighboring Liberia. His
friendship with Lebanese textile merchants, some of whom
were tenants in buildings located in the commercial center of
Freetown that were inherited from his father, gave him in-
sights into the protability of the wholesale and retail merchan-
dise trade. In the 1960s Alhaji Allie began trading textiles,
along with various imported goods, such as shoes, in his large
shop, Elegant Store, on the ground oor of a ve-story build-
ing inherited from his father and located on East Street in the
commercial center of the city.
19
Each year Alhaji Allie imported thousands of leones worth
of textiles from Europe. His customers were drawn from the
multiethnic Freetown population; many were Fula petty trad-
ers and tailors. The Fula petty traders, who had an average
Fig. 3.1. Alhaji Abass Allie (son of Alhaji Momodu Allie
and businessman)
FPO
80%
capital of Le10,000 in the 1970s, were members of the in-
formal economy of Freetown, which was characterized by
self-employment, little or no formal education among business
owners, and shortage of capital. Although the Fula petty traders
were ambitious to become shopkeepers and importers, they
were stied by the lack of capital and access to bank credit. The
large expatriate companies favored Lebanese traders and per-
ceived Fula immigrants as a business risk, so Fula traders
bought goods from the formal sector that they resold exclu-
sively to individuals or households. According to a study of one
thousand businesses in the informal economy of Freetown, 38
percent of these businesses were owned by Fula and 28 percent
by Temne. Despite the importance of informal economy as a
source of employment to jobless Sierra Leoneans with little or
no marketable skills, this sector received little support from the
government, especially in the areas of training and credit pro-
vision. In fact, a major obstacle to growth in the informal econ-
omy was the lack of institutional credit facilities.
20
The biggest challenge to the Fula petty traders in the in-
formal economy came from Temne petty traders, who also
retailed textiles and provisions. The Temne were largely mi-
grants from the provinces who came to Freetown in search of
employment opportunities. Some took up petty trading as a
temporary occupation until they could nd high-wage em-
ployment, but many saw petty trading as an avenue to becom-
ing self-employed shopkeepers or importers. Like the Fula, the
Temne traders bought textiles in small quantities mostly with
cash from European companies and the Lebanese, which they
then retailed to consumers. In the 1970s Temne textile petty
traders were among the most vocal critics of their Fula com-
petitors along the busy Kissy Street, Garrison Street, and
Little East markets.
In addition to Fula petty traders, Alhaji Allie also had cus-
tomers who were African tailors. The tailors also bought tex-
tiles from Fula petty traders, Lebanese traders, European
companies, and African retailers. A substantial number of the
tailors were self-employed immigrant Fula, who had kinship
ties with many of the Fula textile traders and so promoted
their business relations. In starting their businesses, many
Fula tailors received textiles on credit from their kinsmen re-
tailers that they then made into attractive dresses that were
sold before repaying the loan. The tailors saved the prots to
buy textiles wholesale, which was cheaper. Fula tailors spe-
cialized in male and female African designs, and the bulk of
their customers were cross-ethnic women who wore the Fula-
tailored clothes to occasions like weddings, naming ceremo-
nies, and funerals. Many of their male customers were Muslims
whose biggest purchases took place prior to the Muslim holi-
days of id ul-tr and id ul-adha.
Another group of Alhaji Allies customers were Muslim im-
migrant diamond traders in the provinces who traveled to
Freetown to purchase textile products for their wives. The
large prots from the diamond trade enabled these traders to
make large textile purchases. Another group of customers
were Fula julas who sold their cattle in Freetown. They also
made large purchases for their families before returning to the
provinces or their homeland in Guinea. Sales were highest on
the eves of the Muslim holidays of id ul-tr and id ul-adha.
Alhaji Allie faced competition mostly from Lebanese traders,
but because Alhaji Allie purchased textiles wholesale from
overseas companies, he received discounts that enabled him to
oer competitive prices over many Lebanese merchants who
obtained their textiles on credit from European companies in
Freetown.
Besides the textile business, Alhaji Allie functioned as a
middleman in the diamond trade, which provided him with
substantial prots that he in turn plowed back into the mer-
chandise business and real estate. He used the rental income
from his fathers bequests as part of his initial capital to enter
the diamond trade, buying diamonds from Muslim Mandinka
and fellow Fula. Not only did Alhaji Allie exploit his fathers
business reputation in the Fula community to attract Fula
diamond traders, he developed extensive networks with cross-
ethnic Muslim diamond merchants. Like his father, he pro-
vided housing and food free of charge to diamond traders who
came to Freetown to sell him their diamonds. In addition to
receiving diamond dealers, Alhaji Allie traveled to the various
diamond mining sites in Kono and Kenema to buy diamonds
directly from Fula, Mandinka, and Maraka immigrants, as
well as from indigenous diamond dealers.
In managing his business, Alhaji Allie, like other Fula shop-
keepers, adopted an owner-centered approach to decision mak-
ing. He made all the decisions relating to the volume of textiles
to import, where to import, prices to charge consumers, and
whom to give credit. He employed kinsmen who worked as
shop boys and assisted in balancing the business accounts.
His wife Fanta Allie, who was a Mandinka, was not involved in
the day-to-day running of the business. Instead, she retailed
provisions in a shop on the ground oor of their three-story
home at Jenkins Street in the east of Freetown. Despite his
limited Western education, Alhaji Allie managed his textile
business successfully enough to make yearly prots of over
Le100,000.
21
Unlike Fula immigrants in the merchandise trade, Sierra
Leoneanborn Fula like Alhaji Allie, having been raised in a
Western business environment, were less constrained by the
Islamic opposition to Western banking, which they viewed as
indispensable to their business survival. Consequently, they
opened accounts with private banks, such as Barclays Bank and
Standard Chartered Bank, that processed their nancial trans-
actions with foreign companies. Alhaji Allies wholesale mer-
chandise trading involved foreign companies that required that
payments go through the formal banking system in Freetown
without allowance for cultural prejudices against interest-
based banking. Not only did the Fula immigrants decline credit
from the banks, they refused to invest their prots in such in-
stitutions. This may be explained by the fact that the Fula im-
migrant traders did not have a grasp of the functioning of
Western banking practices, that they distrusted the banks with
their money, and that because of their Islamic faith they looked
unfavorably on the practice of interest, whether paid on their
investments or paid to the banks as debt interest.
The Produce Trade
Fula trading in produce like cocoa, coee, and palm kernels
dates back to the colonial era when immigrant and Sierra
Leoneanborn Fula functioned as middlemen between African
producers in the provinces and European companies in Free-
town like the UAC, SCOA, and CFAO. This Fula role com-
pares to that of the Lebanese in the produce trade in Sierra
Leone and elsewhere in West Africa, such as Senegal, as well
as to that of African produce traders in other West African
countries like Ghana. The Lebanese involvement in the Sierra
Leonean produce trade dates back to the early twentieth cen-
tury, when they exchanged imported merchandise for produce
and rented buildings at railway towns in the protectorate to
store produce. The fortunes of the Lebanese produce buyers
increased after the colonial administration started a program
of road construction. This led to the establishment of buying
centers along the trade routes and brought about an increase
in the produce trade as more African traders were attracted to
them because of their convenience. For several decades the
Lebanese functioned as middlemen between African producers
and European companies like the GBO, CFAO, and SCOA,
which had long been established in the produce trade and
owned stores in Freetown as well as the produce areas. In
Senegal the Lebanese were middlemen in the colonial ground-
nut trade, which was dominated by a handful of French com-
panies. These companies operated mainly through African and
Lebanese middlemen, who organized not only the purchase
and export of the crop, but also the import and distribution of
consumer goods. In Ghana, African produce middlemen, like
their Fula counterparts in Sierra Leone, ranged from small-
scale to wholesalers. They purchased produce like cocoa di-
rectly from indigenous farmers and sold the bulk to European
companies. Also, they faced similar problems, such as shortage
of capital, high transport costs, unskilled management, low
prices, and competition from the Lebanese.
22
An example of an early Fula produce trader is Almamy
Jamburia, who since the 1880s worked as an interpreter for
CFAO and was entrusted with leadership of trade delegations
to such areas as Rio Pongas and Forecaria, and as far as Fuuta
Jalon. After saving some capital, Almamy Jamburia opened a
shop in the east of Freetown and sold kola nuts to the French
Company. Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh was also a produce trader; he
owned a shop at his Cline Town residence in the east of the
city. The Fula traders bought produce in small quantities from
provincial farmers in areas like Kenema, Bo, Blama, Kailahun,
and Pendembu and also from produce dealers who brought
their merchandise to them in Freetown. Prior to 1908, when
Pendembu became the railhead of the Sierra Leone Govern-
ment Railway (SLGR), the town was a subsistence-farming
community, but it quickly became an important trading center
and a major produce bulking point for palm kernels, coee, and
cocoa. The Fula traders would store the produce until they
had a sucient quantity to sell to the European companies or
wait until prices were higher before selling.
Some Fula in produce-growing areas like Kissiland bought
cash crops in small quantities from Kissi farmers or bartered
manufactured goods for cash crops. These they sold to the
Sierra Leone Produce Marketing Board (SLPMB) oce at
Pendembu, which was only fty miles away. Pendembu was
the terminus of the railway that connected the eastern
province with Freetown. The Fula also sold their cash crops
to Lebanese traders and African middlemen involved in the
produce business in Pendembu. A few wealthy Fula traders,
who owned their own means of transportation, brought the
bulk produce to Freetown, where it could be sold for higher
prices.
23
The produce trade was highly seasonal and involved col-
lecting hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce from hun-
dreds of farmers scattered in the Sierra Leonean interior.
Produce buying was consisted of three elements: examining,
weighing, and bulking. Most produce was packed in jute bags,
but commodities like palm oil were put in drums. The produce
season was concentrated between November and March, a
hectic period for the produce traders. Most of the produce was
shipped to Europe, and exporters were required to ll the pro-
duce bags to a standard weight, sew them up, and put trade-
marks on them. This enabled the buyer in Europe to address
an exporter about any claim of underweight or defective qual-
ity. The entire process of storing, bagging, and transporting
from the initial purchase to export was called evacuation.
24
Many of the Fula produce traders in Freetown, like Alhaji
Tejan-Jalloh, had extensive trade networks that included kins-
men in the provinces. This facilitated their trading activities in
the city from a supply standpoint since they could depend on
regular supplies of produce. Many of their wives were indige-
nous to the produce-growing areas and helped them to enter
and expand their enterprises in this highly competitive busi-
ness. In addition, the wives participated in price negotiations
that led to the lowering of produce prices. Some Fula immi-
grant women also functioned as retailers in partnership with
their Fula husbands in the produce business. Kinship networks
were an important aspect of the organizational structure of
Fula produce trading.
25
The life history of the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula Agibu Jal-
loh presents an entrepreneurial model of Fula business that
contrasts with that of Alhaji Allie. The basis of Agibu Jallohs
entrepreneurship, which spans the colonial and postcolonial
periods, was the livestock trade, especially cattle, and then di-
versication into the produce trade, motor transport business,
and rice trade. This pattern of Fula accumulation and diversi-
cation can be explained by Agibu Jallohs desire to spread
business risk, increase prots, and create employment for kins-
men. It also demonstrates Fula vertical integration from pro-
duction through processing to wholesaling and marketing.
Agibu Jallohs father, Bilo Jalloh, migrated from Timbo in
Guinea to Rogalan, eleven miles from Rokulan, in the Bombali
district of northern Sierra Leone, at the turn of the century.
Agibu Jalloh, who was born in Rogalan in 1920, nished his
Islamic studies in the 1930s and then relocated to Rokulan to
join his older brother, Alhaji Almamy Wuro Jalloh, who had
opened a retail shop there. Agibu Jalloh started raising chick-
ens, which he exchanged for goats. After a few years he began
bartering goats for cattle and then took up the raising of cattle
as a full-time business. Agibu Jalloh also became involved with
his brother in the buying of produce from African farmers, in-
cluding Fula, and then selling the produce to Lebanese traders
and European companies. By 1940 Agibu Jalloh had opened a
tailoring shop in Rokulan, which expanded his business con-
tacts.
In the 1940s Agibu Jalloh pursued a career in both the
produce trade and motor transport business.
26
In 1958, after
realizing he could make more money by selling his produce
directly to the SLPMB instead of going through Lebanese
middlemen, he expanded his entrepreneurial activities in the
produce trade by becoming a licensed buying agent of the
SLPMB. Agibu Jalloh had several Lebanese friends in the pro-
duce business, like A. M. Jaward, who gave him valuable infor-
mation on how to compete and maximize prots as a produce
buying agent. The SLPMB was created by the colonial admin-
istration in 1949 and was modeled after the marketing boards
that had been established earlier in Nigeria and the Gold Coast
(Ghana). As a public corporation, the board was charged with
the following responsibilities: to buy agricultural produce; to
store, transport, process, and sell produce either locally or for
export; to appoint (and dismiss) buying agents; to x prices to
be paid to the producers for various commodities; to prosecute
anyone who paid lower prices to the producers for scheduled
commodities than those xed by the board; and to set price dif-
ferentials for various grades of produce and to determine min-
imum grades. The board assigned each product a producer
price, the price the farmer ought to receive, which was pub-
lished at the beginning of the buying season and was kept con-
stant until the end of the harvest season. When the board
started its operations, the vast majority of its buying agents
were European companies like the UAC, SCOA, PZ, CFAO,
and GBO. The SLPMB accumulated huge trading prots from
its operations and donated large amounts of money to various
colonial development projects.
27
For many years Agibu Jalloh was the largest Fula produce
buying agent of the SLPMB. He had extensive contacts among
African producers, including Fula, who cultivated crops like
palm kernels, cocoa, and coee in the eastern province, which
was the center of produce cultivation in the country. As a buy-
ing agent, Agibu Jalloh was remunerated for his services at
rates agreed upon between himself and the board. He was in-
structed by the board to purchase produce from farmers on the
boards behalf at prices not less than the minimum set in the
governments gazette. In return for his services, the board al-
lowed Agibu Jalloh the minimum price payable to the producer,
buying allowances, nancial expenses like the cost of bags, a
middlemans commission, transportation costs, and other inci-
dental expenses.
In his rst year as a buying agent, Agibu Jalloh purchased
his rst house, a three-story building at 89 Kissy Road in
the east end of Freetown. He used the ground oor to store
produce like palm kernels and cocoa. He developed extensive
contacts among African producers from various ethnic groups
like the Mende and Kissi as well as middlemen in the prov-
inces, who were ready to supply him with produce at compe-
titive prices. One such supplier was Ansumana Mohammed
Pujeh from Kenema district, one of the highest producing areas
of cocoa and coee in Sierra Leone. Not only did he cultivate
produce in large plantations, Pujeh purchased produce from
fellow farmers, which he in turn sold to Agibu Jalloh. In fact,
Pujeh used some of the prots from the produce trade to
launch a political career and open a supermarket in the east end
of Freetown, where the citys population was concentrated.
28
Many of Agibu Jallohs competitors in the produce trade were
Lebanese. By the 1960s, because Agibu Jalloh oered higher
produce prices relative to many of his Lebanese competitors, he
was able to attract some Lebanese, such as the Watfa brothers
and Alusine Antar, to sell their produce to him instead of well-
established Lebanese buying agents.
29
Within two years of opening his rst store, Agibu Jallohs
produce business was so protable that he opened a second,
bigger store, Banga (palm kernel) Store, at 16 Kissy Bye Pass
Road in 1960. He employed over one hundred workers from
various ethnic groups, including Temne, Limba, and Mende,
who were involved in the packing of produce in jute bags
marked with the inscription of the board and a code number
identifying Agibu Jalloh as a buying agent. This enabled the
board to trace bags with underweight or defective quality to
the agent who was responsible. The workers also weighed and
loaded thousands of bags of produce into lorries, which trans-
ported them to the SLPMB headquarters at Cline Town. At
the height of the produce season between November and
March, Agibu Jalloh employed additional workers and so kept
his operation functional twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week. His kinsmen supervised the workers and reported to
him. Recognizing the high cost of imported jute bags as well
as the need to maximize prots, Agibu established a jute bag
factory at Kissy, where he also employed multiethnic workers.
He bought manufacturing machines and raw materials from
Bangladesh.
Despite challenges like intense competition from other buy-
ing agents, late payments from the SLPMB, and the stress of
supervising a large multiethnic workforce, the produce trade
brought Agibu Jalloh considerable prots. From 1960 to 1978
he made prots totaling over Le2,000,000 measured against a
total investment of about Le1,000,000 over the same period.
Cost savings on labor provided by kinsmen and successful
eorts at reducing theft among workersa serious problem
for African businesses, one that has led to many bankrupt-
ciescontributed greatly to the protability of Agibu Jallohs
produce business. As a businessman with a well-known repu-
tation for savings and reinvestment, Agibu Jalloh plowed back
a substantial portion of this money into his various businesses,
especially those involving motor transport, the cattle trade,
and rice. This attitude typied the long-standing mentality
among immigrant and Sierra Leoneanborn Fula, including
Alhaji Abass Allie and Alhaji Bailor Barrie, that increased
prots should be combined with savings and diversication to
ensure business longevity and protability in the highly com-
petitive Sierra Leonean economy.
30
The Rice Trade
The rice trade also attracted Fula merchants and traders
from various ethnic groups. Rice is cultivated on uplands and
lowlands (commonly known as swamps), and it needs plenty
of water in the soil when it is growing. The upland rice obtains
moisture from the heavy rain of the wet season between May
and September, and the swamp rice grows in water that col-
lects in swamps or which may cover low-lying areas because of
the ooding of rivers. Upland farming is the oldest form of
rice cultivation and is practiced over most of Sierra Leone.
The rice is sown in May or June after the rst rains have fallen,
and it is harvested mainly in October and November. The av-
erage yield of paddy (rice before it is milled and parboiled) is
under twelve hundred pounds per acre. Yields are higher in
the eastern and southern provinces than in the northern
province.
31
Over the past three decades the government has at-
tempted to persuade farmers to adopt intensive swamp culti-
vation that would produce higher yields, but most farmers
have rejected this. Most consumers prefer the taste of upland
rice to that of swamp rice.
32
The rice harvest consists of heads of rice that are threshed
and winnowed, which yields the paddy, or husk rice (the grain
in its protective husk). The husk can be removed by pounding
the rice in mortars, followed by winnowing. The product of
hand processing is called native-cleaned rice. Dehusked rice is
sold in bags of 168 pounds or in bushels of 84 pounds. The
bushel is also used as a measure for husk rice, in which case it
weighs 60 pounds. Although there is a considerable amount of
trade in husk rice, most consumers buy only dehusked rice. In
1936 the colonial administration introduced the rst rice mill
in Sierra Leone. It produced milled rice, which consumers
preferred to native-cleaned rice because it needed less cleaning
before cooking. Since then several mills have been established
throughout the provinces in major rice-producing areas like
Rokupr and Kassiri as well as in Freetown.
33
The rice trade involved traders who bought husk or native-
cleaned rice in the villages by the bushel from small-scale
farmers, which they then sold in bags to wholesalers in pro-
vincial towns or in Freetown, who then retailed to women in
markets milled or native-cleaned rice that they sold by the
cup, normally a tin that originally served as a container for
fty cigarettes. In addition, there were commercial farmers
who sold native-cleaned and milled rice to wholesalers and
also exported rice to neighboring countries. Finally, there
were private importers of rice, such as the Lebanese. The de-
mand for rice was inelastic, since consumer purchases were
only slightly reduced because of higher prices. Consequently,
traders always proted when they raised the price because of a
real or expected rice shortage.
Rice shortages during the colonial era contributed to the
unrests of 1919 and 1955 in Freetown. In both incidents over
eighteen people were killed and extensive damage was done to
property. This paved the way for state intervention in the rice
trade. The colonial administration imported milled rice mostly
from the East Asia because it was cheaper, issued licenses to
private rice importers, and agreed to xed producers prices
for rice in order to boost local production. As the distribution
of imported rice became a major challenge in the 1950s, the
colonial administration established a Rice Department, which
took over the work related to the rice industry that had been
formerly carried out by the Department of Commerce.
34
During the postcolonial period the state continued its in-
volvement in the rice trade as an importer of Asian rice, issuer
of licenses to private traders, and price regulator. Because of
increasing commercial interest in the rice business in the 1960s
from Sierra Leoneans and noncitizens like the Lebanese, the
government created a Tender Board to consider all applicants
and to determine the quantity (quota) that each could handle.
Because of the protability of the rice trade, traders made
every eort to obtain quotas and to prevent rivals from obtain-
ing them. Some quotas were even sold to fellow private traders.
In 1965 the government replaced the Rice Department with
the Rice Corporation, a public corporation that handled more
foreign than local rice. Under a 1965 act all noncitizens, ex-
cept for naturalized Lebanese and Afro-Lebanese, were barred
from the rice trade. This was largely due to African pressure
to bar the Lebanese completely from the trade in rice. Despite
its eorts, the government could not stop proteering and the
hoarding of rice. This practice resulted in part from the lim-
ited storage space of the Rice Department, which was forced
to sell rice quickly to private traders, who controlled much of
the distribution of rice.
35
Fula participated in the rice trade, which dates back to the
colonial period, as wholesalers and retailers. Small-scale Fula
farmers produced and sold rice wholesale in the provinces, and
there was a host of retailers ranging from street sellers to
shopkeepers. Wholesale and retail rice trading were usually
not mutually exclusive; many Fula traders combined both ac-
tivities. There were a few well-established Fula merchants en-
gaged in commercial rice farming as well as wholesale and
retail rice trading, the two most prominent of whom were
Agibu Jalloh and Alhaji Bailor Barrie, who saw the rice trade
as highly protable given its large market in Sierra Leone and
the neighboring countries of Liberia and Guinea, where rice
was also the staple food.
Agibu Jalloh used prots from the cattle trade and motor
transport business to expand into the rice business. He owned
ten tractors and carried out mechanized rice farming on over
two hundred acres of land leased from paramount chiefs at
Mile 91 in the Tonkolili district and at Sanda Loko, Sanda
Kamaranka, and Sanda Tenderin in the Bombali district. He
could not purchase the land because it was communal prop-
erty, which is the common land tenure in the provinces. These
areas produced over fty thousand bags of milled rice annu-
ally. As in the produce trade, he employed workers from vari-
ous ethnic groups, including the Temne and Limba, who were
supervised by kinsmen. As evidence of vertical integration,
Agibu Jalloh had his own mills where a multiethnic labor force
dehusked the rice, packaged it in his locally made jute bags,
and then loaded the bags of rice into his lorries bound for mar-
kets in the provinces and Freetown. By combining rice pro-
duction, jute bag manufacturing, and the transport business,
Agibu Jalloh was able to reduce business costs and maximize
prots.
36
From a marketing standpoint, Agibu Jalloh sold most of his
rice wholesale to cross-ethnic traders in the provinces and
Freetown. These traders would then retail the rice by the bag
to consumers for home consumption or to street sellers. Agibu
Jalloh also transported rice in his lorries to the major markets
in the diamond-producing areas of Kono and Kenema, where
there was high population density and rice farming had been
neglected in favor of the more protable diamond mining. It is
estimated that more than half the diamond diggers during the
diamond rush of the late 1950s were farmers. In addition to
feeding their families, diamond dealers bought hundreds of
bags of rice to feed the workers, who were dependent on daily
rice consumption. During the diamond rush, for example,
local rice production could not keep up with demand, which
led to ination and forced the government to import rice to
avert social unrest.
37
The business career of Alhaji Barrie provides a variant
model of Fula entrepreneurship in which the cattle trade was
the basis of capital accumulation, followed by expansion into
the diamond-mining business, motor transport business, and
the rice trade.
38
The purpose of diversication here, as in the
case of Alhaji Allie and Agibu Jalloh, was to spread business
risk, increase prots, and employ kinsmen. In expanding into
the rice business, Alhaji Barrie used prots from the diamond
business. He leased over twenty acres of land from chiefdom
authorities at Kamakwie in the Bombali district, where he
produced over twelve thousand bags of rice annually. He also
practiced mechanized farming using tractors, and he was per-
haps the rst farmer in the country to import a combine har-
vester. In addition to constructing a petrol depot on his farm,
Alhaji Barrie built four modern farm houses that housed equip-
ment and workers as well as provided storage. Like Agibu
Jalloh, Alhaji Barrie employed workers from various ethnic
groups, including Temne and Limba, who were supervised by
kinsmen. He also owned mills that dehusked the rice. He sold
most of his rice wholesale to traders who retailed it in the
major towns of the provinces, such as Makeni, Kabala, and Bo,
as well as in Freetown.
39
While the majority of Fula in the rice business were male
wholesalers and retailers, a sizable number of Fula women
bought native-cleaned rice or milled rice in bushels or bags
from various areas of the provinces through extensive trading
networks and marketed it in Freetown, the hub of their com-
mercial activities. Not only did the Fulamusus traders com-
pete with cross-ethnic merchants, they bypassed Lebanese and
African middlemen in the rice trade, preferring to deal directly
with rice producers. Most of the female Fula traders received
their capital from their Fula husbands, who were often well-
established merchants. The trading activities of Fula women
represented diversication and expansion of their family-
operated private enterprises. Many of the Fula women traders
were Sierra Leonean born and were therefore familiar with
the opportunities and challenges of the local commercial envi-
ronment.
One example of a female Fula rice trader was Haja Fatmata
Bah,
40
the rst of four wives of the Fula chief Alhaji Bah. Al-
though Alhaji Bah was a traditionalist who held the view that
wives should not work for others, he allowed some of them to
own shops and to participate in the produce trade as retailers.
Beginning in the late 1960s, after Ramadan each year Haja Bah
traveled over a period of four months to Mambolo, Kassiri, and
Samu, major rice-growing areas in the provinces, to purchase
rice from farmers. Each year she bought hundreds of bags of
rice, most of which were transported by launch down the Sierra
Leone River to Government Wharf in Freetown, although
some were carried by lorries. Although Haja Bah retailed rice
directly to Freetown consumers, she gave hundreds of bags of
rice to her husband to supply to government institutions under
his food contract, which brought them substantial prots.
When the APC came to power in 1968, its supporters tried
to stop Haja Bah from buying rice in Mambolo, Makotolo, and
Kassiri because she was considered an SLPP supporter. The
rice farmers of Mambolo, for example, informed her that the
APC government had instructed them not to sell rice to her.
After several unsuccessful attempts, Haja Bah decided to start
buying rice from cross-ethnic farmers in Kabala, which has a
large Fula population. Her business eorts were facilitated by
the Fula chief of Kabala, who introduced her to rice producers
and traders as the wife of the Fula chief in Freetown. This en-
abled her to buy large quantities of rice at competitive prices.
In one month alone, she would send as many as ve lorries of
rice every week to her husband to supply to government insti-
tutions. Some of the rice was stored in family-owned stores
until August or September, when Haja Bah retailed the rice to
Freetown consumers to meet the increased demand. Most of
the prots of Haja Bahs rice business came from supplying
government institutions under her husbands contract. In ad-
dition to retailing rice, Haja Bah and her husband gave several
bags of rice each month to needy Fula in Freetown.
41
Not only did the rice trade spread the business risk of Fula
merchants and lead to the employment of more kinsmen, it
brought them considerable prots as wholesalers and retailers.
From 1970 to 1978 it is estimated that Agibu Jalloh invested
about Le800,000 in the rice trade and made prots of about
Le640,000; Alhaji Barrie invested about Le900,000 and made
prots of about Le600,000; Alhaji Bah and his wife Haja Bah in-
vested about Le500,000 and made prots of about Le300,000.
42
Most of the rice prots were plowed back into other busi-
nesses, such as the livestock trade, motor transport, produce
trade, and the diamond business. In addition to the entrepre-
neurial eorts of the Fula, high prices and the increasing con-
sumer population of Freetown were major contributors to
Fula success in the rice trade.
43
Fula Culture and Trading
Fula merchandise trading was greatly shaped by their cul-
ture. Fula traders were predominantly male. In Fula cultural
practice it was the responsibility of Fulamusube to bear chil-
dren and take care of the home. The Fula women and indige-
nous wives of the Fula shopkeepers, for example, ran the
businesses only when their husbands made periodic visits to
their homelands in Guinea or Senegal. Such visits often lasted
from one to three months. If the Fula shopkeeper had two or
more wives, he would assign responsibility for running the
shop to the beyngu aranoh, while the others rotated the house-
hold responsibilities. Children who had acquired some West-
ern education usually helped with balancing the books and
obtaining supplies. When the husband returned to Freetown,
the beyngu aranoh would provide a comprehensive account of
how the business and household were run in his absence.
The trading enterprises of the Fula involved both nuclear
and extended family members. The owner of the business, usu-
ally the father, made all the management decisions, while other
family members played supporting roles. Some wealthy Fula
shopkeepers opened shops for each of their two, three, or four
wives at dierent locations in Freetown. Kinship networks
were important in the commercial organization of Fula shop-
keepers in terms of credit allocation and business expansion.
Wealthy Fula traders provided their kinsmen with nyamande
in cash or goods to open their own businesses. In keeping with
their shared Islamic faith, the recipients repaid these loans
without interest at their convenience. Well-established Fula
traders also provided interest-free loans and monetary gifts to
kinsmen to expand their trading enterprises.
Kinship anity also brought together small-scale Fula
shopkeepers in business partnerships to procure merchandise
wholesale from Lebanese, European, and Indian merchants.
The goods were divided according to the size of capital in-
vested by each partner and retailed to consumers. This prac-
tice enabled the Fula shopkeepers to overcome the problem of
small individual capital; they also gained the upper hand over
competitors trading in similar goods bought at relatively high
retail prices. Small-scale Fula shopkeepers also gave kinsmen
money collected from groups of traders to travel to the south-
eastern border town of Koindu to purchase merchandise. Usu-
ally the money was collected monthly and handed to the leader
of the group, generally a well-established trader and long-
term resident of Freetown. Koindu was a major commercial
center that connected three trading routes: American manu-
factured goods from Liberia, French manufactured goods from
Guinea, and British manufactured merchandise from Free-
town. In addition to being a market for manufactured goods
like cigarettes, textiles, radios, watches, and soap, Koindu was
also a major exporter of cash crops like cocoa, coee, and palm
kernels. As trade expanded Koindu was transformed from a
weekly to a daily market involving various ethnic groups from
the region and elsewhere in Sierra Leone as well as foreign na-
tionals such as Liberians and Guineans.
44
Real Estate Investment
Despite the contrasting entrepreneurial models of Alhaji Allie,
Agibu Jalloh, and Alhaji Barrie in the merchandise trade, they
had one common pattern of diversication: real estate invest-
ment. As it was with Fula traders in the livestock trade, urban
properties were the single largest investment of Fula in the
merchandise trade for the same reasons discussed in the pre-
ceding chapter. Besides being safe and giving a good return on
investment, properties became a way to invest that did not go
against the Islamic injunctions regarding Western banking in-
stitutions and interest on loans. Also, the Fula merchants used
some of their properties to house kin and clients, as well as to
rent for prot. In contrast to the colonial period, when only a
few Fula in the merchandise trade invested in properties de-
spite the encouragement of Alhaji Momodu Allie, there was a
substantial increase in real estate investment among both im-
migrant and Sierra Leoneanborn Fula in the postcolonial
period. Collectively, Fula merchants in the merchandise trade
owned over two hundred properties in Freetown valued at
over Le700,000. These Fula merchants also bought properties
with cash from cross-ethnic buyers, but mostly from Krio prop-
erty owners. Many took advantage of relatively low property
prices in the expanding eastern part of the cityin areas like
Kissy, Wellington, and Calabar Townwhere the population
expansion was the fastest because of the migration of rural
Sierra Leoneans. In fact, the east of Freetown was the gateway
from the provinces. Agibu Jalloh, for example, bought several
properties in the east end of Freetown.
Most of the Fula properties in the east of Freetown were
vacant lots that needed development. By 1978 over one hun-
dred one-, two-, and three-story homes, houses with ground-
oor shops, and rental rooming houses that adjoined a family
house, had been constructed on many of these lots. In fact, the
Fula were pioneer developers in many neighborhoods in Kissy,
Wellington, and Calabar Town. They rented their properties
to the cross-ethnic population of these areas, who were at-
tracted by relatively cheap rents and proximity to the com-
mercial center of Freetown by public transportation. Many of
these residents were migrants from the provinces who com-
muted daily from their trading occupations in the markets and
major streets of Freetown to their homes, usually leaving be-
fore sunrise and returning home in the late evening.
In contrast to Agibu Jalloh and many other Fula property
owners who invested in eastern Freetown, Alhaji Allie bought
several properties in exclusive neighborhoods in the west end
of the city. Having inherited properties from his legendary
father that brought him considerable income, Alhaji Allie rec-
ognized the importance of properties as a secure long-term
investment and reliable source of income. With information
Fig. 3.2. Fula commercial property in Freetown
FPO
70%
about the long-term prospects of housing in Freetown, Alhaji
Allie bought properties in the suburban west of the city since
he was convinced that more wealthy, educated elites as well as
expatriates would take up residence in this area. In 1969 he
bought two buildings in the exclusive Spur Road neighbor-
hood, and in 1974 he purchased an additional property there.
He rented all three properties to Lebanese and other expatri-
ates. In all, Alhaji Allie owned eighteen properties valued at
over Le100,000. Of these he bought nine with cash, which is a
testament to his wealth and success as a merchant. Alhaji Allie
purchased most of his properties from Krio sellers.
45
Despite their success, Fula in the merchandise trade, like
those in the livestock business, did not realize their full poten-
tial. In 1978 the Sierra Leoneanborn Fula accountant Alhaji
Musa Jalloh called an unprecedented meeting of Fula from
various sectors of the merchandise trade. He proposed forma-
tion of a multinational, joint-stock trading company that
would initially establish branches in Freetown, then expand to
the major towns of the provinces, such as Makeni, Bo, and
Kenema, and eventually to the neighboring countries of
Guinea and Liberia. He further advocated that the Fula, given
their long involvement and experience in the commerce of
Sierra Leone, should seize the market opportunity created by
the downsizing of such European companies as PZ and CFAO
in the country. He also proposed that Western-educated Fula
manage the company while wealthy Fula provide the capital.
In fact, some of these recommendations had been suggested in
earlier studies of Sierra Leonean entrepreneurship.
46
Despite his detailed proposal, the vast majority of Fula
merchants did not embrace Alhaji Jallohs business plan. The
distrust of Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn Fula by
wealthy Fula immigrant merchants was the primary reason
for the failure of the plan. Clan dierences over who should
provide leadership for the proposed company was also a seri-
ous obstacle. In addition, the strong commitment of Fula
traders to keeping their business details secret within the fam-
ily or kinship group, their distrust of Western banking insti-
tutions, their opposition to interest, and their reluctance to
delegate business responsibilities to non-Fula contributed to
the nonimplementation of Alhaji Jallohs vision.
The decision of President Tour in 1978 to introduce eco-
nomic and political liberalization in Guinea brought about a
gradual exodus of immigrant Fula in the merchandise trade.
The Guinean president appealed to his fellow nationals living
abroad to return home and involve themselves freely in na-
tional economic development. The chief reason for the mass re-
turn of immigrant Fula traders was to participate in Guineas
new free trade.
In addition to the bold initiatives of President Tour in
1978, three developments that occurred in Sierra Leone in that
year also motivated Fula traders to return to Guinea. The rst
was the decision of the Sierra Leone government in its 1978
budget speech to increase the fees paid under the Non-Citizen
(Trade and Business) Act of 1969. The second was the intro-
duction of national registration in Sierra Leone, which distin-
guished citizens from noncitizens by issuance of identity cards.
Many Fula returnees left instead of registering as noncitizens
for fear of harassment. The third was the opening of the Kam-
bia bridge, which facilitated travel between Freetown and
Conakry, the capital of Guinea.
47
There is no comprehensive statistical record of the number
of Fula in merchandise trading that returned to Guinea during
this period. This was due to the corruption and ineciency of
police immigration ocers at the border, the refusal of Fula
immigrants to register with border ocials, and poor record
keeping by the Sierra Leone Police Immigration Department.
Although they recorded only 210 Fula returnees for 1978, im-
migration ocials pointed out that hundreds were undocu-
mented. According to eyewitness accounts, during the year
about ve thousand Fula were on the lorries that departed
daily from Freetown to Guinea. The returnees took with them
cash and merchandise to start trading careers or expand ex-
isting ones in their homeland. It is estimated that over ve
hundred Fula shops were closed in Freetown because of this
emigration, although many Fula who had established strong
family and business ties in the city stayed behind to face the
new challenges.
48
4
The Motor Transport Business
As Fula became successful merchants in the livestock business
and merchandise trade, they sought diversication in the ex-
panding postindependence Sierra Leonean economy. One such
area was motor transport, which was rapidly emerging as a
protable business. Despite its importance, few studies of any
kind have been conducted on the role of Africans in the motor
transport business of Sierra Leone. Some, like those by Peter
M. Kaindaneh and J. Barry Riddell, have been done on the evo-
lution of Sierra Leones transport services from the colonial
era to the postindependence period.
1
Although it does not deal
specically with the Fula, S. M. Sesays study on drivers in the
motor transport industry provides signicant information on
the activities of Africans as well as the evolution and impor-
tance of this industry in the Sierra Leonean economy.
2
H. L.
van der Laans study on the Lebanese also contains valuable
information on the development of the motor transport busi-
ness and the competitive role of Africans in this sector of the
economy.
3
113
This chapter examines the role of the Fula in the motor
transport business of Freetown between 1961 and 1978 and
explores the issues of capital accumulation, business manage-
ment, and types of investment. The study also helps ll a gap
in the understanding of the relationship between Fula kinship
and business success, the contradictions between Fula Islamic
faith and business practices, and the continuities and disconti-
nuities between Fula private enterprise in the colonial and
postcolonial periods in Sierra Leone. The careers of two suc-
cessful Fula entrepreneurs, Agibu Jalloh and Alhaji Bailor
Barrie, in the motor transport business will be examined, each
representing a dierent model. In the case of Agibu Jalloh the
motor transport business was one level of diversication re-
sulting from his core capital accumulation in the cattle trade.
Alhaji Barrie, on the other hand, diversied into the motor
transport business from the diamond trade, which was the
basis of his mercantile career.
Over the course of the past six decades Freetown, the ad-
ministrative and economic capital of Sierra Leone, has been the
hub of the national transportation network. This is the result
of the citys port, its point of contact with the outside world, as
well as its concentration of economic and utility services and
its role as the seat of government and the source of news and
innovation. For all these reasons Freetown has been the focus
of modernization in the country, a position that has aected
signicantly Sierra Leones motor transport business. Motor
vehicles were used not only for the movement of goods be-
tween Freetown and the provinces but also for the transporta-
tion of rural migrants from the provinces to the city. These
multiethnic migrants, who number in the thousands, were at-
tracted by Freetowns many amenities, including educational,
nancial, and medical institutions. Besides employment oppor-
tunities, these migrants were exposed to new ideas and values,
which many of them took back to their traditional societies.
This further brought about an increase in migration to the cap-
ital, as their kinsmen learned about the many opportunities in
urban Freetown. The city also attracted those who had accu-
mulated wealth in mining and the produce trade in the prov-
inces and now wanted to enjoy the urban life of Freetown.
4
The transport sector is a major source of socioeconomic de-
velopment in Sierra Leone and elsewhere in Africa. Given the
broad ethnic diversity as well as a strong ethnic and regional
consciousness in Sierra Leone, an expanded transportation in-
frastructure fosters national unity and makes Freetown more
accessible to the diverse ethnic groups of the provinces. More-
over, it stimulates economic growth by linking producers, who
are concentrated in the rural areas, and consumers, who are
mostly found in the urban centers, especially Freetown. Con-
sequently, producers are aided in the marketing of their mer-
chandise since they can choose from a wider range of potential
buyers. A good transportation system leads to internal spe-
cialization and division of labor, which further result in lower
retail prices of food and other consumer goods produced for
the domestic market. Also, transport costs are central to deter-
mining the competitiveness of local businesses, as well as that
of Sierra Leone, in international trade. Transport facilities
provide the initial stimulus for the establishment and further
development of greater production in agriculture, industry,
trade, and tourism. The ability, therefore, to provide and oper-
ate transport facilities at reasonable cost determines, in large
measure, the success or failure of social and economic activi-
ties. Striking features of transport in Sierra Leone, as else-
where in Africa, are the low density and wide dispersal of
population. Thus, passenger transport frequency and demand
are comparatively low over long distances and high only in
urban areas.
5
The Motor Transport Business / 115
Transport Services
At independence, Sierra Leone had ve major transport ser-
vices: inland waterways, roads, coastal and ocean shipping, air
services, and rail. There were two railways: the SLGR and the
Sierra Leone Development Companys (DELCO) mineral line
from Pepel to Marampa. For over half a century the state-run
SLGR, whose construction was largely completed in 1916,
was the backbone of the countrys transport system. In addi-
tion to accessing the oil palm belt of the south and east of the
country and facilitating administration of the protectorate, the
railway was built to transport tropical export commodities
like coee and palm kernels to the coast in Freetown. There
was a high demand for palm produce in Europe for the pro-
duction of glycerin and margarine. Government Wharf in
Freetown, adjacent to the central railway station on Water
Street, was the main focus of freight carried on the railway be-
fore the opening of the Queen Elizabeth II Quay at Cline
Town in 1954.
6
The railway had many advantages, such as low accident
rate, smooth ride, and reliability. In addition, it contributed to
urban growth in both Freetown and the provinces. While
Freetown remained the focus of urban growth, the provincial
headquarters of Bo (southern), Makeni (northern), and
Kenema (eastern) also increased their population because of
the railway network that connected them. Smaller towns in the
provinces, such as Hangha, Blama, Pendembu, and Segbwema,
also expanded their settlements because of the railway pres-
ence. African residents in these areas as well as Krio and
Lebanese traders established shops along the railway line to
buy produce and sell imported goods. Large European rms
also built factories at the junction of road and rail to trade in
produce.
7
But by the early 1920s it was clear that despite its benets,
the railway could not compete with road transport, which was
less costly, faster, more exible, and accessible to more areas.
This was evident on the road between Makeni and Port Loko
between 1934 and 1938. The gradual withdrawal of European
rms from major provincial towns, which accelerated after
independence, also contributed to the loss of freight trac
on the railway. The Lebanese and African merchants who re-
placed the European rms, operating on limited capital and
dependent on a quick turnover of their merchandise, often used
lorries to make smaller and more frequent shipments.
In 1967 the National Reformation Council (NRC), a mili-
tary regime that gained power after the coup dtat in March
of that year, decided to phase out the railway. This decision
was supported by the APC civilian government that took over
in April 1968. By 1978 the APC government had phased out
the SLGR and only the DELCO railway remained. The deci-
sion to downsize use of the railway was based on a survey
commissioned by the World Bank, which recommended that
the funds saved should be used to improve the road system.
Among the problems indicated by the World Bank were road
competition, low eciency of the railway, excessive shipment
time, and lack of heavy trac generation within the rail hin-
terland.
8
The Road Transport Network
The road transport network began in the early 1900s as the
colonial administration built feeder roads to transport palm oil
to routes joining the railway. Urban centers, like Freetown,
provided the earliest transport nodes in Sierra Leone. They
also brought about the development of road interconnections
linking producing areas with market centers. Several factors,
such as population distribution, physical environment, level of
economic activity, and urbanization, aected the spatial diu-
sion of the road network, but road development was dictated
more by the needs of export agricultural production than by
the populations social need for accessibility. This emphasis on
the development of export products resulted in a spatial dis-
tribution of roads that greatly reected the priorities of Sierra
Leones mercantile-oriented economy. In 1922 Sierra Leone
had only 291 miles of roads, with the longest stretch only 24
miles. In the ve-year period from 1926 to 1931 the network
of motorable roads expanded to over 800 miles.
During World War II the colonial administration completed
the road between Freetown and Port Loko as an alternative
route in case the railway was sabotaged. This was the rst
road between the colony and the protectorate, and it had a
major impact on commerce between Port Loko and Freetown.
Traders along the Port LokoMakeni road and along the Port
LokoMarampa road who owned lorries preferred Freetown
to Port Loko when buying merchandise and selling produce
because it eliminated the transferring of goods from lorries
into launches or vice-versa in Port Loko. The colonial admin-
istration also built a circular road around the Freetown penin-
sula, thus linking the isolated villages with the capital. After
the war the colonial administration undertook a massive in-
vestment of millions of pounds in constructing and improving
roads within Freetown and between the capital and the prov-
inces. The road network suddenly grew from a series of short,
disconnected feeders to one that extended over much of the
country.
Under APC rule the 16.5-mile Freetown-Waterloo road
was largely completed and opened to trac between 1976 and
1977. This major highway project, which received funding
from West Germany, is the main arterial route that connects
the provinces with Freetown and the rest of the world. A
major goal of the governments highway development pro-
gram was the improvement of existing primary and secondary
roads to increase their capacity. Since 1960 the national road
transport system has been managed by the Public Works De-
partment (PWD), local governments, and private agencies.
The road network in Freetown has been administered by the
City Council and the PWD.
9
In contrast to the colonial administration, the postindepen-
dence Sierra Leonean governments took into account social
and political considerations in developing a transport system.
While they recognized the importance of the export sector,
the governments tried to expand the transport system to help
diversify the internal exchange economy and to promote over-
all development, especially in the poorer regions of the coun-
try.
10
The Freetown Motor Transport Business
The motor transport business in Freetown, which dates back
to the early 1900s, comprised passenger transportation, the
movement of goods, and the import and retail of motor vehi-
cles. Because Sierra Leone lacked the capacity to manufacture
motor vehicles, it imported them from Europe, North Amer-
ica, and Asia, although most of the imported cars and lorries
were British and American made. By the mid-1950s French,
German, and Italian car manufacturers had become interested
in selling cars and vans in Sierra Leone. Renault was the rst
to appoint an agent, Mustapha Hassan, a Lebanese, in Free-
town. In 1957 Mercedes-Benz appointed A. Yazbeck, another
Lebanese, as its agent in Freetown. Japanese cars and lorries
entered the Freetown market in the 1960s. Bedford lorries im-
ported by UAC dominated the lorry market at rst, but even-
tually Toyota lorries from Japan sold faster because they were
cheaper. In 1964 Allie Hassan, a Lebanese agent, introduced
Japanese-made Datsun cars in Freetown. By the late 1960s the
competitive position of European cars, especially British cars,
had declined relative to the cheaper Japanese cars.
11
The largest buyers of motor vehicles in Freetown were Krio
professionals and merchants. The rental income from their
many properties in the city as well as their professional in-
come enabled them to purchase a variety of vehicles. They
were able to buy even more after World War II, when the
British army sold a large number of used vehicles on their de-
parture from the city. The vast majority of the Krio-owned ve-
hicles were used for private purposes and were status symbols
in the ethnically segmented Freetown society. With indepen-
dence, however, the Krio gradually lost much of their privi-
leged economic status to such ethnic groups as the Lebanese
and the Fula.
12
Statistical evidence suggests that it was in the postcolonial
period that the Fula, both Sierra Leoneanborn and immi-
grants, became major competitors in the motor transport busi-
ness of Freetown. The Fula were involved in all areas of the
business as owners of a large number of commercial vehicles,
drivers, importers and retailers of motor vehicles, and me-
chanics. According to estimates from the Sierra Leone Police
License Oce, of the 9,862 taxis registered in Freetown be-
tween 1961 and 1978, Fula owned 8,488; of the 1,616 lorries,
they owned 987; and of the 392 poda-podas (light vans), they
owned 234 (see tables 4.14.3). Many of these vehicles were
purchased with prots derived from the diamond trade.
Passenger Transport
The passenger transportation business, which involved mostly
taxis and poda-podas, attracted a large number of enterprising
Fula merchants, in addition to various ethnic groups, because
of its protability. This was largely due to the rapidly expand-
ing population in Freetown, which made the motor transport
Source: Register of Motor Vehicles, Sierra Leone Police License Ofce, Freetown.
Table 4.1
Estimated Taxis Owned and Operated by Fula Merchants in Freetown, 19611978
Taxis
Total
Table 4.2
Estimated Lorries Owned by Fula Merchants in Freetown, 19611978
Lorries
Total
Table 4.3
Estimated Poda-Podas (Light Vans) Owned by Fula Merchants in Freetown, 19611978
Poda-Podas
Total
business one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy.
From1963 to 1974 the Freetown population grew from 161,258
to 276,247. As waves of migrants from the provinces and other
West African countries settled in the city, the government-run
Road Transport Corporation could not keep up with the de-
mands for public transportation. This shortage created the en-
vironment for large prots to be made by commercial motor
vehicle owners.
13
Like most Fula in the livestock and merchandise businesses,
the vast majority of those in the passenger transport business
did not borrow capital from banks to nance or expand their
private enterprise, for the reasons discussed in the preceding
chapters. Many of the Fula owners of passenger vehicles, espe-
cially taxis, accumulated capital from various sources, including
the diamond business and the merchandise trade. Others had
accumulated capital through savings from various menial occu-
pations such as domestic servant, housekeeper, shop boy, and
watchman (night security) in Freetown. They worked for Krio
professionals and merchants, as well as Lebanese and Indian
traders. Some of these Fula were self-employed as porters in
the major markets of Freetown. From these menial occupations
these Fula opened retail shops in the city, which became a sec-
ond level of capital accumulation from which they diversied
into the passenger transport business. This was also an attempt
to spread their business risk in the competitive business envi-
ronment in Freetown.
14
Fula had extensive consanguineous and aned kinship net-
works in the passenger transportation business, which is a ma-
jor reason for their success. There was a gradation of owners
ranging from those with one vehicle to those with over twenty
vehicles. The top of the pyramid was headed by wealthy Fula
entrepreneurs like Agibu Jalloh and Alhaji Barrie. The Fula
owners, especially the wealthy merchants, employed mostly
their sons, sons-in-law, brothers, brothers-in-law, nephews,
cousins, and grandsons to operate their vehicles as drivers,
who were crucial to the success of this business, and as ap-
prentices. The apprentices played an important role in collect-
ing fares from passengers and advertising in the highly
competitive lorry parks in the city. Many of the competitors of
Fula drivers were Sierra Leoneans who had learned their skill
as government employees. It was common for Fula drivers to
own their commercial vehicles.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of this kinship-centered em-
ployment approach was that it reduced operating costs since
kinsmen were often underpaid or received deferred payment.
It also minimized losses through theft by drivers, who were
responsible for collecting the daily proceeds. The protability
of commercial passenger vehicles was largely dependent on
the honesty of drivers in reporting earnings since, unlike ad-
vanced industrial societies, there were no money meters to
verify daily income. As an incentive to encourage drivers to
report full earnings, many Fula owners oered them an oral
business deal whereby the drivers would assume ownership of
the vehicle after the purchase price and a negotiated prot
were realized on the investment within a certain period of
time. This incentive was quite successful in getting drivers to
become business partners rather than exploiters of owners, a
common occurrence in the passenger transport business. Many
non-Fula drivers built houses and bought vehicles while still
driving for an employer, who made only marginal prots or
even experienced losses. Theft by unscrupulous drivers was a
serious problem in the passenger transport business.
The operating cost of the Fula was also reduced signi-
cantly because of their kinship ties to mechanics who did vehi-
cle repair and maintenance. A large number of the mechanics
in Freetown were Fula immigrants from Guinea who had
garages (auto repair shops) scattered throughout the city. In
contrast to other groups, like the Temne, who were mechanics,
Fula oered competitive prices for their services because of
their low labor cost. Frequent maintenance of vehicles was es-
sential in this industry because of the poor condition of the
roads and the age of the vehicles. Having an honest mechanic
was crucial to protability since drivers often would connive
with a mechanic to eece an owner for alleged vehicle repair.
Frequent garage visits by drivers led to the bankruptcy of
many vehicle owners since they spent money on xing prob-
lems (many only alleged) and lost income when the vehicle was
in a garage. Through many years of hard work, some Fula me-
chanics were able to raise capital to buy new or used vehicles
that were used for commercial passenger transportation. Since
these Fula mechanics repaired and serviced their own vehicles,
they were able to reduce their overhead signicantly.
15
The two major passenger routes in Freetown were those
from the CBD, especially Rawdon Street and Kissy Street, to
Wellington in the east of the city and from the CBD to Lum-
ley in the west of the capital. The rst route was the busiest
since it passed through areas of high population density. Usu-
ally taxis and poda-podas would make several stops as they
plied this route, picking up passengers and disembarking them.
Each time a passenger disembarked a taxi or poda-poda he was
charged a fee. By the 1970s taxis, like poda-podas, were charg-
ing individual fares instead of group fares for trips. It was not
uncommon for taxi drivers, especially those who owned their
vehicles, to make a prot of over Le200 at the end of each day
after deducting expenses for petrol. The taxis had a seating ca-
pacity of four, but drivers frequently added a fth passenger.
Poda-podas, with a larger capacity of between ten to twenty
passengers, made prots of over Le500.
Fula also owned medium-size lorries, which were mostly
Japanese brands like Mazda, that transported passengers and
luggage between Freetown and the provinces. Some of the lor-
ries went as far as Conakry in neighboring Guinea. Usually a
lorry would depart from a lorry park in the east of Freetown,
where the population was concentrated, early in the morning
and would make few stops on its journey. Passengers included
immigrants from Guinea, rural migrants from the provinces,
and multiethnic business people resident in Freetown. Riders
were charged for seat occupancy and their luggage, which
increased the prot margin of the drivers. The drivers were
assisted by one or two male apprentices who solicited passen-
gers in the noisy and competitive lorry parks.
As vehicle owners and drivers the Fula faced widespread
problems in the passenger transport business. Perhaps the most
serious was the corruption of trac police ocers, whose fre-
quent arrest of Fula drivers on alleged trac oenses resulted
in enormous revenue loss. Corruption was common among traf-
c police ocers of various ranks throughout Freetown. De-
spite many complaints about this problem, the government,
especially during APC rule, did not address it. Since many of
the Fula drivers were illegal immigrants and distrusted the
justice system, they bribed police ocers rather than go to
court to challenge trac charges. Even the few Fula lawyers,
who were Sierra Leoneanborn, were distrusted by immigrant
Fula drivers to represent them in court. Recognizing that the
Fula were prone to bribery, the police ocers targeted them
for alleged trac violations.
16
Poor road conditions, especially during the long rainy sea-
son between May and September, resulted in various mechan-
ical problems that presented a serious nancial drain to Fula
vehicle owners. Perhaps the most common problem was the
replacement of shock absorbers. Given the frequency of re-
placing broken parts and the fact that most spare parts were
imported and thus expensive, the Fula grappled with a large
and costly maintenance overhead. Lebanese businesses, such
as A. J. Bamin, A. Bahsoon, and Baydoun and Abess, dominated
the import and retail of spare parts in stores concentrated in
the CBD or workshops attached to showrooms of imported
vehicles, like Freetown Motors. A few European companies,
like UAC Motors and SCOA, as well as Indian companies like
Chanrai also retailed spare parts. By the 1970s some Fula and
ethnic groups like the Temne were beginning to open stores
that sold spare parts throughout Freetown. Some of the spare
parts were counterfeits imported from Nigeria, which were
cheaper but not durable. Vehicle repair was costly to owners,
and unscrupulous mechanics made it even costlier by suggest-
ing unnecessary repairs.
17
Goods Transport
In addition to the passenger transport business, the Fula
also played a major role as business owners in the transporta-
tion of various goods on lorries, such as Bedfords and Mercedes-
Benzes, between Freetown and the provinces. The goods
included imported merchandise, cattle, and produce like coee
and palm kernels. The major routes included Freetown-Bo,
Freetown-Kenema, Freetown-Makeni, and Freetown-Kabala.
Like the passenger transport business, this was a private enter-
prise comprising various ethnic groups, such as the Lebanese,
Fula, Temne, Mende, and Krio. It was highly competitive, and
success required networking with businesspeople who wanted
their goods transported quickly and aordably. Some of the
goods were perishable foodstus like oranges and tomatoes.
The desire of businesspersons for a quick turnover on their
imported merchandise, which required lorry transport, made
the lorry transport business highly protable. Moreover, the
location of the countrys only seaport at Cline Town gave
lorry owners an advantage in competing for business to trans-
port imported merchandise from Freetown to the provinces.
This port location, which was a major consideration in the
SLPMBs decision to have its headquarters at Cline Town,
also meant that all export produce had to be transported to
Freetown, where it was loaded onto ships bound mostly for
Europe.
18
Prior to independence, the Lebanese competed with Euro-
peans and Africans, especially the Krio, in this sector of the
motor transport business. Lebanese-owned lorries trans-
ported mostly produce, like palm kernels and coee. Like the
Krio, the Lebanese purchased several lorries from the British
army when it left after World War II, and most of them were
used to transport goods between Freetown and the provinces.
Following the war the number of African lorry owners in the
protectorate increased because of higher earnings for their
produce. But the Lebanese still dominated the lorry business,
which led Africans to pressure the government to restrict
Lebanese participation in this private enterprise. Conse-
quently, in the 1960s and 1970s the government passed legis-
lation that restricted the participation of noncitizens in the
business of transporting goods on lorries. Some European,
Lebanese, and Indian businesses that used their own lorries to
supply their provincial subsidiaries were allowed to operate.
The evidence suggests that some Lebanese, who now owned
bigger (seven-ton) lorries that few Africans could aord, cir-
cumvented the restrictions by registering their lorries in the
name of Sierra Leonean employees or friends. Despite the re-
strictions, the postindependence period witnessed the expan-
sion of the role of the Lebanese, both citizens and noncitizens,
in the lorry business because of their involvement in the dia-
mond business, produce trade, and import and retail of motor
vehicles.
19
Prior to the 1960s only a small number of Fula were in-
volved in the transportation of goods in the provinces or be-
tween Freetown and the provinces. Lack of capitala new
Bedford lorry, for example, cost over 1,000and opposition
to borrowing a vehicle on interest were the major reasons. But
as Fula accumulated capital from various sources, including
the cattle trade, petty trading, and the produce trade, their
numbers in the lorry business increased substantially.
20
rnr rtsirss c.nrrn or .cirt .tton
The legendary Agibu Jalloh (g. 4.1) is an excellent exam-
ple of a Fula highly successful in the lorry business. In 1943
after saving for several years he and his older brother, Alhaji
Wuro Jalloh, purchased their rst lorry, a secondhand Ford,
for 500. While Alhaji Jalloh managed their shop at Rokulan,
Agibu Jalloh gave up tailoring and rst became a lorry con-
ductor, then a mechanic, and nally a driver. This was a com-
mon path of ascent among Fula and non-Fula drivers in the
lorry business. The partnership between Agibu Jalloh and his
brother demonstrates the important role of kinship ties in the
motor transport business in regard to capital accumulation
and the operation of vehicles. The lorry transported mostly
goods, produce, and cattle between Makeni and Port Loko
since the road connecting the northern province with Free-
town was still under construction. It cost between 8 and
10 to transport a full load of twenty cattle. Some of the cat-
tle transported were those raised by Agibu in his wareh at
Rokulan. The price of passengers was about three shillings,
and the cost of a bag of palm kernels was about one shilling,
fteen pence.
At the end of World War II, Agibu Jalloh became one of the
rst to own and operate Joe Khaki military Bedford lorries
auctioned by the British army; he and his brother had a eet of
lorries under the name Jalloh Brothers. In 1950 Agibu Jalloh
decided to become an independent businessman and purchased
additional Bedford lorries with cash, some costing as much as
800. He had saved the money from his lorry business, pro-
duce trade, and cattle trade. Besides being an owner, Agibu
Jalloh was a driver and mechanic for his vehicles, which re-
duced operating costs and increased his prot margin. In 1952
Agibu Jalloh gave up driving and relocated to Freetown in
order to concentrate on business networking with African,
Lebanese, and Indian merchants, who transported goods be-
tween Freetown and the provinces. The transporting of goods
was highly competitive, and it took Agibu Jalloh many years
to establish a reputation that secured him contracts to trans-
port mostly imported merchandise to the provinces. On their
return journeys to Freetown, Agibu Jallohs lorries carried
produce, cattle, and passengers.
In the early 1970s Agibu Jalloh expanded his transport busi-
ness by purchasing ten tankers, which were ordered from Ger-
many and sent to Britain to be installed with imperial-gallon
Fig. 4.1. Agibu Jalloh (Fula businessman)
FPO
80%
tanks. Each tanker cost about 10,000, had a capacity of two
thousand imperial gallons, and was used to transport kerosene
and petrol from Mobil or Shell oil reneries in the industrial
area of east Freetown to various petrol stations in the city and
the provinces, especially in the main provincial towns of Mak-
eni, Bo, and Kenema. This business was especially protable
when there was a shortage of petrol and kerosene in the coun-
try. Agibu Jalloh made hundreds of thousands of leones in
prot from this private enterprise.
In 1978 Agibu Jalloh further expanded his eet by buying
four aviation fuel tankers with capacities ranging from four to
six thousand imperial gallons and costing about Le10 million.
Purchase was made from Mobil, which was legally barred
from the transportation business after the introduction of the
Non-Citizens (Trade and Business) Act of 1969.
21
The tankers
were used to transport aviation fuel from the oil reneries to
Lungi International Airport. After making a down payment of
over Le5 million, Agibu Jalloh reached an agreement with the
company to make monthly payments to cover the remainder of
the cost. Agibu Jalloh was the only Fula to have entered this
market, which required substantial capital. In fact, few Afri-
cans could compete in this highly protable area of the motor
transport business because of lack of capital. The lorries were
loaded onto a ferry at Kissy Dockyard in the east of Freetown
that took them across the Sierra Leone River to Lungi. Since
there was no bridge connecting Lungi with Freetown, Agibu
Jallohs operation cost was high since he had to pay a round-
trip fee for each vehicle on the ferry. The government-owned
ferry service was not reliable, thus leading to lost revenue and
inconveniences.
Besides Agibu Jallohs involvement in the supply of petrol,
kerosene, and aviation fuel, by the 1970s he had hundreds of
cattle in his wareh in the Bombali district. He sold a large
number of his cattle in the Freetown market to customers,
such as the Fula chief Alhaji Bah, Alhaji Allie, and other
prominent butchers in the city. Agibu Jalloh transported the
cattle on his lorries, of which he owned more than ten, mostly
imported Mercedes-Benzes. As in the rest of his businesses,
Agibu Jalloh employed mostly kinsmen as herders, wareh su-
pervisors, and cattle middlemen, who brought the cattle to
Freetown and assisted in contacting buyers and negotiating
prices, subject to Agibu Jallohs approval.
22
From a management perspective Agibu Jallohs centralized
decision making was common among Fula entrepreneurs. Al-
though he consulted with kinsmen and non-Fula employees,
he made all business decisions. Agibu Jalloh, like most Fula
merchants, depended largely on kinsmen to help him run his
various businesses. This kinship-centered management ap-
proach had the advantages of cost reduction and dependability.
Unlike many immigrant Fula entrepreneurs, Agibu Jalloh, de-
spite his Muslim faith, was not constrained by the Islamic in-
junction against interest because he recognized it was crucial
to the protability of his business enterprise. He had accounts
with commercial banks that earned interest, and he even bor-
rowed money with interest to pay workers in his produce busi-
ness while he waited for the SLPMB to honor its nancial
commitment during dicult times in the 1960s. As did many
Fula merchants, Agibu Jalloh plowed back most of his prots
into his various businesses, especially the lorry business and
the cattle trade.
Like other owners of commercial motor vehicles, Agibu Jal-
loh encountered high insurance rates and unscrupulous dri-
vers who overloaded the lorries beyond their full capacity to
earn extra money without the knowledge of their employers.
This deception brought about serious mechanical problems
that reduced the longevity of the vehicles. He also had to deal
with the endemic corruption of trac police ocers in Free-
town and those who manned road posts between Freetown
and the provinces. His drivers believed this to be the most sig-
nicant reason for the loss of revenue in the lorry business.
23
rnr rtsirss c.nrrn or .tn.i r.iton r.nnir
As Agibu Jalloh prospered in the lorry business, another
legendary Sierra Leoneanborn Fula, Alhaji Bailor Barrie (g.
4.2), made history in the 1970s by becoming the rst Fula to
enter the European-Lebanese-dominated import and retail of
motor vehicles. Not only was Alhaji Barrie the most successful
Fula diamond dealer in postcolonial Sierra Leone, his career
demonstrates the importance of the diamond trade as a source
of capital accumulation among the Fula. The Fula functioned
as illicit and licensed diggers, middlemen, and exporters in the
diamond business. Since the early 1930s, when alluvial and
kimberlite gem and industrial diamonds were rst discovered
there, Kono, in the eastern province, had been the center of di-
amond mining in Sierra Leone. The Consolidated African Se-
lection Trust (CAST) was the rst company to prospect and
to discover large amounts of diamonds in the area. Its sub-
sidiary, the Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST), was then
formed to mine the diamonds. In 1934 the colonial adminis-
tration gave the SLST exclusive rights to mine diamonds in
Sierra Leone for ninety-nine years in return for certain pay-
ments to the colonial administration.
Because of widespread smuggling by Sierra Leoneans and
foreign nationals, including Fula immigrants involved in illicit
mining, the colonial administration decided in 1956 to restrict
the mining activities of the SLST and grant licenses to indi-
viduals to mine diamonds in Kono. This program, the Alluvial
Diamond Mining Scheme, brought about a diamond boom
that attracted several ethnic groups in Sierra Leone and else-
where in West Africa, including the Fula. The vast majority of
the Fula were engaged in illicit alluvial diamond mining in the
towns of Yengema, Sefadu, Nimikoro, and other mining sites
in Kono. To curb illegal diamond mining the colonial adminis-
tration carried out several stranger drives, which led to the
arrest and imprisonment of many Fula in Kono and Freetown.
During the colonial period thousands of Fula, mostly immi-
grants, were arrested by the police for illicit digging, unlawful
possession of diamonds, and nonpossession of residency per-
mits; many of the detainees were expelled to neighboring
Guinea. In addition to these measures, in 1957 the minister of
Fig. 4.2. Alhaji Mohamed Bailor Barrie (Fula businessman)
FPO
80%
mines introduced a policy that distinguished native dealers
from nonnative dealers, which permitted a restrictive policy
regarding nonnative licenses. Under this policy the number of
licenses issued to nonnatives was sharply reduced. Illicit dia-
mond deals oered bigger prots to licensed dealers than did
legal deals since an illicit dealer was under pressure to sell
immediately rather than negotiate a higher price, for fear of
being arrested by the police.
The postcolonial Sierra Leonean government under the
SLPP and APC also carried out stranger drives against hun-
dreds of Fula involved in illicit diamond mining in Kono that
resulted in arrests and expulsion to their countries of origin.
Many of the Fula detainees were brought to Freetown, where
they were cared for by the Fula community following their
release from prison. The vast majority of these Fula were
Guinean immigrants. Besides selling diamonds to African and
Lebanese licensed dealers in Kono and to smugglers, these
Fula also illegally exported diamonds to Liberia, a major out-
side market. Diamonds from Liberia were exported mostly to
Europe and the United States. As in the livestock trade, the
delinking of the leone from the British pound and the relative
weakness of the Guinean currency contributed to making the
Liberian dollar attractive to Fula diamond smugglers. Cur-
rency considerations inuenced diamond smuggling: diamonds
were taken from countries with soft currencies to those with
hard ones, whether soft is dened in terms of the stringency of
the exchange control or in terms of the discount in the free
currency markets. As illicit diamond miners, the Fula, like
other illegal diamond miners like the Maraka, suered arrest
and harassment by the police, largely because of the ease of ob-
taining illicit payos and the absence of strong political back-
ing, as the Lebanese diamond miners enjoyed.
24
Alhaji Barrie was one of the Fula who started his diamond
business career as an illicit dealer in Kono. He was born in
1934 at the village of Sokrala, close to Kabala in the Koinadugu
district, where his father, Alhaji Ba Demba Barrie, settled after
arriving from Mamou, a major trading town in Guinea, at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Not only was Alhaji Ba
Demba a large-scale merchant, he migrated with several head
of cattle that he raised in warehs run by his polygamous family.
While in Sokrala he provided leadership to fellow Fula immi-
grants in their long struggle with the Koranko over settlement
rights. After overcoming a Koranko political challenge, Alhaji
Ba Demba moved to Kabala, where he was elected almamy by
the Fula community. As noted in chapter 1, Koinadugu district
had the largest number of Fula in Sierra Leone, with occupa-
tions ranging from merchant to artisan. As Fula chief, Alhaji
Ba Demba had several wives, including immigrant Fula and
Koranko, which broadened his political base in Kabala and fa-
cilitated his mercantile pursuits.
25
In his twenties, prior to embarking on a trading career, Al-
haji Barrie received Quranic education from his father and
other Fula teachers in Kabala. Although a traditional Fula, Al-
haji Barries father respected the value of Western education
for his male children in order to be successful in the Western-
ized environment of Sierra Leone. Consequently, he sent Alhaji
Barrie to a Western school in Kabala to receive elementary and
high school education. But Alhaji Barrie showed little interest
in Western education and dropped out of school before high
school graduation. Nevertheless, Alhaji Ba Demba, because of
his commitment to Western education, hired the Western-
trained teacher A. B. M. Kamara, who later became a govern-
ment minister representing Koinadugu district, to tutor his
son, but this failed as well.
Recognizing that Alhaji Barrie was not interested in pursu-
ing Western education, Alhaji Ba Demba gave him some cattle
to sell to raise start-up capital for a business career. To Fula,
not only was cattle a long-term investment, it was also used
for both convertible and short-term investments. Many Fula
traders sold their cattle for cash to nance new mercantile
pursuits for themselves or their children, although the number
of cattle sold in this manner was small. Because, for Fula cat-
tle owners, it was inconceivable to be without cattle, they sold
as few as possible. After selling his cattle to Fula julas, Alhaji
Barrie used the money to invest in lorries, which transported
passengers and merchandise between Kabala and Makeni, a
busy trade route in the northern province.
26
In the late 1950s Alhaji Barrie left Kabala and traveled to
Bo and its Mende-speaking surrounding areas, where he pros-
pected for diamonds and engaged in merchandise trading. Af-
ter a few years he relocated to Kono to mine diamonds. After a
few years of illicit diamond mining in the towns of Yengema
and Sefadu in Kono, Alhaji Barrie sold diamonds to Lebanese
diamond middlemen for substantial prots. Alhaji Barries ex-
perience as a diamond digger gave him a competitive edge and
set him apart from many of his Lebanese competitors, who
were merely dealers that bought and sold diamonds from
mostly Sierra Leoneans and African immigrants. Like the leg-
endary Alhaji Allie during the colonial period, Alhaji Barrie
was a self-taught businessman and his knowledge of the dia-
mond business on matters such as value and grade was derived
from many years of experience and on-the-job training.
During his early years in Kono, Alhaji Barrie developed a
strong business relationship with fellow Fula diamond dealers
like Alhaji Sanu Barrie, who later became president of the Fula
Progressive Union in Freetown and whose early history par-
allels that of Alhaji Barrie. Alhaji Sanu Barrie was born in
1935 in a small Fula village in Kabala. After receiving an ele-
mentary Western education, he dropped out before complet-
ing high school and entered the cattle trade. In 1949 he joined
Fula julas who were transporting cattle on foot from Kabala to
Bo, a major cattle market. After a few years of doing this and
saving some capital, Alhaji Sanu Barrie decided to relocate to
Bo and prospect for diamonds in its surrounding areas. During
the diamond rush in Kono in the mid-1950s, Alhaji Sanu Bar-
rie moved to Kono to continue his diamond mining, which he
carried on illicitly for several years until he obtained a valid li-
cense for twenty-ve pounds that was renewable annually.
27
While in Kono during the 1950s Alhaji Bailor Barrie also
cultivated a strong business relationship with several Lebanese
diamond dealers and the Afro-Lebanese Jamil Said Moham-
med, one of the largest private exporters of diamonds in Sierra
Leone. Jamil, as he is simply known, was born to a Lebanese
father and a Mandinka mother from Karene in the northern
province in the 1930s. He received little formal education and
was a motor vehicle apprentice before becoming a driver. After
many years as a driver Jamil bought commercial lorries that
transported produce like rice, ginger, palm kernels, and ground-
nuts (peanuts) between major towns in the provinces, such as
Port Loko and Makeni, and between the provinces and Free-
town. In the 1950s Jamil entered the diamond business and
carried out mining activities in the towns of Sefadu, Yengema,
Nimikoro, and Jaiama in Kono. Not only did Jamil and Alhaji
Barrie start out as illicit diamond miners, both merchants
developed extensive networks in the mining community in
Kono.
28
By the 1960s Alhaji Barrie had legitimized his diamond
mining by obtaining a valid license and residential permit; he
also opened an oce, which was managed by a Lebanese,
Ramez Mohammed Jaward. In addition, he developed exten-
sive kinship networks in the diamond trade. In fact, a major
reason for Alhaji Barries success was his use of extensive con-
sanguineous and anal kinship networks. Like many Fula in
diamond mining, Alhaji Barrie employed a large number of
kinsmen to mine diamonds and also provided some with money
to mine independently, on the understanding that in the event
they found diamonds, they would sell them to him below the
market price. Alhaji Barrie also extended this oer to unre-
lated but trusted Fula diamond miners, expanding the scope of
his business contacts. Besides providing his miners with capi-
tal, food, and equipment, Alhaji Barrie protected them from
the police and local political authorities. Although he em-
braced the idea of helping kinsmen, throughout his business
career he opposed nancial handouts and instead promoted
hard work and accountability.
In addition to positioning himself as a leader in the Fula di-
amond business community, Alhaji Barrie developed trading
networks with indigenous cross-ethnic diamond traders and
miners such as the Kono, Mende, and Temne. His uency in
several African languages enabled him to develop these ties.
To facilitate his mining and marketing of diamonds in Kono,
Alhaji Barrie entered into business partnerships with some
Kono diamond dealers and cultivated a strong working rela-
tionship with politicians like S. L. Matturi, resident minister of
the eastern province, during the SLPP government of Prime
Minister Albert Margai, and with paramount chiefs, like
Kaimachende of Gbense. In fact, Chief Kaimachende was crit-
icized by his fellow Kono for favoring strangers, such as the
Lebanese and Fula, to exploit the land in return for substan-
tial nancial compensation. Many of the Kono political leaders
were owners of mining sites in the district.
29
Besides working with Sierra Leonean diamond traders and
miners in Kono, Alhaji Barrie also developed a close working
relationship with Muslim immigrant diamond traders such as
Fula, Mandinka, and Maraka. One of his closest partners in the
diamond business was a Mandinka immigrant, Sidi Moham-
med Saccoh. Shared Islamic faith was a major factor in bring-
ing these merchants together. Most of the immigrant diamond
traders came from Guinea, Senegal, Mali, and The Gambia.
They were attracted to Kono by the prospect of quick prots
from diamond sales, and often they were told by wealthy re-
turning kinsmen about the great opportunities that Kono of-
fered to those willing to take risks in the diamond business.
Because of their limited knowledge of the market outside Sierra
Leone and their desire to make quick prots, these immigrants
sold most of their diamonds to Lebanese middlemen for sub-
stantial prots until the 1970s, when some Fula emerged as
major diamond buyers with access to overseas markets.
30
Besides Kono, Alhaji Barrie had diamond mining sites in the
Kenema district, a major diamond-producing area containing
alluvial and kimberlite gem and industrial diamonds (a major
source of diamonds in Kenema was the lower Bambara chief-
dom). Like Kono, Kenema experienced a diamond rush in the
late 1950s and attracted an inux of foreign nationals, includ-
ing Guinean Fula immigrants, who were involved in illicit di-
amond mining and smuggling. Alhaji Barrie employed the
same business approach in Kenema as he had in Kono. In addi-
tion to opening an oce to handle his diamond business, which
was managed by his kinsmen, he worked with Fula, Lebanese,
and immigrant Muslims in the mining, buying, and selling of
gem and industrial diamonds. Alhaji Barrie spent considerable
time traveling between Kono and Kenema to supervise the
management of his large-scale diamond business.
31
As Alhaji Barrie expanded his diamond business he faced
strong competition from the Lebanese. He realized that he
could maximize his prots by eliminating Lebanese middle-
men, who had created a niche in the diamond business. Many
Lebanese countered by oering a commission fee ranging from
1 to 3 percent of the value of a diamond to a Fula agent, who
would bring another Fula to sell diamonds to them. This in-
centive led some Fula to ignore kinship ties and seek higher
prots by selling their diamonds to Lebanese dealers.
By 1973, despite his limited Western education, Alhaji
Barrie had gained enough experience to sell his diamonds in
Europe without going through Lebanese exporters. He opened
a diamond marketing oce in Brussels, a major world dia-
mond marketing center. The oce was managed by Alhaji
Barries son Tejan Barrie, a brother of Alhaji Barrie and a
Lebanese employee. Alhaji Barrie made frequent visits to this
oce to supervise its operations. The evidence suggests that
millions of leones worth of diamonds were sold through this
oce and prots were plowed back into Alhaji Barries dia-
mond business and other business ventures. Unlike Jamil, Al-
haji Barrie did not receive state patronage or utilize state
institutions like the National Diamond Mining Corporation
(NDMC), of which Jamil was managing director, to market his
diamonds. Nevertheless, Alhaji Barrie was able to compete
with Jamil and other Lebanese diamond dealers in the highly
politicized diamond business.
32
As Alhaji Barrie gained success in the diamond business
and expanded into neighboring Guinea as well as Mali, where
he oered bids for local diamonds, he faced strong competition
from Jamil. As a diamond dealer Jamil forged a close relation-
ship with President Siaka Stevens. During Stevenss rule the
government actively discriminated against the issuance of
diamond-mining licenses to Africans, including the Fula. In-
stead, Lebanese merchants received the bulk of the new li-
censes, which enabled them to consolidate their control in the
private diamond-mining industry. The favored treatment of
the Lebanese was largely due to their bribery of government
ocials. In fact, Lebanese diamond dealers, like Jamil, enabled
Stevens to gain personal access to foreign exchange and to
control diamond sales. The Lebanese depended on Stevens for
favorable treatment and exemption from harassment. While
Alhaji Barrie developed and consolidated diamond trading net-
works with his kinsmen and fellow Muslims, Jamil strength-
ened his business ties with Lebanese merchants, such as Tony
Yazbeck and Mohammed Jaward. This business alliance, which
was tied to President Stevens, stied business competition in
the diamond business and fostered corruption. Both Jamil and
Stevens were members of the Government Diamond Oce
(GDO), which was created to value all privately marketed di-
amonds and to assess the ocial levy. Although the GDO
required that the proceeds from diamond sales abroad be
deposited in the Bank of Sierra Leone, it allowed many Leb-
anese exporters to bypass this regulation in return for pay-
os.
33
Although the Fula, including Alhaji Barrie, made millions
of leones in prot from the diamond business, they also lost
considerable money for several reasons. One was the specu-
lative nature of the diamond trade. Fula diamond dealers
preferred to lease land from individuals and chiefs to mine
diamonds rather than function as middlemen, but the cost of
supporting workers, especially with food like rice, was ex-
tremely high in the diamond areas, since agriculture was ne-
glected in favor of diamond miningas well as the fact that
the diamond mining areas in Kono and Kenema were not
major rice producing areasand consequently food had to be
brought from other areas. Some Fula spent millions of leones
on a large labor force that prospected for diamonds for several
years without any success. There was no guarantee that a
piece of land that showed promise of diamond deposits would
contain diamonds sucient to justify the large investment in
land rights, labor, and equipment. Bankruptcy was a common
problem in the private diamond-mining business that aected
all ethnic groups, including the Fula and the Lebanese. A few
miners sought business partnerships with the Europeans and
Americans who brought advanced equipment to the mining
sites to evaluate the prospects of diamonds before committing
a large investment in labor and land rights.
Another problem faced by Fula diamond dealers that re-
sulted in a huge loss of capital was the manipulation of oral
agreements by chiefdom authorities. Traditionally, land was
not sold in the provinces because it was communally owned.
Hence land was leased to Fula and other immigrants who
wanted to mine diamonds. Some duplicitous political authori-
ties revoked oral agreements with Fula diamond dealers after
large diamond deposits were found and then oered the land
to the highest bidder. These authorities connived with corrupt
police ocers to ensure that the Fula did not have due process
to recover their money or mine the land. Because many of the
Fula diamond dealers were illegal immigrants, they were re-
luctant to bring such cases to court for fear of imprisonment
or deportation.
In addition, Fula diamond dealers lost money because of
overpayment to unscrupulous diamond miners. Recognizing
that not all Fula were experienced in the pricing of diamonds
on the basis of grade and size, some cross-ethnic miners over-
valued their diamonds in oral sales, which did not involve any
paperwork or receipt. Consequently, Fula victims could not go
to the police or prove in a court of law that they had been
cheated. Besides, the illegal status of many of the Fula dia-
mond dealers who suered such losses precluded them from
pursuing such cases in the courts, where ocials were corrupt.
The problem of overpayment was common in the private
diamond-mining business.
The use of counterfeit foreign currency, especially the U.S.
dollar, by some Europeans, Americans, Lebanese, and Africans
to buy diamonds from Fula dealers also contributed to their
nancial losses. Because of the illicit nature of their business,
the vast majority of Fula preferred cash, rather than checks
drawn on local or overseas accounts, for diamond sales. These
Fula, who were mostly immigrants, did not have local or
foreign bank accounts and did not fully understand Western
banking. Those who traded in counterfeit money were mostly
onetime diamond buyers who did not seek to establish a long-
term business relationship with Fula diamond dealers. The
Fula victims of such practices would share information about
the unscrupulous buyers through informal networks but would
avoid contacting the police, who were usually corrupt.
Because of the high degree of speculation and risk involved
in the diamond business, which often led to bankruptcy, many
Fula diamond dealers decided to expand into less risky sectors
of the Sierra Leonean economy. They were strongly of the view
that business diversication was crucial to protability and lon-
gevity. Alhaji Barrie in 1975 made a pioneering transition to
importer-retailer. He used his prots from the sale of diamonds
to open M. B. Barrie and Sons, the rst Fula-owned company
in Sierra Leone, which imported and retailed Japanese-made
Daihatsu and Pony cars and lorries. The company was located
in a building owned by Alhaji Barrie at Cline Town, close to
Freetowns only seaport. Besides selling motor vehicles, the
company, like Lebanese and European motor vehicle distribu-
tors, had a department that imported and retailed Daihatsu
spare parts. As in the diamond trade, Alhaji Barrie employed
mostly his own kinsmen to oversee the sale of Pony and Dai-
hatsu cars, lorries, and spare parts.
Alhaji Barrie competed with Lebanese distributors and
European companies for the Freetown motor vehicle market.
Lebanese dealers, like Freetown Motors, were located in the
east, the CBD, and the west of the city. They imported and re-
tailed mostly Japanese-made vehicles, such as Datsun, Mazda,
and Nissan. European companies like UAC Motors and SCOA
imported and retailed mostly European-made vehicles, such as
Peugeot, Renault, Austin, and Bedford. Despite strong com-
petition, Alhaji Barries company sold over two hundred cars
and lorries worth over Le800,000 between 1973 and 1978.
These vehicles arrived every three months from Japan, and
their prices ranged from Le2,500 to Le10,000. Most consumers
bought four-door sedans, mainly for use as taxis in the city.
34
Not only was the diamond trade the largest source of Fula
investment capital in the motor transport business, it also pro-
vided consumers with money to purchase cars, lorries, and
light vans. Sales of Daihatsu and Pony vehicles, for example,
were highest in the dry season when diamond-mining activi-
ties were at their peak in Kono. Many of the Fula who were
customers of M. B. Barrie and Sons were diamond traders who
traveled to Freetown to invest in commercial vehicles. Some
of these merchants were immigrants from Guinea who had
settled in Sierra Leone as political refugees in the 1960s and
1970s. Temne diamond traders also formed a large segment of
Alhaji Barries customers; they bought mostly taxis.
Some of Alhaji Barries customers were Fula and Temne
retailers who sold textiles and provisions in shops and open
markets in Freetown. These merchants diversied their in-
vestments into commercial vehicles after accumulating sub-
stantial capital through savings. Most of these savings were
not kept in commercial banks because of distrust and unfamil-
iarity with these institutions. These traders bought mostly
taxis, which they saw as a protable investment, given the
citys expanding population.
Not all of Alhaji Barries customers paid cash for vehicles.
He also had a borrowing plan, which was common among
motor vehicle retailers, that allowed buyers to make an advance
payment in cash and then to enter into monthly payments,
with interest, until the vehicle was paid o. In contrast to the
cattle trade, in which there was no interest charge or written
agreement between a Fula lender and a debtor, both elements
existed in the contractual agreements between Alhaji Barrie
and customers who bought vehicles on credit. Unlike Western
industrial societies, there was no credit check of individuals be-
fore credit was approved, which led to many bad lending deci-
sions. A few of Alhaji Barries customers defaulted on their
monthly payments, and the vehicles had to be repossessed,
often in such poor condition that it was dicult to resell them
without a loss. In addition, some of his employees who were re-
sponsible for repossessing vehicles did not discharge their du-
ties because they were bribed by the defaulters.
35
From a management perspective, Alhaji Barrie, like Agibu
Jalloh, provides an excellent example of the owner-centered
decision-making approach of the Fula merchants in the Sierra
Leonean economy. Although Alhaji Barries business opera-
tions were decentralized within his family, he made all the
management decisions, including the volume of Daihatsu and
Pony vehicles to import, when to import them, the amount of
credit to allow customers, and where to invest the companys
prots. His business centralization resulted from the thinking
that commercial details should be kept secret within the fam-
ily or kin group. It appears that Alhaji Barrie did not grasp the
need for decentralized decision making as a means to ensure
the responsiveness necessary to compete in the countrys fast-
changing markets. Alhaji Barries management team included
his sons, brothers, brothers-in-law, sons-in-law, and other
male members of his extended family. Like most traditional
Fula, including Agibu Jalloh, Alhaji Barrie was of the view
that women should be housewives rather than be involved in
business management, which explains why his daughters did
not participate in managing his businesses. Alhaji Barrie also
employed Fula who were not kinsmen, as well as Lebanese.
His long-term auditor was the Sierra Leoneanborn and
Western-trained Fula accountant Alhaji Mohammed Seray-
Wurie (who later became Fula chief in Freetown). Like many
large-scale Fula entrepreneurs in the Sierra Leonean econ-
omy, Alhaji Barrie faced management problems resulting from
waste, corruption, and the inexperienced and unskilled kins-
men he employed.
Like some Fula entrepreneurs in the motor transport busi-
ness, Alhaji Barrie opened interest-bearing accounts with
commercial banks in Freetown to facilitate his business trans-
actions. He recognized that modern business could not be
undertaken without knowledge of, and participation in, the
banking institutions of the country. For example, only the
banks could legally transfer the substantial capital required to
import vehicles. Moreover, the banks provided an avenue to
deposit savings and secure loans to help cover the huge cost of
importing motor vehicles. For Alhaji Barrie and many other
Fula involved in the transport business, religious objection to
the earning or payment of interest was secondary to practical
business considerations. This was a departure from the strong
opposition to riba by earlier Fula immigrants and those in the
livestock and merchandise trade.
From an investment standpoint, like most Fula entrepre-
neurs in other sectors of the Freetown economy, many of
those in the motor transport business invested their prots in
properties in the city. They shared the vision of earlier suc-
cessful Fula traders, like Alhaji Momodu Allie, that properties
had the best potential to bring the highest return on invest-
ment because of the rapidly growing Freetown population.
Alhaji Barrie, for example, bought several properties in the
commercial center of Freetown, the east of the city, and in ex-
clusive neighborhoods at Wilberforce and Spur Roads in the
suburban west of the city, where property values were the
highest. One of his commercial properties was the Leona
Hotel, in the CBD, which he purchased from two Lebanese
brothers in the 1970s and refurbished before its operation.
The hotel was managed by members of his extended family
under the supervision of one of his sons. During this period
Alhaji Barrie expanded his real estate investments to Kenema,
Kono, Bo, and Makeni in the provinces and overseas in The
Gambia, where he started construction of a multimillion-
dollar, two-hundred-bedroom hotel and casino to cater to in-
ternational tourists. Real estate records for Freetown show
that by 1978 Fula merchants in the motor transport business
owned over one hundred properties worth over Le500,000.
36
Despite the success of Fula merchants in the motor transport
business, they did not realize their full potential. Their owner-
ship of commercial vehicles could have been greater if some of
the Fula traders in the city had not refused to take out inter-
est-bearing loans from commercial banks or nancing with in-
terest from car dealers because of religious objection to riba.
Indeed, this attitude dated back to the preindependence pe-
riod, and it was also common among Muslims in cities else-
where in West Africa.
37
Moreover, the vast majority of the Fula traders did not con-
solidate their nancial resources to form joint-stock compa-
nies, which could have imported and retailed motor vehicles.
The long-standing distrust between wealthy Fula immigrants
and Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn Fula, most of
whom did not have substantial capital, and the deeply rooted
interclan divisions within the Fula immigrant business com-
munity further prevented business expansion through the con-
solidation of merchant capital.
The motor transport business in postcolonial Sierra Leone
cannot be fully understood unless the activities of Sierra
Leoneans and West African immigrants are investigated. Here
it has been shown that Fula, both immigrants and those born
in Sierra Leone, were key participants in the motor transport
business of the capital city, Freetown. Using prots from the
diamond trade and savings from various menial occupations,
Fula merchants transcended their initial peripheral involve-
ment in the motor transport business. This is illustrative of
their commercial diversication in the postindependence econ-
omy of Sierra Leone.
Indeed, the motor transport business is one of the fastest-
growing sectors of the Freetown economy as the citys popu-
lation continues to expand. The reduction of state provision
of road transport services in Freetown has provided an ad-
ditional incentive for more private investment in the motor
transport enterprise. This has broadened and intensied com-
petition among mercantile groups, like the Fula, as they po-
sition themselves to meet the increasing demand for public
transportation in the city.
5
Islamic Activities
For over two centuries Fula traders have helped to shape the
religious landscape of Sierra Leone, especially Freetown. Not
only was there a close relationship between trade and Islam in
Sierra Leone, this relationship was common throughout West
Africa.
1
Besides their role as educators, Fula traders have given
nancial support to various mosques and schools and partici-
pated in Islamic organizations. The Fula mercantile group and
Islam support each other: Islam provides eternal salvation and
social status; in return, the merchants provide economic sup-
port. Religious participation provides Fula merchants with
greater social recognition, which benets the individuals and
their families. The Fula, who are Sunni, are one of the most
devout Muslim groups in Sierra Leone and West Africa in
general. Not only do they have a long history as agents of Is-
lamization in the region, they have played a major role in the
conversion to Islam of almost half the 4.5 million people of
Sierra Leone.
2
151
The Role of the Fula in Spreading Islam
Several studies have documented the pioneering role of the
Fula, especially those from Fuuta Jalon, in the spread of Islam
in Sierra Leone. These works discuss the role of Fula traders
as agents of Islamization and the close relationship between
trade and the spread of Islam. In addition, they point to Fula
success in converting members of ruling houses and their sub-
jects belonging to local groups like the Temne in provincial
towns such as Gbinti and Sanda Magbolonto.
3
Thomas Win-
terbottom, an eighteenth-century European visitor to Fuuta
Jalon, noted the important role of Fula traveling scholars in
the spread of Islam from Fuuta Jalon to Sierra Leone.
4
In ad-
dition, E. F. Sayers, a district commissioner stationed in Port
Loko during the early twentieth century, observed that many
Muslims in Sierra Leone were converts of Fula scholars.
5
Many of the immigrant Fula who were agents of Islamiza-
tion in Freetown and the provinces arrived after the Fuuta
Jalon jihad of 1727, which contributed greatly to the diusion
of Islam throughout Sierra Leone. This jihad of pastoralist
Fula was led by the noted cleric Karamoko Alfa Ba, who was
supported by his military general, Ibrahima Sori. The jihad
opposed the Yalunka, a southern Mandinka people who spoke
a language closely related to Soso. They were agriculturalists
who practiced traditional African religion in Jallonkadu, which
was the name of Fuuta Jalon before the jihad. Fyle notes that
although Fuuta Jalon referred only to that part of Jallonkadu
under Fula authority, the original name was gradually lost.
The conict between the Fula immigrants and the indigenous
Yalunka was over the clash of religions and the threat posed to
Yalunka rulers by the increasingly wealthy and inuential
Muslim Fula. The jihad led to the ascendancy of Muslim Fula
and the establishment of a theocracy in Fuuta Jalon in which
the Fula embarked on converting pagan Fula and non-Muslim
ethnic groups like the Yalunka to Islam.
Following the jihad many Yalunka migrated into northern
Sierra Leone, where they established permanent communities
and political ruling classes. The jihad contributed immensely
to the creation of the Solima Yalunka state in the northeastern
boundary between the present republics of Guinea and Sierra
Leone in the nineteenth century. It was the combined opposi-
tion to the Fuuta jihadists that brought together the Yalunka
states of Solima, Sinkunia, Dembelia, and Folosaba under
the leadership of Solima. The major Yalunka clans were the
Samura (Solima), Jawara (Dembelia), Mansaray (Sinkunia),
and Kamara (Folosaba).
6
Also resulting from the jihad was the migration of Muslim
Fula scholars, clerics, traders, and herdsmen to various areas of
the Sierra Leonean hinterland, especially the Koinadugu and
Bombali districts, to spread their faith and engage in trading.
They also established permanent settlements and intermarried
with the indigenous groups. Some Fula immigrants went as far
south as Kissiland, where they also created a permanent com-
munity and began to proselytize among the local groups. In
addition to serving as karamokos and imams (Muslim leader
in prayer), the Fula immigrants built mosques and opened pri-
vate schools where they taught Arabic and the tenets of Islam
to their families and those who were interested in their faith.
Since Fula karamokos considered it improper to accept money
for teaching the Quran, their pupils performed domestic chores
for them as compensation for their services. It was these immi-
grant Fula who were largely responsible for the conversion of
many Sierra Leoneans to Islam in the provinces.
7
The pioneers of Islam in Freetown were Fula and Mandinka
traders who arrived mostly after the Fuuta Jalon jihad. As
noted in chapter 1, in 1819 Fula immigrants formed the rst
Islamic Activities / 153
settled Muslim community at Fula Town in the east of Free-
town to take advantage of expanding commercial opportunities.
The Fula and Mandinka traders who had also settled at Fula
Town built the rst mosque, a rough-thatched building, in the
1830s and embarked on the mission of converting the countrys
multiethnic population to Islam. The Fula also cooperated with
the Mandinka in building the rst permanent mosque, Jami ul-
Ruh ul-Kudus (the Mandinka mosque), in the east end of Free-
town at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although the
Mandinka owned the land for the mosque, the Fula, who re-
garded the mosque as an interethnic enterprise, contributed
cash, services, and building materials. But the Fula left in the
1950s to start construction of their own mosque on Jenkins
Street in the east end of Freetown after disturbances between
two divisions of the Mandinka, the Kankan and Sarakule.
8
In spreading Islam in Freetown, Fula merchants worked
with several Muslim organizations, especially the Sierra Leone
Muslim Congress, which was founded in 1932 by progressive
Fig. 5.1. Fula mosque in Freetown
FPO
66%
cross-ethnic Muslims following the earlier eorts in 1922 of
Hadir ud-Deen, secretary of the Muhammadan Education Board,
in proposing organization of Muslims into a unied body. The
congress received generous support from the Lebanese mer-
cantile community. Not only did the congress represent an in-
dependent Muslim initiative, it united Muslims and provided
a counterweight to the predominantly Christian inuence in
modern education. In fact, the Fula imams Alhaji Misbaahu
Bah and Alhaji Seray Bah (g. 5.2) served on the congresss
Board of Imams, which regulated the life of the Muslim com-
munity in Freetown.
9
A prominent member of the Muslim congress whom the
Fula worked with for several years in promoting Islam was
Fig. 5.2. Alhaji Mohammed Seray Bah (Fula imam)
FPO
100%
Alhaji Sheikh Jibril Sesay, who came from a well-known Mus-
lim Temne family of Port Loko (in this context, a sheikh is a
learned and respected Muslim). During the 1920s Sheikh Sesay
studied the Quran at Madrasa Islamia and with noted Islamic
scholars in Freetown before traveling to Banjul and Dakar,
where he studied for a number of years and became a member
of the tijaniyya (religious brotherhood founded by Ahmad al-
Tijani). During the 1940s Sheikh Sesay studied Islamic law and
theology as well as Arabic at al-Azhar University in Cairo on
a scholarship from the Muslim Congress. After his return
to Freetown in the 1950s, he was appointed to the position of
secretary-general of the Muslim Congress and became the
deputy and chief imam of the Temne central mosque, Jami ul-
Jalil, on Oldeld Street in Freetown. In addition, he served in
several leadership roles in organizations such as the Sierra
Leone Muslim Reformation Society, the Muslim Brotherhood
Mission, and the Pilgrims Association. The Muslim Congress
attempted to coordinate the activities of various Muslim orga-
nizations in the country, various jamaas (Muslim ethnic com-
munities) and the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded in
1954 by younger Muslims, like al-Azhar graduate Alhaji Sorie
Ibrahim Kanu, in Magburuka to promote Islamic education
and to proselytize among non-Muslims, especially those in the
rural areas.
10
But unlike other ethnic groups such as the Temne, the Fula
did not receive much foreign support for their Islamization
work in Freetown. The bulk of their funding, especially for ed-
ucation, came from private individual contributions. A chief
reason was that the Fula did not have many prominent foreign-
trained scholars, such as Sheikh Sesay or Alhaji Kanu, who
could lobby their alma mater, foreign Islamic organizations, or
Arab governments to provide much needed nancing for Is-
lamization in Sierra Leone. Because of problems of corruption
and accountability, foreign Islamic organizations usually pre-
ferred to deal with African Muslims whom they had known
through long contact in a university setting or through orga-
nizational aliation in providing nancial support for Islami-
zation. The reasons for the proselytizing success of the
Muslim Fula immigrants included the local demand for their
Arabic literacy with its utilitarian and religious qualities, their
role as mediators in disputes and as counselors, and the wide-
spread perception that they had great supernatural power,
which led to their characterization as morimen (mystics). This
mystical power was often shown in the making of sebehs (pro-
tective amulets), which were especially sought by chiefs and
warriors in pursuit of political power. In fact, some Fula fami-
lies who combined Islamic scholarship with strong spiritual
power, such as the Bunduka in the northern province and the
Kai Kai in the southern province, created political ruling
classes that have survived to the present time. Another factor
that assisted the development of Islam was that converts came
to regard the religion as one of prestige and status. Well-edu-
cated and devout Muslims like the Fula were highly thought of
and became, for many, a reference point and a model.
11
One of the chief beneciaries of Fula Islamic proselytizing
in Freetown, especially during the colonial period, was the Aku
community at Fourah Bay and Fula Town in the east of Free-
town. The Aku were Muslim Krio of mostly Yoruba ancestry
who had lived in Freetown since the early nineteenth century
as Recaptives, or Liberated Africans, following the British abo-
lition of the slave trade in 1807. From its founding, the Aku
community welcomed the Fula as Islamic educators and imams.
Faced with the prejudice of British colonial and Christian mis-
sionaries because of their Islamic faith, the Aku turned to the
Fula for support. In 1871 the Aku Muslims informed Dr. Bly-
den of their indebtedness to the Fula for their contribution to
the development of Islam in their community. A prominent
Fula merchant-scholar in the Aku community was Chernor
Mohammed Jalloh (Chernor Mahmadu Madina), a karamoko
on Foulah Street and at the Amaria School in Fula Town. His
karandas (pupils) included Haja Umu Daniyah, of the well-
known Daniyah family of Foulah Town, and Haja Dausi Wurie.
Chernor Madinas contemporaries included Chernor Ahmed
Seray-Wurie, Alpha Taju-Deen, and Alhaji M. S. Mustapha, a
former SLPP politician and cabinet minister.
Besides helping the Aku build mosques and establish
Quranic schools, the Fula traveled with many Aku for ad-
vanced studies at Fula Islamic centers like Timbo and Lab,
where they specialized in Islamic law, theology, and literature.
One such Aku was Alfa Yadali, who left for Fuuta Jalon in the
1830s to study Islamic theology, law, and the sciences for sev-
eral years. At the completion of his studies, Yadali was given
the title of muqaddam (superior) of the tijaniyya, which gave
him the authority to initiate others into the brotherhood.
Upon his arrival in Freetown, Alfa Yadali embarked on the
dissemination of tijaniyya doctrines in the Aku community.
Another noted Aku tijani was Legally Savage, who studied
under Fula tijani scholars at Dinguiraye for over twenty years
before returning to Freetown in the mid-1870s and was ap-
pointed as assistant imam of Fourah Bay mosque. By the late
nineteenth century the Aku Muslim community was able to
produce its own karamokos, alfas (Muslim scholars), and
imams. One of the outstanding Aku alfas of this period was
Mohammed Sanusi of Fula Town. He received his advanced
Islamic education at Timbo and subsequently pursued a career
as Arabic teacher at Fourah Bay and translator for Dr. Blyden
between 1872 and 1873. He was the chief Arabic translator for
the colonial administration from 1873 to 1901 and manager of
the Fula Town madrasa (Muslim school) from 1901 to 1907.
12
The Fula played a major role in the spread of the tijaniyya
in Freetown. This Su (mystical) brotherhood was devoted to
mysticism, ascetism, baraka, and miracles attributed to saints.
It was named after its founder, Shaykh Ahmad al-Tijani, an Is-
lamic scholar from southern Algeria (shaykh was the highest
level of leadership in a Su order). He attracted a large follow-
ing in his adopted city of Fez, in Morocco, where he claimed
his teachings were revealed to him by Allah and the Prophet
Muhammad. After his death in 1815 his tomb in Fez became a
popular pilgrimage site and the spiritual center of the broth-
erhood. In West Africa the tijani order was spread largely by
al-Hajj Umar Tal, a Fula from Fuuta Toro, who received his
tijani wird (litany of special prayers peculiar to a Su order)
from Moorish clerics in his homeland. Umars tijani followers
were called talibe (students), and, like other Sus (Islamic mys-
tics), the tijanis practiced dhikr (communal recitation). But the
tijanis professed doctrinal exclusivity, which asserted the su-
premacy of their religious brotherhood over all others and
demanded that its adherents reject all previous religious
brotherhood aliations. Unlike West African countries such as
Senegal, where the Mourid brotherhood founded by Ahmadu
Bamba and the tijaniyya under the leadership of Ibrahim
Niass were successful in popularizing Islam and winning con-
verts for their brotherhoods, the Freetown tijanis had limited
success primarily because of the absence of a charismatic
leader who would appeal to the transethnic Muslim commu-
nity. The tijanis also faced competition from other Sus in
Freetown.
13
Besides working with Muslim Aku in Fula Town, the Fula
also had a long history of cooperation with those at Fourah Bay.
Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, for example, was well respected among
Muslim Aku at Fourah Bay for his exemplary Muslim leader-
ship and service in promoting Islam, as was evidenced by the
large turnout of a cross-section of the Aku community at his
funeral in 1990. He gave his time and nancial support to the
building of Islamic schools and mosques, as well as serving on
Aku educational boards. For many years during the SLPP and
APC eras Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh was also a liaison between the
Fula jamaa and the government on matters pertaining to
Islam. This role was facilitated by Alhaji Tejan-Jallohs Sierra
Leonean background, his profound knowledge of Fula culture,
and his deep understanding of Islam. Another Fula who was
well respected for his Islamic service to the Aku community at
Fourah Bay was Alhaji Misbaahu Jalloh, the chief imam of the
Fula mosque in Freetown.
14
In addition to Islamic cooperation, many Aku had business
relationships with Fula merchants. In fact, a prominent Mus-
lim Aku, Ahmad Alhadi, master and registrar of the Supreme
Court of Sierra Leone and administrator of estates, assisted Al-
haji Momodu Allie in acquiring properties in Freetown during
the colonial period. For over a century Aku butchers forged
close ties with Fula butchers; they cooperated in the areas of
credit and cattle supply. But Fula immigrant merchants had
limited commercial and friendship networks outside the Mus-
lim mercantile community due to their lack of Western educa-
tion and their Islamic faith. Interpersonal relations among the
Fula immigrants were based on loyalty and trust grounded in
Islam, factors that shaped their social interactions and their
business relationships, including those with non-Fula Muslim
immigrant traders like the Mandinka, with whom they worked
in the diusion of Islam in Freetown. Trust based on Islamic
faith was especially important in commercial transactions with
Muslim traders from other ethnic groups.
Relations with Other Religions
Sierra Leone welcomes diverse religious groups, whatever their
linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The three major religions
are Islam, African Religion, and Christianity. The Muslim com-
munity itself, in which all the countrys ethnic groups are rep-
resented, reects that diversity. Despite the large number of
Muslims in Sierra Leone, there is no broad-based group that
seeks to turn the country into an Islamic state with an Islamic
constitution.
15
The relationship between Muslim Fula and Christians in
Freetown has been characterized by both opposition and co-
operation.
16
The Fula faced strong opposition from Christian
missions like the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in their
eorts to spread Islam in Freetown. The CMS was founded
in England in 1799 and sent its rst missionaries to Sierra Le-
one in 1804. As a Christian settlement Freetown was the rst
successful mass movement in African Christianity in which
Africans were both members and leaders, with their values in-
corporated into Christian worship. The CMS recruited Ger-
mans, Swiss, and other Europeans to join Scots, Irish, Welsh,
and Englishmen across denominational lines in pastoral and
educational work in Freetown. The CMS annual report for
1828 described the karamokos, many of whom were Fula, as
false prophets who had an advantage over the missionaries.
Not only did the report acknowledge the high number of Mus-
lim teachers in the colony, it further stated that they had greater
stamina than the European missionaries but that they oered
a religion that required primarily outward observances with-
out inward change. The CMS report for 1829 claimed that the
free and unrestrained exercise of Mohammedanism [Islam]
was restricting the inuence of CMS missionaries.
17
During the early phase of colonial rule the administration
relied on Christian missionaries to carry out the Christianiza-
tion and Westernization of the Freetown population through
education and the building of churches like Saint Georges Ca-
thedral. In 1845 the CMS opened the CMS Grammar School
(now the Sierra Leone Grammar School), a secondary school
for boys whose curriculum included English, mathematics, the
Bible, and English history. In 1849 the CMS opened a post-
primary school for girls, the Annie Walsh Memorial School.
The missionaries and the colonial administration saw educa-
tion as an eective means of spreading Christianity and pro-
moting Western skills among the African population that would
result in much-needed local skilled labor to help administer
the colony.
18
The position of the colonial administration on Christian-
Muslim relations was inconsistent. In the early part of the
eighteenth century colonial ocials, eager to preserve the
Christian Krio community in the face of increasing Muslim
immigration, supported missionaries in attacking Muslim pros-
elytizing. During the 1830s Governor Findlay and his succes-
sor, Governor Doherty, took steps to curtail the inuence of
Muslims in Freetown. In 1833 Governor Findlay issued a
proclamation prohibiting Muslim clerics and scholars from
residing in the Recaptive villages. In 1839 Governor Doherty
received two petitions signed by Church of England mission-
aries and Free Churchmen in which they described the prose-
lytizing activities of the Fula and other Muslims as fraught
with danger to the colony both in a moral and civil point of
view. They therefore requested the governor to consider the
propriety of checking so injurious a system. Acting on this
recommendation in 1840, Governor Doherty ordered two
mosques to be destroyed in the east of Freetown.
19
Since the late nineteenth century, however, the colonial ad-
ministration was tolerant and sympathetic to Muslims and
therefore encouraged positive relations with them. The admin-
istration pursued a Muslim policy motivated by the conviction
that Muslims were commercially useful and important poten-
tial allies. Several governors, such as Sir Matthew Nathan and
Sir Samuel Rowe, followed a pro-Muslim policy, inspired by the
example of Dr. Blyden, who between 1870 and 1905 succeeded
in obtaining the colonial administrations support for modern
schools among Muslims. In 1879 Governor Rowe entertained
over seven hundred Muslim guests, serving only nonalcoholic
beverages, in deference to Islamic teaching, at an id ul-tr cel-
ebration in Freetown. In 1871 nineteen leading members of the
Fula, Mandinka, and Soso Muslim community addressed a let-
ter to Sir Arthur E. Kennedy welcoming him back as governor
of Sierra Leone and thanking him for the steps he had taken
during his administration to protect them, which had encour-
aged their fellow Muslims to migrate to the colony. Not only
did the colonial administration appoint an Aku Muslim, Mu-
hammad Sanusi, as an Arabic writer, in 1890 it took two mea-
sures to integrate Muslims into Freetown society. First, the
colonial administration recognized the almamy system, where-
by the various ethnic communities elected their leaders, or
almamies, subject to the regulation of the colonial administra-
tion. Second, it began to sponsor primary schools for Muslim
children that combined Islamic and British education. By the
1950s a growing number of colonial administrators preferred
Muslims to Western-educated Krio, who were disliked and re-
garded as troublemakers and upstarts because of their anti-
colonial activities.
20
Cooperation between the Fula and Christians was demon-
strated during the 1940s when a Western-educated, Sierra
Leoneanborn Fula, Abass Camba, became the chief organiz-
ing secretary of the Fujalto Muslim Orchestra, which pro-
moted educational reform among Muslims and performed at
various Muslim celebrations like maulid ul-nabiy at dierent
locations in Freetown, including the Holy Trinity School in
the east end of the city. The orchestra received nancial and
material support from Fula merchants in the city. Its musical
programs included various songs praising the Prophet in Ara-
bic and Pulaar, as well as some Christian music. The orchestra
sought and received Christian assistance. In fact, its musical
director was C. W. Mann, a Christian organist at the Holy
Trinity Church. Following the founders withdrawal from
active life in the late 1940s, the orchestra continued to perform
under the leadership of the Fujalto Muslim Circle until 1969,
when it was nally disbanded due to poor participation by
members.
21
The postcolonial period also witnessed an increase in the
number of Fula merchants Sierra Leoneanborn male and fe-
male pupilsincluding the authorwho attended Christian
elementary and high schools in Freetown to obtain superior
Western education that would position them to compete in the
highly competitive Freetown society. Fula families that sent
their children to these schools included prominent names like
Tejan-Jalloh and Jalloh-Jamburia. These Western-Christian
schools included Saint Edwards Primary School, Holy Trin-
ity Primary School, Saint Edwards Secondary School, Saint
Joseph Convent, the Sierra Leone Grammar School, and the
Annie Walsh Memorial School. Not only did these schools
oer better educational facilities, they had a network of alumni
in the capital that facilitated professional employment, which
was extremely competitive, or admission to Fourah Bay Col-
lege, which was founded in 1827 by the CMS and in 1960 re-
ceived the status of a university college. Some of the Fula high
school graduatesagain, including the authorenrolled at
Fourah Bay College, where they received degrees in the arts
and sciences. Fourah Bay College was the rst institution of
higher learning in sub-saharan Africa.
22
Relations among Muslims
Although better organized, more self-condent, and more in
touch with the rest of the Muslim world, the Muslims in post-
colonial Sierra Leone do not form a community characterized
by rigid uniformity. There are a variety of ideological strands
to Islamwhether one labels them conservative, modernist,
or fundamentalistand consequently a variety of responses to
the wider world. Many Muslims would not wish to assert the
all-embracing self-suciency of Islam and exclude any consid-
eration of other values and ideas. In practice there is consider-
able tolerance and mixing of religious ideas. The Muslim
community is also characterized by acute rivalry and fragmen-
tation, which is to a large extent explained by ethnicity. The
divisions over such issues as education, election of community
heads, mosque building, and the religious calendar, particu-
larly at Ramadan, are deeply complex, and alignments have
shifted markedly across groups and within them over time.
23
Despite a shared Islamic faith with Sierra Leonean Muslims
like the Aku and Temne, the Fula had distinct dierences. This
was clearly evident with regard to the issue of membership in
secret societies, like the Ojeh, which was of Yoruba origin, and
the Bullom-Sherbro Poro, which entered Freetown from the
provinces. The evidence suggests that the Fula, both immi-
grants and those born in Sierra Leone, did not join such soci-
eties in Freetown because they considered them un-Islamic.
The Fula, especially the Fuuta Jalon immigrants, strongly be-
lieved that members of such societies worshipped idols and
their behavior was immoral, indecent, and absolutely opposed
to Islamic doctrines. They therefore called upon these Mus-
lims to disassociate themselves from whatever tended to recall
pagan times, warning that otherwise Allah would punish them
by sending them to burn in hell in the hereafter. Yet many
Sierra Leonean Muslims not only became members of such se-
cret societies, they defended their participation in traditional
festivals and masquerades on the grounds that these celebra-
tions were part of their culture. A large number of Muslim
Aku, for example, were members of the Ojeh and of secret
hunting societies. It was not uncommon for a Muslim Aku to
go to the mosque on Friday, the Muslim sabbath, and pray to
Allah and then later in the evening put on his Ojeh dress to
join his fellow members in social festivities. Moreover, many
Temne Muslims in Freetown were members of the Poro, and
there is evidence that so were some Fula in the provinces, es-
pecially in the Tonkolili and Bombali districts. As early as the
nineteenth century, Fula in the Yoni chiefdom in the Tonkolili
district, including Fula Mansa Binbinkoro (mansa is the Mande
term for a ruler), the ruler of Yoni and the eldest son of a Fuuta
Jalon immigrant, Amadu Jalloh, belonged to the Poro. Accord-
ing to Fyle, it was from Yoni that the Poro spread to the rest of
Temneland in the provinces, and it was the Fula who brought
the Poro to the Temne. Not only were most of these Fula the
ospring of interethnic marriages, Fyle has suggested that
these Fula members of the Poro were not Muslims.
24
Notwithstanding divisions in the Muslim community in
Freetown, the Fula cooperated with Muslims from various
ethnic groups belonging to such organizations as the Sierra
Leone Muslim Congress. One major area of cooperation was
the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage and the most characteristic
form of religious mobility in Islam.
25
The pilgrimage is above
all a religious duty and a profound religious experience. In ad-
dition, the pilgrimage tends to reinforce the feeling of oneness
among Muslims and to strengthen the solidarity of the Mus-
lim community, and of mankind. But some Fula merchants,
both male and female, saw the hajj as more than a religious
obligation; they viewed it as a status symbol among their com-
munity and the wider Muslim population. Because of the hajj,
Fula alhajis and hajas, as well as other cross-ethnic Muslims
with such titles, were treated with reverence and dierentiated
socially in the Fula jamaa and the broader Muslim community
in Freetown. There was also a correlation between the number
of times a Fula merchant made the hajj and public estimation
of his wealth.
Fula Traders and Education
One of the most important religious contributions of Fula
merchants to Freetown society was Islamic education, which
spanned the preindependence and postindependence periods.
Mention must also be made of the signicant role of the
Mandinka and the Aku in promoting Islamic education in
Freetown through the building of schools and mosques during
this time span. The Mandinka Islamic educators included Al-
mamy Barakah Kamara, Sheikh Mahmoud Swarray-Deen, and
Alfa Yikiba Kamara. Of the Akus, the scholars who played a
major role in the spread of Islamic knowledge in their com-
munities at Fula Town, Fourah Bay, and Aberdeen included
Alfa Mohammed Sanusi, chief Arabic letter writer and inter-
preter for the colonial administration.
In contrast to many Freetown residents who viewed West-
ern education as a status symbol, a primary indicator of social
prestige among Fula traders and in the broader Fula commu-
nity was Islamic learning. The interaction of the Fula mercan-
tile group with Islam was especially signicant in view of the
overriding importance of Islam and the religious nature of
their community. It is not always easy to distinguish between
the Islamizing role of Fula merchants, on the one hand, and of
teachers and holy men, on the other, since these two activities
were often associated in the Fula community and regularly
combined in the same person. But there were some Fula who
were either full-edged scholars or clerics or full-time mer-
chants. Some Fula were full-time traders for part of their lives
and later retired from commerce to continue their studies and
to become full-edged scholars or clerics.
26
The Fula, like Muslims elsewhere, demonstrated full aware-
ness of their responsibilities to educate their people. The place
of knowledge in Islam cannot be overemphasized. It is a pre-
requisite to and, therefore, precedes ritual worship. Indeed,
education from the beginning was so much a part of the struc-
ture of Islam that the religion fostered rmviews on the struc-
ture, substance, and process of education. As Muslims the Fula
merchants were of the conviction that it was the duty of every
Muslim and every Islamic community to educate everyone, in-
cluding children, adults, women, the underprivileged, the dis-
abled, and peasants or nomads. In Islam learning is obligatory
for every Muslim; it is not simply a right or privilege.
Beginning with iqraa (reading), which is mentioned in al-
Alaq (sura 96 of the Quran), there is considerable evidence in
both the Quran and hadith (prophetic traditions) to show that
to a Muslim education is obligatory.
27
Besides encouraging
learning, these books accord the learned a preferential posi-
tion in society and honor. Islam abhors ignorance, and the
Quran holds that it will be dicult for man to produce before
Allah an acceptable excuse for ignorance in the hereafter.
Seeking knowledge is regarded as one of the most meritorious
acts of worship a Muslim can perform. Like other religions,
Islam enjoins proselytization, which would be impossible with-
out education on the part of the proselytizer. Education is also
necessary because a Muslim must always make only informed
decisions since actions are judged by their intents. Education
is required in order to discharge other Muslim duties properly
as well.
28
Fula Islamic education is designed to realize the following,
as is education elsewhere in the Muslim world. First, it in-
structs the followers to acquire religious knowledge so as to
know Allah, obey his laws as revealed to the Prophet Muham-
mad, worship him, and fulll all the religious obligations. For
the individual, this was also a means of liberation, a path to in-
dependence and self-reliance. The educational system achieves
this by teaching the individual to anchor himself rmly in
Allah and to purge himself of self-centeredness through the
appreciation of the insignicance of self. Here lies a great
paradox on which successful Muslim living depends. Man
is noble before Allah, yet mans greatness is possible only
through the annulling of self, only through the surrendering
and anchoring of the self in Allah. Only those who are inde-
pendent depend unwaveringly on Allah; only those who are
equipped to grow spiritually submit absolutely to Allah. Sec-
ond, Islam advises one to instill the discipline of hard work
and train the hands, mind, and intuitive faculty to cultivate the
earth and benet from what Allah has created. Third, Islamic
tenets advocate being a responsible and useful citizen capable
of performing duties in the best interest of the community, ac-
cording to the pattern of the Prophet Muhammad.
29
Fula Islamic education existed in one or more of three
forms: rst, as a parallel system outside the formal school sys-
tem of Freetown; second, side by side with Western education
in the formal school system; and third, as exclusive schools set
up as formal schools but devoted wholly or principally to Is-
lamic education. Not only did the Fula improve the quality of
Islamic education in Freetown, they increased the number of
Muslims literate in Arabic. This was seen as necessary to pre-
serve the Islamic identity of Muslims living in contact with
Western ideas and attitudes. The Fula also saw this contribu-
tion as leading to greater cohesion and unity in the trans-
ethnic Muslim community. As Islamic educators, the Fula held
various titles such as karamoko, alfa (Muslim scholar), sheikh,
cherno (Fula title for a Muslim teacher or scholar), and imam in
mosques, which were not only places of worship but centers of
Islamic education and socialization for Muslims.
One of the most important mechanisms through which Fula
merchants contributed to the diusion of Islam in Freetown
was by establishing Islamic educational institutions at dier-
ent levels, starting with the Quranic school or karanta (pri-
mary school). This school was common among Sierra Leones
multiethnic Muslims in Freetown and the provinces and was
established in houses, mosques, and public places. In fact, the
Quranic school was an essential and necessary part of the
early education and training of Sierra Leoneanborn Fula
children in Freetown. The establishment of such schools was
not the responsibility of the central government or local au-
thorities but rather a communal obligation. Muslims regarded
the setting up of such schools as obligatory and believed that
any person who contributed to that kind of meritorious activ-
ity would be abundantly rewarded by Allah.
30
In the Fula karanta, a Fula karamoko instructed male and
female karandas from various ethnic groups ranging from
ages six to seventeen, who usually resided in the karamokos
neighborhood. The vast majority of the Fula karamokos were
male; many were shopkeepers who combined trading with
part-time Islamic instruction. The school week normally be-
gan on Friday afternoon after the two oclock congregational
prayer held at the Fula mosque. Thereafter sessions were held
once or twice a day in the morning and afternoon until
Wednesday, when only the morning session was held. From
Wednesday afternoon to Friday morning, there was no school.
The duration of a session was determined by the karamoko,
but usually a lesson lasted from two to three hours.
The karamokos covered two of the main stages of Fula Is-
lamic education: jangugol (reading) and windugol (writing),
both of which helped to develop the pupils mental and intel-
lectual capabilities. The lessons were based on Quranic text,
through which the karanda not only learned how to read and
write Arabic but memorized portions of the Holy Book using
the rote method. Reading was a laborious process consisting
of chanting the separate words of the Fatiha (the opening sura
of the Quran) and other selected suras. The pupils were re-
quired to write passages of the Quran on a wala (wooden
slate) with locally made black ink and a pen made from a reed
sharpened to a ne point. The pupils then recited the passages
aloud until the karamoko approved their memorization. In
addition to teaching the skills of reading and writing, Fula
karamokos taught their pupils the basic principles of Islam, in-
cluding the pillars of Islam and ibada (an act of devotion, both
in theory and practice). The pupils would also learn the rudi-
mentary principles of ethical values, which included how to
behave at home and in public and how to respect their parents,
teachers, and other elders.
Fula karamokos also taught their pupils to show deference
to them in order to earn baraka, a virtue that assured an indi-
vidual of blessing and success in life. Parents, who could also
provide their children with baraka, imposed on them a duty
to obey karamokos, who were usually authoritative and held
in respect bordering on fear. It was widely believed in Sierra
Leone and elsewhere in Muslim West Africa that karamokos,
who had an intimate knowledge of the Quran and of the di-
vine language, Arabic, had a particularly powerful baraka at
their disposal to give or withhold, and it was that assumption
that led many parents to entrust their children to them. But
baraka never works in reverse: pupils do not give baraka to
their teachers, or children to their parents. Also, husbands give
baraka to their wives, but not the reverse. Although you may
earn baraka, you cannot give it to yourself. Both individuals
and communities can receive baraka or lose it; they could re-
gain it and retain it. If you receive enough baraka, you will
obtain immunity from misfortune. Those who have baraka
should expend it, and the more they expend it, the more it in-
creases. If you hoard baraka, you will lose it because it spoils
from inactivity or miserliness. The karamokos also taught that
baraka was a valuable asset that could enable the pupils to fend
o evil and to pursue noble ends. Baraka was intergenerational
and could therefore be passed on to families.
31
After a karamoko was satised that his pupils had acquired
the required Islamic education, which often lasted from two to
six years, he would inform their parents about the graduation
ceremony, which often took place at the Fula mosque. During
the ceremony the imam and his followers were among the vis-
itors. Prayers were an important part of the ceremony and
were led by the imam, who usually began by asking everyone
present join in reciting the Fatiha and ended by thanking the
karamoko for his service. In addition, parents brought a large
oering of kola nuts, which was formally introduced to the
gathering and then laid aside to be distributed after the intro-
ductory prayers. The graduates wore clean white gowns and
were expected to perform ablution (ritual cleansing) before at-
tending the ceremony. The highlight of the event was when the
pupils announced the suras from which their selections were
taken and then commenced the long, arduous task of recitation.
Most of the pupils would recite their pieces with condence, to
the great satisfaction of the people present. The karamoko
would prompt the graduates if their condence faltered. Usu-
ally at the end of the ceremony the crowd, which included
friends and relatives, shook hands, oered short prayers, and
then gathered for a big meal prepared by the mothers of the
graduates. In contrast to the provinces, a pupil did not perform
domestic work, such as gathering rewood or farming, for the
karamoko, who did not receive any fees. Instead, the pupils
family usually oered gifts like kola nuts to the karamoko in ap-
preciation of his instructional service. Unlike Western schools,
the Quranic schools did not oer employment prospects in the
civil service or similar institutions after graduation.
32
The Fula also played an important role in the establishment
of formal Muslim schools with state support, but they were di-
vided over this issue. The vast majority of the Fula, including
Alhaji Momodu Allie and Alhaji Malal Jalloh, not only favored
exclusive Islamic education, but they were opposed to all forms
of Western education. These Fula parents did not send their
children to Western schools, which they viewed as doing more
harm than good and, possibly, destroying their spiritual be-
liefs. They felt that Western education was simply an instru-
ment to be used for the purpose of converting them and their
children to Christianity. In addition, they did not want to adapt
Western education to Islam, but rather to construct Islam with
its own distinct identity. These Fula emphasized the unique-
ness and all-embracing eternal relevance of Quranic teaching
and opposed any form of change or innovation, which meant
that, among other things, they opposed Western ideas and
ways.
33
In addition to fear of their children being converted to
Christianity, these Fula were apprehensive that Western edu-
cation would prepare their children for nonbusiness profes-
sions like law and teaching, which conicted with their goal of
having their children participate in and continue their patriar-
chal family businesses. They were also of the view that West-
ern education would socialize their children to look down on
their mercantile careers. In fact, many of these Fula had wit-
nessed the decline of Krio traders whose children, after receiv-
ing advanced Western education at the traders expense, had
pursued noncommercial careers like law and medicine to the
detriment of the family-owned businesses.
34
In contrast to Fula like Alhaji Momodu Allie, who favored
exclusive Islamic education, a few Fula, like Almamy Jamburia,
supported integrating Islamic and Western education. This
Fula minority emphasized that although the Islamic educa-
tional system should be preserved, developed, and expanded,
it was also necessary to provide more Fula, both men and
women, with the skills and qualications gained in the Western
educational system, which would enable them to participate
more fully in the modern economy and government of Sierra
Leone. In proposing an integrated curriculum, these Fula re-
moved the need or fear of having to convert to Christianity in
order to acquire the skills necessary for full participation in the
aairs of the country. In fact, one of Almamy Jamburias sons
who received both Islamic and Western education, Abdul Aziz
Jalloh-Jamburia, rose to become assistant master and registrar
in the Supreme Court of Sierra Leone in Freetown.
35
At the turn of the twentieth century Almamy Jamburia pre-
sented a proposal to the colonial administration for the estab-
lishment of a primary school where Fula children would learn
Arabic and English. Governor King-Harman endorsed the
proposal, and a Fula primary school named Madrasa Islamia
was opened in the basement of the house of S. A. Metzger on
Upper Kissy Road. The school was subsequently transferred
to Almamy Jamburias residence on Jenkins Street and later
moved to his other residence on Gloucester Lane in the east of
the city.
By 1903 there were six madrasas for children in Freetown;
they included Madrasa Islamia (Fula), Madrasa Amaraia (Man-
dinka), and Madrasa Harunia (Aku). In 1904 the colonial ad-
ministration proposed that the Fula and Mandinka madrasas
be merged into a single Madrasa Islamia under a joint admin-
istration, a proposal that was endorsed by both groups. This
consolidation resulted in a more ecient administration of the
Madrasa Islamia, which was then transferred to another site at
Magazine Cut in the east of Freetown. The Madrasa Islamia
represented the core of what the colonial administration de-
scribed as Mohammedan education. In contrast to the Chris-
tian schools, the madrasas were poorly funded by the colo-
nial administration, the result primarily of fear that strong
Muslim education would undermine Christianity in Free-
town.
To regulate the madrasa system better in Freetown, the
colonial administration appointed Dr. Edward W. Blyden, who
had long been an advocate of an educational system for Mus-
lim children that combined Islamic and British education, as
director of Mohammedan education in 1901. In 1902 the colo-
nial administration adopted the Mohammedan Education
Ordinance, which committed it to providing nancing and
inspection of the madrasas as well as providing for the appoint-
ment of Dr. Blyden for a term of ve years. Besides supervis-
ing the madrasas, Dr. Blyden was responsible for directing a
training school for Muslim elementary school teachers. After
he retired in 1906, a Mohammedan Board of Advice was ap-
pointed in 1907, on the advice of the governor, that consisted
of Almamy Jamburia and six prominent Muslims in Freetown.
In 1928 the colonial administration introduced further changes
in the madrasa system: it changed the status of the Madrasa
Amaraia and Madrasa Sulaimana to that of Infant Schools; and
it divided the Madrasa Umaria in Aberdeen into Infant and
Standard schools. Madrasa Harunia in Fula Town, which re-
jected the proposed reforms, did not receive nancial support
from the colonial administration.
36
In 1913 Almamy Jamburia was appointed by the colonial
administration to the Government Muslim Board of Educa-
tion, which had oversight of the madrasa system and Bo Gov-
ernment School. Following Almamy Jamburias death in 1931,
his son Alhaji M. S. Jalloh, who was also a trader and literate
in Arabic, French, and English, continued his work as an Is-
lamic educator and leader in the Fula community. Alhaji Jalloh
had graduated from the Muslim teachers program directed
by Dr. Blyden in 1912, and in 1958 he established Madrasa
Omaria in the east of Freetown in memory of his fathers con-
tribution to Islam.
Fula Islamic education did not end at the karanta or
madrasa but continued into fennu (higher studies). For Fula
pupils from wealthy families or those from families with a long
tradition of Islamic scholarship, the next educational step was
to pursue specialized studies in Islamic law and sciences or
comparative textual criticism of books on Islamic theology
and law in such renowned places as Timbo, Dinguiraye, Lab,
Touba, or Fuuta Toro in West Africa. The curriculum in-
cluded tawhid (Islamic theology), qh (Islamic jurisprudence),
adab (Arabic literature), tafsir (commentary of the Quran), ha-
dith, and tasawwuf (mysticism). In each of these disciplines dif-
ferent works were studied, such as al-Muwatta (a corpus of law
and traditions), Tafsir al-jalayn (a Quranic exegesis), and al-
Shifa (an ethical work). What was unique about this system of
education was the use of the Fula language in oral exposition
and rhetorical training. After completing their advanced edu-
cation, students received various titles such as karamoko, alfa,
cherno, or sheikh. Alhaji Momodu Allie, for example, sent his
sons Alhaji Ibrahima Allie and Alhaji Baba Allie to Guinea,
Senegal, Mali, and Mauritania to pursue advanced Islamic
studies. It is estimated that between 1940 and 1978 over two
hundred Fula from wealthy familiessuch as Jalloh-Jamburia,
Allie, Tejan-Jalloh, Jalloh, Bah, and Barriepursued advanced
Islamic education in other African countries, especially Guinea,
and overseas.
37
Fula students who were born in Freetown often combined
Islamic studies with cultural education in Fula homelands. It
is estimated that over 50 percent of the Fula immigrants from
Guinea sent one or more male children in their teenage years
to their homeland in Fuuta Jalon for cultural education, which
included study of the Fula language and history as well as val-
ues regarding issues like trade and family. But a few of the
teenage Fula, especially those from interethnic marriages with
groups like the Temne, resisted, with encouragement from
their non-Fula mothers, attempts by their Fula fathers to send
them to Guinea for fear of not returning to Freetown. In spon-
soring the education of these students, Fula parents wanted to
ensure that they were solidly grounded in Islamic values and
traditional Fula culture before returning to Freetown where
there were strong Christian-Western inuences. In addition,
given the kin basis of Fula trade organization and the fact that
their rms were envisioned as patriarchal family businesses,
the Fula fathers wanted their children to be socialized in the
proper values in their homelands as well as establish or
strengthen kin ties in these areas for future cross-boundary
trade purposes.
38
Fula families played an important role in the socialization of
children in Islamic and cultural values. From the age of ve
both male and female children were required to pray privately
with the family. These prayers were led by the male head of the
household, who also tutored the children in the Quran and
made sure that they carried out the theoretical and practical
assignments of the karamoko. It was in the Fula household
that a child was rst exposed to the basic tenets of Islam, such
as the ve daily prayers. Not only were Islamic values taught,
Fula traditions and history were also passed on to the chil-
dren. Recognizing the widespread proselytizing activities of
Christians and the propensity of children to speak Krio in the
multiethnic Freetown society, Fula merchants insisted on the
speaking of Pulaar and the practice of Islam in their patrilin-
eal households. To reinforce Islamic and Fula cultural values,
many Fula children were sent frequently for short vacations to
Guinea, Senegal, and other Fula homelands in West Africa.
39
In the postcolonial period Fula merchants became better
organized and began to provide for young Muslims an Islamic
education of higher quality on a much wider scale than in the
past. In contrast to the colonial period, the Fula chief was
joined by many elders in encouraging Fula parents to send
their daughters to school and to allow them to pursue their ed-
ucation beyond primary school. Whereas the tendency in the
past was to encourage girls to limit their interests to domestic
subjects, they were now being advised to broaden their hori-
zons and qualify themselves for entry into such professions
as teaching and nursing. A Western education did not by
any means lead all Muslim Fula women to abandon Islamic
domestic and religious norms and values. In Freetown there
were many examples of Western-educated Fula women who
willingly accepted such traditions as their husbands having
more than one wife. Although a minority of Fula men opposed
the education of girls beyond the age of twelve and wanted
women to be conned to such professions as shopkeeper, oth-
ers were of the opinion that girls and women should have the
same opportunities as men. A primary reason why more Fula
parents now wanted their daughters to pursue Western edu-
cations was to help them forge trade alliances with wealthy
Fula who increasingly wanted to marry Western-educated Fula
women for reasons of prestige as well as to help them manage
their businesses. Marriage alliances were a key strategy used
among Fula traders to facilitate credit in cash or merchandise
to start or expand a business as well as to build trade networks
not just in Freetown but throughout Sierra Leone and neigh-
boring Guinea.
In response to the increasing postcolonial educational needs
of the Fula community, in 1965 SLPP prime minister Albert
Margai gave the Fula chief Alhaji Bah a large parcel of land
gift on Guard Street in the east of Freetown on which to con-
struct a school for Fula children. Not only did the Fula chief
use his good relations with the prime minister to obtain the
land, he personally supervised its construction by visiting the
building site twice daily until it was completed in 1966. The
Fula School, which was both an elementary and high school,
played an important role in the socialization of Fula children.
Many of the teachers were Fula, who served as role models;
some of the donations by Fula merchants were used as salaries
for the teachers. The students received instruction in the con-
ventional subjects, such as English and mathematics, as well as
in Pulaar, the Fula language. Traditional Fula culture and his-
tory were also taught to the students. Some of the students
were non-Fula who came from the multiethnic population in
the east of the city. In addition to being used as an educational
center, the Fula School became a place for the Fula to meet,
on the last Sunday of every month, to raise funds and discuss
matters aecting the community.
40
In 1978 the Ansarul Islamic College was added to the coed-
ucational, fourteen-classroom Fula School, which was renamed
the Ansarul Islamic Secondary School. The college was built
by the Ansarul Islamic Mission, founded in 1974 by three
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula from the Koinadugu district: Alhaji
Abu Bakarr Bah, Alhaji Sajallieu Bah, and Alhaji Mohammed
Jalloh, who were diamond dealers in Sefadu, Kono district.
Their goal was to use their diamond prots to build schools to
provide Islamic education, not just to Fula children but to all
children in Sierra Leone, and to build mosques to spread the
Islamic faith throughout Sierra Leone and elsewhere in West
Africa. These Fula merchants, who were also involved in the
merchandise trade, were strongly inuenced by the long-
standing Fula Islamic educational tradition in Sierra Leone.
Following its founding, the Fula pioneers devoted most of
their time and resources to the advancement of the Ansarul Is-
lamic Mission.
The Fula founders were assisted by a prominent Fula poli-
tician, Alhaji Chernor Marjue, who was also a minister of state
attached to the vice presidents oce in the APC government.
Having learned about the plans of the three Fula pioneers,
Alhaji Marjue led a government delegation to Kono to meet
with them and make recommendations to the government.
The delegation recommended that the Islamic association pro-
posed by the Fula merchants be changed to a mission with a
proper name. The name Ansarul was adopted, along with the
motto Service to Mankind, following a suggestion by Alhaji
Abu Bakarr Bah, who was also a Sheikh and served as the rst
principal of the college. Besides the nancial support of Fula
merchants, the college received nancial assistance and teach-
ers from the Egyptian government. In addition to Freetown,
the Ansarul Islamic Mission established primary and sec-
ondary schools in Bo, Kenema, Kono, Makeni, and Koindu in
the provinces as well as an Arabic Institute. The Fula founders
cooperated with several local and foreign Muslim organiza-
tions as well as Christian educational organizations in the
country as they pursued the common goal of providing educa-
tion to Sierra Leonean children under the auspices of the Min-
istry of Education. The Ansarul Islamic Mission was aliated
with the Supreme Islamic Council (SIC), which was created by
Alhaji Sheikh Ahmad Tijan-Koroma and other Muslims in
1969. In addition to forging a close relationship with the APC
government, the SIC formed branches throughout Sierra
Leone and solicited funds through the government and pri-
vately for building schools and mosques. It also recruited
teachers from foreign institutions like al-Azhar and provided
scholarships to Sierra Leonean students to study at leading Is-
lamic universities overseas.
41
In cooperating with Muslim organizations on the issues of
education, Western-educated Fula such as Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh,
Abass Camba, and Alhaji Sulaiman Jalloh-Jamburia served as
liaisons between the organizations and the Fula jamaa. In fact,
in the 1940s Abass Camba, as editor and proprietor, launched
a new Muslim newspaper, the Ramadan Vision, which cam-
paigned vigorously for modern education among Muslims and
criticized the slow pace of the Muslim Congress in strength-
ening modern education among Muslims. But the Ramadan
Vision praised the eorts of the Muslim Association, a break-
away elitist group formed by Ahmed Alhadi in 1942 to pro-
mote primary and secondary school for Arabic and Islam. The
association built a school at the foot of Mount Aureol, support
for which was raised entirely from voluntary contributions. Its
rst headmaster was a prominent Freetown politician, Lamina
Sankoh, formerly the Reverend E. N. Jones. Both the associ-
ation and the congress, as well as the editor of the Ramadan
Vision, wanted to emulate the example of the successful Chris-
tian schools that exercised considerable inuence in Free-
town.
Unlike in advanced Western industrialized societies like the
United States, wealthy Fula merchants did not set up educa-
tional foundations or endowments to provide scholarships to
needy Fula and Muslim students at every level of the coun-
trys educational system. The students who needed nancial
assistance the most were those pursuing higher education.
This Fula attitude may be explained by three factors. First,
many of the Fula who would have contributed to an educa-
tional fund did not want the government to know about their
wealth since they evaded tax payments to the Income Tax De-
partment. Unlike nancial donations to a mosque, those to a
foundation or a nonprot educational organization had to be
reported to the department. Second, many wealthy Fula busi-
nessmen were narrow-minded: they only wanted to help their
families and kinsmen and were afraid of other Fula or Muslims
surpassing them, which evidently contradicted their Islamic
faith, which required them to help all people without distinc-
tions. This attitude was exacerbated by the strong intraclan
rivalry in the Fula community. Third, the wealthy immigrant
Fula distrusted the Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn
Fula, who had the skills to manage educational foundations or
endowments. Despite the constant plea of Fula visionaries like
Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh and Alhaji Musa Jalloh to wealthy Fula to
pool their resources and set up an educational foundation that
would provide scholarship money for Islamic and Western
education from the primary level through college, it never
materialized because of the lack of support from mainly con-
servative immigrant Fuuta Jalon Fula.
42
Fula Traders Support of Islam
Sadaqa (charity) has long been an important dimension of the
religious life of the Fula merchant group in Freetown and was
undertaken by individual merchants or groups of merchants
organized according to clans. It included monetary donations
to schools for Islamic education or to mosques to help the
needy as well as maintain the building. Some Fula traders pro-
vided essential foodstus like rice to needy Muslims during
Ramadan. Alhaji Momodu Allie, for example, gave nancial
support to many Fula and non-Fula Muslims. As a devout
Muslim, he did not collect rent from his Muslim tenants dur-
ing Ramadan. Rather, he provided them with provisions like
sugar, rice, and meat to prepare their meals. These acts of
sadaqa enhanced Alhaji Allies social image as a philanthro-
pist, which further advanced his business and political inter-
ests. Because Islam discourages Muslims from disclosing their
charitable deeds, it is dicult to have a complete picture of
how much sadaqa Alhaji Allie gave to Muslims in Freetown.
For Alhaji Allie, the baraka that resulted from his charitable
deeds would be enhanced by Allah if he kept them private.
43
To increase his baraka through sadaqa, in the late 1930s Al-
haji Allie proposed to build Jami ul-Foulanien (Fula mosque)
on Jenkins Street in the east of Freetown. But while the Fula
jamaa accepted his land donation, the majority of Fuuta Jalon
Fula rejected his monetary oer to build the mosque because
of intra-Fula prejudice that viewed the Fuuta Toro Fula, to
which Alhaji Allie belonged, as a minority who should not be
permitted to dominate Fula aairs. In addition, many Fuuta
Jalon Fula felt that Alhaji Allie would monopolize the baraka
for the mosque if allowed to build it alone. These Fuuta Jalon
Fula wanted the baraka to be shared by the entire Fula jamaa,
which decided in the 1940s to donate money for building the
mosque. The money was collected by the treasurer, Alhaji
Abdulai Jalloh, a butcher, and was deposited into a Tribal
Fund, which was controlled by the colonial administration
because of previous allegations by some Fuuta Jalon Fula that
the Fula chief Alhaji Allie had misappropriated funds of the
jamaa. During the construction of the mosque in 1953, the
Fula Mosque Building Committee, which was dominated by
Fuuta Jalon Fula, wrote to the colonial administration re-
questing permission to withdraw 500 from the Tribal Fund
to nance completion of the mosque, which occurred in 1958.
In addition to providing nancial support, many Fula mer-
chants provided manual labor. The Fula who contributed in
cash and kind to the building of the Fula mosque were of the
conviction that Allah would double their baraka in the here-
after. The Fula mosque became one of the social forces of
cohesion for Fula immigrants, who realized that they had to
become members of the mosque and attend regularly if they
were to be recognized by the Fula community.
44
In the postcolonial period Fula merchants continued their
support of charitable activities, but gifts were not always of
money. Some merchants donated articles of clothing or food
and sometimes made a gift of the rent on one of their proper-
ties for a specied period to their Muslim tenants. Some of the
largest religious contributions made by Fula merchants were
made posthumously. Many Fula of means, regardless of the
gifts they made to the mosque for its maintenance, feeding the
poor, or supporting Muslim holidays during their lifetime,
wanted prayers said for their souls after they died. Their -
nancial bequests for such prayers were usually divided among
the Fula eldersled by the imam, with a greater portion go-
ing to himwho gathered in the mosque weekly or monthly
to oer such prayers. But provision for religious contributions
in ones will was far from common among the Fula merchants
of Freetown. The general tendency was for individual mer-
chants, regardless of their social or economic standing, to
make either large religious contributions or no contributions
at all.
The sadaqa of Alhaji Allie, for example, in supporting
needy Muslims and the Fula mosque during the colonial pe-
riod was continued by his merchant sons Alhaji Ibrahima
Allie, Alhaji Baba Allie, and Alhaji Abass Allie. The Allie
brothers donated large sums of money to pay for such mainte-
nance costs at the mosque as painting, carpeting, and electric-
ity, since the monetary contributions collected every Friday
afternoon from the congregation, the Muslim sabbath, were
not sucient to cover the mosques expenses. In 1975 Alhaji
Abass Allie donated an electric generator and loudspeakers to
the mosque, and in 1978 Alhaji Baba Allie paid for the painting
of the entire mosque. The Allie brothers also contributed
money to help pay for the living expenses of the imams, whose
responsibilities included leading the Fula in prayer ve times
daily. Because Islam discourages Muslims from disclosing
their sadaqa, it is dicult to have a complete picture of how
much sadaqa the Allie brothers gave to the Fula mosque and
needy Muslims. Often they donated money to the mosque and
supported needy Muslims anonymously. Like their father, they
held a strong religious conviction that their charitable deeds
would be enhanced by Allah if they kept them private.
45
One of the Fula imams, Alhaji Mohammed Seray Bah, who
was also a merchant-scholar, provided leadership for the Fula
mosque and taught children as well as adults the Quran for
many years in Freetown. Alhaji Bah was born about 1909 in
Lab in Guinea. At age thirteen he had completed his primary
Islamic education under a Fula karamoko and then embarked
on the translation and commentary of the Quran. In 1926 he
left Guinea to pursue advanced Islamic studies in Senegal,
where he stayed for fteen years before leaving for The Gam-
bia. While in The Gambia, Alhaji Bah met a noted Fula Is-
lamic scholar, Chernor Mamadu Borbo Jalloh, at Serekunda, a
major Islamic learning center not just in The Gambia but also
throughout West Africa. Both men developed a strong friend-
ship and stayed together for seven years studying the Quran
before Chernor Mamadu Jalloh decided to relocate to Free-
town in 1948 and Alhaji Bah went along with his mentor.
On arrival in Freetown both scholars stayed at Tengbeh
Town in the west end of the city for a year while they tried to
network with other Fula. They then relocated to the village of
Dogoloya in the Koinadugu district, where they stayed for four
years teaching the Quran and proselytizing before returning
to Freetown in 1953. During his stay at Congo Cross in the
west end of the city, the imam met one of the Fula elders from
Guinea, Alhaji Lamrana Bah, who introduced him to the Fula
community. Following this introduction, Alhaji Bah continued
his teaching and propagation of Islam, opened a provisions
shop, and started a polygamous family. Alhaji Bah became a
student of, and later an assistant lecturer under, Alhaji Amadu
Sie, an outstanding Fula Islamic scholar who studied with Al-
haji Malik Sy in Senegal and was initiated into the tijani broth-
erhood. After the death of Alhaji Amadu Sie in 1957, Alhaji
Bah became senior lecturer of Islamic studies in the Fula com-
munity. In 1964 he was appointed assistant imam of the Fula
mosque under the chief imam Alhaji Misbaahu Bah.
46
Fula merchants also sponsored religious celebrations like
maulid ul-nabiy, id ul-adha, and id ul-tr. They underwrote
such expenses as food and drink, clothing, transportation, and
sacricial animals like sheep, goats, and cows. In addition, they
gave monetary and material assistance to the imam and his fel-
low Muslim scholars, who read the Quran and oered prayers
for Allahs many blessings during Muslim holidays at the Fula
mosque or in open praying elds in the city. During the month
of Ramadan the wives of Fula merchants prepared food that
was brought to the Fula mosque, where their husbands and
those Fula and non-Fula who could not aord to buy their
own meals or did not have wives to prepare them would eat
communally after breaking the fast each evening. Sometimes,
the wives of Fula merchants entertained Muslim guests from
various socioeconomic backgrounds with food and nonalco-
holic beverages at their homes during Muslim celebrations,
especially during id ul-tr and id ul-adha.
Fula merchants Islamic obligations in supporting educa-
tion, the Fula mosque, charitable activities, and the hajj con-
stituted major nancial expenses that aected their capital
accumulation, margin of prots, and business expansion in the
competitive Freetown economy. It is extremely dicult to
have a precise gure of how much money Fula traders ex-
pended on these obligations because of their religious objec-
tion to divulging private donations and their reluctance to
make known their nancial standing. But it is known that Fula
merchants spent over Le2,000,000 in support of Islamic edu-
cation, the maintenance of the Fula mosque, payment for the
hajj, and charitable activities between 1961 and 1978.
47
Although there is no evidence that these obligations led to
the bankruptcy of Fula businesses, they diverted valuable re-
sources that would have allowed for greater business diversi-
cation and expansion, considering the fact that the vast
majority of Fula merchants were totally dependent on their
own nancial resources instead of using other peoples money,
through borrowing from banks, to conduct their businesses.
What was comforting for the Fula merchants, however, was
their faith that through such good works in support of Islam,
they could obtain Allahs favor in the hereafter. While nan-
cial success was important to the Fula merchants, they real-
ized that this success was not transferable to the hereafter.
Acting on the commandments of the Quran, they therefore
used their nancial success to support Islam so that they
would occupy their rightful place in the ranks of heaven.
Through support of Islam, the Fula merchants also enhanced
their social status not just in Freetown but throughout Sierra
Leone and in their homelands. This facilitated their trading
activities by attracting clients and building trade networks
among Muslims in Sierra Leone and neighboring countries,
especially Guinea.
6
Politics
Chieftaincy Politics
Since its beginnings in the colonial period, the institution of
almamy (chief, tribal ruler, or headman) was central to the
merchant-based Fula community in Freetown. As more Fula
immigrants settled in Freetown, they decided in the nine-
teenth century to follow political traditions in their homelands
by electing an almamy who would exercise authority, espe-
cially on commercial matters. Authority was also necessary to
apply pressure to individuals to fulll their obligations to the
collective interests of the community and to maintain mecha-
nisms for political communication, formulation of problems,
deliberation, decision making, and coordination of action. Au-
thority was also essential for the maintenance of a number of
administrative functions on such issues as marriage and inher-
itance that were necessary for the continuity of the Fula com-
munity. The Fula chieftaincy also played a major integrative
role among Fula merchants. The almamies devoted consider-
able time and energy to de-emphasizing clan dierences and
188
to strengthening ties among Fula traders. From the colonial
period to the postcolonial period the Freetown almamy repre-
sented the Fula in the city and was also the chief leader of all
Fula in Sierra Leone. On matters aecting Fula in general
throughout Sierra Leone, the state would rst consult with
the Fula chief in Freetown. Not only was Fula chieftaincy pol-
itics in Freetown tied to national politics, it shaped Fula poli-
tics elsewhere in Sierra Leone.
1
This chapter explores the interrelationships among the en-
trepreneurship of Alhaji Momodu Allie and Alhaji Momodu
Bah and of many other Fula merchants, on the one hand, and
community politics centering on headship and the jamaa as
well as national politics, on the other. In fact, as almamies, Al-
haji Allie and Alhaji Bah dominated Fula chieftaincy politics
for over four decades. This domination by merchants compares
to that of the Hausa community in Ibadan in Cohens study of
Hausa migrants. Some of the key issues examined here include
why Fula traders dominated the oce of almamy, how leader-
ship brought benets in terms of trade, how trade and wealth
enabled almamies to fulll certain functions expected by the
community, and how trade continued despite clan and political
divisions in the Fula community.
2
Not only were all the Fula almamies, from the colonial time
to the postcolonial period, merchants, there was a correlation
between mercantile auence and Fula chieftaincy politics in
Freetown. The evidence points to wealth derived from com-
merce as a primary factor in the election of Fula chiefs in Free-
town. An almamy was expected to be wealthy to fulll the
traditional social obligations of the chieftaincy. These included
entertaining the Fula community during Muslim holidays by
slaughtering cows and providing meals, bestowing monetary
gifts to elders, and providing free lodging to needy Fula immi-
grants in Freetown. Of the entire Fula jamaas donation to pub-
lic charities, the chief s share was expected to be the largest.
3
Politics / 189
The Fula chieftaincy was more than a symbol of political
power; it gave the elected individual religious, judicial, and
economic power. Fula julas, for example, would rst bring
their cattle to the Fula chief, to whom they often would sell
below market prices. As Fula chief it was easier to conclude
commercial deals with Fula merchants who brought their
merchandise to Freetown. In addition, when the Fula almamy
traveled to the provinces or Guinea it was traditional to give
him gifts, which often included cattle. The Fula chieftaincy
also provided the almamy with the role of spokesman, arbitra-
tor, and protector of his people. Since the state recognized the
Fula almamy as the chief power broker between his people and
the state, he could use his oce to obtain personal commercial
benets from politicians in return for his political loyalty. The
almamy was also responsible for calling together the jamaa to
celebrate the Muslim holidays and to observe Ramadan. In ad-
dition, he often represented the Fula community at functions
organized by state ocials and ociated at public ceremonies
such as the dedication of mosques or schools. But the almamy
did not possess dictatorial powers; he shared authority with
the imams, elders, and prominent economic leaders who made
up his advisory group.
4
Prior to the election and installation of Almamy Jamburia as
chief in 1902, which was attended by Governor King-Harman
and all the other almamies in the colony, the Fula had only
spokesmen (sometimes referred to as headmen), including Alieu
Fullah, Ahmad Naya Fullah, Sori Fullah, and Alfa Abdul
Aziz. All these nineteenth-century Fula spokesmen were im-
migrant merchants who served as an important link between
their people and the colonial administration, dealing with var-
ious issues regarding Islam, culture, immigration, and the divi-
sions within the Fula community. Most of the Fula spokesmen
combined their political duties with trading and Islamic pros-
elytizing in Freetown.
As Fula chief, Almamy Jamburia continuously advocated
unity among the Fula despite strong divisions within the com-
munity between Fuuta Jalon Fula and those from Fuuta Toro,
as well as threats to his leadership. In his weekly Sunday ad-
dresses to his fellow Fula, Almamy Jamburia underscored a
common heritage in urging them to put aside their dierences
and unite as a community. He also cited the umma (Muslim
community) of the prophet Muhammad as the model for all
Fula to emulate in Freetown. In addition, he presented pro-
posals to the colonial administration for strengthening the po-
sition of headman that were later used as a model for other
groups in Freetown. During his tenure as tribal ruler, Al-
mamy Jamburia received the title of justice of the peace (J.P.) in
recognition of his service to his community.
5
Almamy Jam-
buria not only continued the cultural duties of the nineteenth-
century Fula almamies, he represented Fula commercial
interests to the colonial administration. Although the colonial
administration was still reluctant to institutionalize the head-
man system in the colony, there was growing support for it.
6
In 1905 the governor introduced Ordinance no. 19, titled
An Ordinance to Promote a System of Administration by
Tribal Authority among the Tribes Settled in Freetown. This
ordinance empowered the governor to recognize as Tribal
Ruler any Chief, Almamy, or Headman, who with other Head-
men or representatives of the sections of the tribe, endeavors
to enforce a system of tribal administration for the well-being
of members of the tribe, resident in, or temporarily staying in
Freetown. Each ethnic group had to request recognition of
its leader as almamy, and the almamy had legal powers only
when acting with a council of advisers. It was under this ordi-
nance that Almamy Jamburia was recognized by the colonial
administration as the headman or Tribal Ruler of the Fula in
Freetown.
Under the Tribal Administration Ordinance almamies could
Politics / 191
make regulations covering such matters as indebtedness and
the pawning of property between members of an ethnic group.
In addition, they could impose nes, but the rules and rates of
ning had to receive the governors approval and be published
in the Sierra Leone Royal Gazette before they could obtain the
force of law. The almamy could settle disputes between mem-
bers of his ethnic group, and he had the same obligations as
chiefs in the protectorate to return to their chiefdoms men who
had left without permission.
7
In 1912 a small group of Fula from Senegambia that in-
cluded the Allie and Bunduka families requested from the
colonial administration ocial recognition for the appoint-
ment of their own headman. This led to the appointment of
Almamy Abibu, who ruled the separatist group for ve years
until he was ousted on charges of corruption. The group was
then reabsorbed into the larger Fula community under Al-
mamy Jamburias leadership. Following the death of Almamy
Jamburia in 1931, the Jamburia family and their Fula support-
ers proposed to the colonial administration that Alhaji Mo-
modu Allie, who had served as an assistant to Almamy Habibu
from Fuuta Toro from 1912 to 1918, be recognized as acting
almamy, a proposal the colonial administration endorsed. Al-
haji Allies strong business relationship with the colonial ad-
ministration and his vast wealth were primary factors in his
appointment as acting Fula chief. In 1933 Alhaji Allie was rec-
ognized as permanent chief by the colonial administration fol-
lowing an election among the Fula, although a rival group
made up mainly of Fuuta Jalon Fula opposed him because he
was not from Fuuta Jalon.
During Alhaji Allies chieftaincy, from 1931 to 1948, his op-
ponents accused him of corruption, misappropriation of funds
for a new mosque, and not convening the monthly meetings in
the local mosque. The petitioners were also opposed to the
strong roles played in Alhaji Allies political decision making
by Alieu Umboror, a relative; Alhaji Juheh Jalloh-Jamburia, a
relative of Almamy Jamburia; Abdulai Dukar, brother-in-law
of Alhaji Allie; and Abdul Aziz Jalloh-Jamburia, son of Al-
mamy Jamburia and assistant master of the Supreme Court.
They accused the above-mentioned advisers of urging Alhaji
Allie to rule heavy-handedly. It also appears that opposition to
Alhaji Allie stemmed from the desire of certain individuals or
factions among the Fuuta Jalon Fula to get a larger share of
the monetary and status rewards of the chieftaincy, and also to
ensure that their alliances were not discriminated against in
the governance of the Fula community.
Despite allegations of misrule, Alhaji Allie met with Fuuta
Jalon Fula, who were divided over a candidate for the chief-
taincy election in an eort to get himself reelected. To win
their votes he made six pledges to the Fuuta Jalon Fula. First,
he would cease to make Abdul Jamburia, Alieu Umboror, Al-
haji Juheh Jalloh, and Abdulai Dukar his principal and only ad-
visers. Second, he would exercise his duties in consultation
with a committee of six appointed by the jamaa. Third, he
would account for the sum of 95 that he received when he
was acting almamy. Fourth, he would provide a statement of
the monthly levy that he had collected from each Fula in Free-
town when he was acting almamy. Fifth, he would deposit each
month whatever money was left after administrative expenses
in a savings bank account in his name and those of two other
Fula selected by the jamaa. Sixth, he would convene each
month a general meeting in which he would inform all Fula of
the monthly amounts he had collected from them. He revealed
that the Fula jamaa had contributed the 95 when Almamy
Jamburia was chief, to be used for the erection of a mosque to
serve the entire Fula community, and the monthly 6d levy was
intended to be spent for entertainment of notable Fula from
their homelands who were visiting Freetown, for the relief of
sick and distressed Fula, for defraying funeral expenses of a
Politics / 193
member of the Fula community, and for the maintenance of a
mosque.
8
In July 1938 the colonial administration supervised a new
election for Fula chief. Despite a challenge from Alfa Amadu
Bailor, a Fuuta Jalon merchant who was one of the strongest
critics of Alhaji Allie and one of the signatories of the petitions
against him in 1937, Alhaji Allie won the election. The colo-
nial administration made it clear to the Fula that Alhaji Allie
was the almamy recognized by the governor and that he held
and would retain the powers and functions of his oce until
the governor revoked the recognition or canceled all or any of
his powers.
9
In addition to his promises to the jamaa, Alhaji Allies mer-
cantile wealth played a primary role in his election victory.
Many Fuuta Jalon Fula who voted for him hoped to benet
from his chiey dispensations. Alhaji Allie used his money to
recruit inuential Fuuta Jalon Fula like Alhaji Ibrahim
Kasanel Jalloh to canvass for votes among Fula from his home-
land. Alhaji Allies political strategy partly involved using his
wealth to buy gifts, like expensive imported white satin for the
elders of the various clans of the Fula community. However,
his eorts to win broad-based support among Fuuta Jalon
Fula were only partially successful. In 1939 he faced more pe-
titions by opposing Fuuta Jalon Fula led by Chernor Mo-
hamadu Koola. The petitioners wrote to the colonial secretary,
who advised them to bring the issue to the district commis-
sioner of Headquarters Judicial District, who had been dele-
gated the responsibility to supervise Tribal Headmen in
Freetown. He informed the Fula petitioners that if, after mak-
ing representations to the District Commissioner, they re-
mained dissatised, they could then make representations to
the Governor.
10
The petitions stated that Alhaji Allie had failed to keep the
promises he made to the Fuuta Jalon Fula before his election
as almamy. In addition, Abdul Jamburia was accused of unwar-
ranted interference in chieftaincy decision making, and of
using his position in the colonial judiciary to frustrate their
representations to the police. He was attributed the remark
that when he retired from the colonial judiciary he would be-
come ruler of the Fula. It was also alleged that he made the
statement that he had an inherent claim to the oce of almamy
because his father was Almamy Jamburia. The petitions fur-
ther stated that during the frequent long absences of Alhaji
Allie, while on the hajj, between 1933 and 1938, he had ap-
pointed Abdul Jamburia, Alieu Umboror, Alhaji Juheh Jalloh,
and Abdul Dukar to act as rulers without the consent of the
jamaa.
Until his death in 1948, Alhaji Allie served as almamy de-
spite opposition and bitter struggles for power within the Fula
community. There is no evidence that chieftaincy politics dis-
rupted his mercantile career by preventing his opponents, who
were merchants, from doing business with him. Rather, the ev-
idence suggests that Fula merchants did not allow chieftaincy
politics to inuence their commercial decisions in terms of
whom to trade with, and they traded with their Fula political
opponents as they searched for prots.
The death of Alhaji Allie deprived the Fula community of
commercial and political leadership at a crucial time in their
settlement in Freetown. This was a dicult period for the
Fula as they struggled to adjust to the harsh postWorld War
II economy of Sierra Leone. The economic problems of the
Fula were compounded by insecurity and political uncertain-
ties brought about by heightened local opposition to British
colonialism.
11
Following the death of Alhaji Allie, there was an interreg-
num in Fula chieftaincy politics from 1948 to 1956. During
this period two Fuuta Jalon merchants, Moodi Ibrahim
Kasanel Jalloh and Moodi Ahmadu Timbo, acted as almamy.
Politics / 195
The commissioner of Headquarters Judicial and Freetown Po-
lice districts, P. Youens, who was administratively responsible
for chieftaincy aairs, made two unsuccessful attempts to hold
an election for the position of Fula chief. In 1950 the Fula
formed the Fula Tribal Committee, made up of the elders of
the various clans, to organize a chieftaincy election. The com-
mittee invited application for the position of almamy from in-
terested Fula and decided that only a full-blooded Fula could
apply. Eleven candidates competed: four from the Hacunde-
maje clan, ve from the Timbi, and two from the Lab. The
candidates were both immigrant traders and Sierra Leonean
born merchants. The scheduled election proved abortive when
most of the candidates refused to participate because they al-
leged that some of their rivals had imported lorry loads of
Fula from the protectorate to vote. The next planned election
was boycotted by some of the candidates and their supporters
as a protest against the acceptance of certain rival candidates.
Commissioner Youens held fourteen unsuccessful meetings
with the Fula to resolve their dierences and organize a chief-
taincy election.
12
After the failure of the second election, both the Fula com-
munity and the commissioner decided that the number of can-
didates should be reduced. It was determined, therefore, that
each of the three clans that had put forward candidates should
meet and select one candidate to represent them in an election.
This proved fruitless, as all three clans reported that they were
unable to reach an agreement on the selection of a candidate.
The commissioner then invited the eleven candidates to nom-
inate elders from their clans to constitute, with him, a Com-
mittee of Selection. Each candidate appeared before the
committee and stated reasons why he felt he should get the
post of almamy. After several weeks of deliberations, the com-
mittee nominated three merchants: Alhaji Abdulai Jalloh, rep-
resenting the Lab clan; Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, son of the leg-
endary Alhaji Momodu Allie, from Hacundemaje; and Alhaji
Momodu Bah from the Timbi clan.
In 1951 the Fula chieftaincy election was held at the Recre-
ation Grounds at Brookelds, in the west end of Freetown,
with the commissioner and the three candidates present. The
Committee of Selection, in agreement with the candidates, had
decided that any candidate could object to any supporter of
a rival on the grounds that he was not a Fula. The person
against whom the objection was made would be referred to a
committee of three, one selected by each of the candidates. The
decision of the committee on the voters eligibility would be
nal. The voters grouped themselves behind their chosen can-
didates. A count was rst taken of Alhaji Jallohs supporters,
who numbered 128, and he agreed with the commissioner that
he did not stand a chance of being elected. The commissioner
then informed him that he and his supporters could now, if
they so desired, line up behind either Alhaji Bah or Alhaji Allie.
After the commissioner counted the supporters of each candi-
date, Alhaji Bah had 1,028 votes while Alhaji Allie had 657.
The commissioner declared Alhaji Bah the winner and then
wrote to the governor recommending that he be recognized as
Fula chief for a period of ve years under sections 2 and 8 of
the Tribal Administration (Colony) Ordinance.
Despite the recommendation of the commissioner, Alhaji
Bah was not immediately recognized as almamy, for two rea-
sons. First, Alhaji Allie led petitions against Alhaji Bah ac-
cusing him of bribery and corruption. The petitions also stated
that Alhaji Bah had been criminally prosecuted and had levied
tax illegally against the Fula. The governor then asked the
commissioner to investigate the charges before he could recog-
nize Alhaji Bah as Fula chief.
13
Second, the colonial adminis-
tration was reviewing the position of almamies in Freetown
Politics / 197
and appointed a committee under the chairmanship of F. A.
Montague to examine and report on the system of indigenous
administration there.
14
The failure of the colonial administration to recognize Al-
haji Bah as almamy caused great concern in the Fula commu-
nity and some members of the Fula jamaa submitted petitions
to the governor pleading with him to recognize him as Fula
chief. To represent his interests to the colonial administration,
Alhaji Bah hired the Krio lawyer R. B. Marke, who wrote to
the colonial secretary informing him of his clients concern re-
sulting from lack of recognition as Fula chief by the governor.
He reiterated the statement of some Fula that such recogni-
tion was in the best interest of the community and relations
between the colonial administration and Fula in Freetown.
15
Further disrupting the situation, some of the supporters of
Alhaji Allie sent a petition to the governor accusing the
French consul in Freetown of interfering in Fula chieftaincy
politics and favoring Alhaji Bah. They alleged that the French
consul had tried unsuccessfully to get Alhaji Allie to create a
French national union in Freetown to promote French na-
tional interests. The petitioners made it clear that their loyalty
was to the British colonial administration, not to the French
government.
16
But the French consul repudiated the allegations in the
petition that he had interfered in Fula chieftaincy politics. He
informed the British colonial administration that he only
learned about the election of a Fula chief when certain sup-
porters of Alhaji Bah called at his consulate in Freetown. The
status of French subjects of many Fuuta Jalon immigrant Fula
who supported Alhaji Bah may have led them to meet with the
French consul in the hope of enlisting his support for their
candidate in the chieftaincy election.
17
While his supporters petitioned the governor, Alhaji Allie
also wrote to him proposing that he be recognized as almamy
and that only British subjects by birth should contest and vote
in future Fula chieftaincy elections. These suggestions were
part of Alhaji Allies political strategy to keep the majority
Fuuta Jalon Fula, who were French subjects, from participat-
ing in Fula chieftaincy politics in Freetown. This would have
given him an opportunity to consolidate his political support
among Sierra Leoneanborn Fula.
18
In early 1957 the colonial administration met with Fula el-
ders to discuss the logistics of a new chieftaincy election. The
result was the revival of the Fula Tribal Committee, which
was made up of Fula elders, Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, and Alhaji
Abass Camba as Joint Secretary. The committee agreed that
each Fula chief would serve for ve years and that the chief-
taincy would be held by Fula from the four major sections in
rotation. The committee represented the entire Fula commu-
nity in its discussions with the colonial administration. The
assistant permanent secretary of the Ministry of Internal Af-
fairs, P. S. Mould, served as a liaison between the committee
and the colonial administration.
19
After consulting with the Fula committee, the administra-
tion decided that voting would be by secret ballot. Voters had
to meet three criteria: Fula male, more than twenty-one years
of age, and more than six months residence in Freetown over
the past two years. Instead of voter registration, a screening
committee of ten persons was used, consisting of the two can-
didates and four supporters for each; the committees job was
to challenge any person who wanted to vote but did not appear
qualied.
20
Alhaji Allies political strategy for the chieftaincy election
included using his wealth to lobby key Fula elders and sub-
chiefs to vote for him, just as his father Alhaji Momodu Allie
had done over a decade ago. Since the Maasi Fula were in the
majority, he enlisted the support of the oldest Maasi elder in
Freetown, Alhaji Lamrana Bah (g. 6.1), to campaign for him
Politics / 199
among his fellow Maasi Fula. To consolidate his support among
Sierra Leonean Fula, he secured the support of the prominent
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula Alhaji Musa Jalloh and Salie Camba,
son of Alhaji Abass Camba.
21
Using a similar political strategy, Alhaji Bah canvassed for
votes in the Fula community. He gave each of the subchiefs var-
ious gifts, including cattle, to win their political loyalty. He
combined his gift-giving strategy with an appeal to his fellow
Fuuta Jalon Fula to vote for him because he had a better grasp
of Fula chieftaincy traditions and was more committed to up-
holding Fula conservative culture in the Westernized Free-
town society. He also promised that he would use his wealth to
provide various chiey dispensations, such as feasts to cele-
brate Muslim holidays, as the almamy did in their homelands.
22
Of the 2,577 votes cast in the election at King Tom, in the
west end of Freetown, Alhaji Bah received 1,592 while Alhaji
Allie obtained only 985.
23
In 1958 Governor Sir Maurice H.
Fig. 6.1. Alhaji Lamrana Bah (early Fuuta Jalon Fula settler in Free-
town)
FPO
68%
Dorman recognized Alhaji Bah as almamy for the Fula eec-
tive 27 December 1958, in accordance with the provision of
section 2(c) of the Tribal Administration (Colony) Ordinance.
He would serve for a period of ve years unless his appoint-
ment was revoked.
24
This announcement was reported in the
Sierra Leone Royal Gazette. But immediately following the gov-
ernors recognition, Alhaji Allie and his supporters hired the
prominent Krio lawyer C. B. Rogers-Wright to challenge the
election result. He issued a writ seeking a declaration of the
election of Alhaji Bah to be ultra vires, and an injunction to re-
strain him from fullling his functions as Fula chief. Alhaji
Bah then hired the English lawyer Michael Scott to represent
him, but after briey representing the Fula chief Scott relin-
quished all responsibility for the defense. Since the governor
had recognized Alhaji Bah as almamy, a Crown Counsel paid
by the state now undertook his defense. The case, Ibrahima
Allie and others [plainti] v. Momodu Bah [defendant], lasted
from January to October 1959. During the trial supporters of
both candidates lled the courtroom to capacity. Alhaji Allie
spent over 300 in lawyers fees during the trial. In October
the appeals court upheld the governors recognition of Alhaji
Bah as almamy for the Fula in Freetown.
25
Although Alhaji Bahs term of oce expired in 1962, he
continued to serve as almamy, which brought strong objec-
tions from some Fula who wanted a new election. The con-
cerns of Alhaji Bahs critics were not restricted to ocial
letters to the Ministry of Internal Aairs. Some sent open let-
ters to local newspapers. The Fula community was divided
over this issue. Many Fuuta Jalon Fula and a sizable number of
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula supported Alhaji Bah and called for
his reelection as Fula chief. It appears that the opposition to
Alhaji Bah, like that to Alhaji Momodu Allie during the colo-
nial period, stemmed in part from the desire of certain Sierra
Leoneanborn and Fuuta Jalon Fula outside his Timbi clan,
Politics / 201
along with their factions, to get a larger share of the monetary
and status rewards associated with the Fula chieftaincy, and to
ensure that their alliances were given a share of governance in
the Fula jamaa.
In 1967, however, Alhaji Momodu Bahs appointment as
Fula chief was revoked by the NRC, which was made up of a
small group of senior army and police ocers under the chair-
manship of Lt. Col. A. T. Juxon-Smith. From 1951 to 1967 the
Sierra Leonean government was in the hands of the SLPP,
which lost the general election in March 1967. Immediately
after the election the head of the army Brigadier David
Lansana, an SLPP Mende supporter and close friend of Prime
Minister Albert Margai, led a coup to restore SLPP rule and
protect Mende hegemonic interests. But within forty-eight
hours of the coup, the NRC seized power. The Fula chief s ter-
mination by the NRC was part of a general decree that sus-
pended the constitution and revoked all elected political
positions in Sierra Leone. Not only did the NRC order that the
word tribe be deleted from all ocial documents, it commis-
sioned a report on the activities of Tribal Headmen in Free-
town. The report, titled The Abolition of Tribal Headmen in
the Western Area [Freetown] and throughout Sierra Leone,
noted that the appointment of tribal headmen had reinforced
divisions instead of promoting unity. It stated three argu-
ments against the continuation of the tribal headman system:
rst, it no longer served the purpose for which it had been es-
tablished; second, it strengthened tribal divisions, contrary
to the NRCs goal to promote national unity; and third, it
brought about discrimination by dierential treatment of
Sierra Leoneans. The report concluded that if the NRC de-
cided to abolish the tribal headman system, the Ministry of
Social Welfare would perform its functions.
26
In addition to abolishing the almamy system, the NRC took
steps to replace the juridical services provided by the al-
mamies. It introduced legislation extending the jurisdiction of
the Magistrate Court to include cases involving customary
law. But the NRC did not implement its programs because it
was overthrown by noncommissioned ocers of the army in
April 1968. The ocers invited Col. John Bangura, a popular
ocer who had left the army in protest at the earlier coups,
from exile in Guinea to head a National Interim Council
(NIC). In the same month the NIC invited Siaka Stevens to re-
turn and form a government. He was sworn in as prime min-
ister on 26 April 1968. In May Alhaji Bah was reinstated by
Prime Minister Stevens as Fula chief, as were other almamies
in Freetown.
27
In October 1970 a new election for Fula chief was held in
Freetown. Four Fula candidates vied for the position: the in-
cumbent, Alhaji Bah, who had the strongest political networks
in the Fula mercantile community; Sierra Leoneanborn Ma-
mudu Allie, son of Alhaji Momodu Allie; A. B. Tejan-Jalloh (g.
6.2), a Sierra Leoneanborn Fula; and Sierra Leoneanborn
Ahmed Akim Jalloh-Jamburia, grandson of Almamy Jamburia.
The candidates were required to submit letters of application
to the permanent secretary of the Ministry of the Interior,
along with nine copies of their photographs. In his letter of ap-
plication Akim Jamburia stated that if elected I hope to follow
the footsteps of my grandfather to improve the cultural rela-
tionship and understanding between the Fullah community
and government. But his candidacy divided the support for
Mamudu Allie, whose brother and father had received the votes
of the Jamburia family and their supporters in previous elec-
tions. Upon receipt of the applications, the ministry screened
the candidates to ensure that they met the requirements of the
position. The candidates were then notied that they could
compete in the chieftaincy election.
28
In contrast to the screening method used by ocials in the
1958 election, voters for the Fula chieftaincy election were
Politics / 203
now required to register with a registration ocer appointed
by the Ministry of the Interior. Only Fula males twenty-one
years of age and over would be allowed to register to vote in
the election. The registration lasted from 21 June to 5 July.
Fula immigrants who did not have valid travel documents
were prohibited from registering, and the public was warned
that anyone who impersonated a Fula to register would be se-
verely dealt with. Those Fula who presented themselves for
registration were required to give their full name, address,
name of landlord, and the date they arrived in Freetown. In
cases of doubt, the registration ocer reserved the right to re-
quire the presence of the landlord before an applicant could be
registered.
29
Fig. 6.2. Alhaji A. B. Tejan-Jalloh (Fula poli-
tician and businessman)
FPO
100%
On 11 October the election was held from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00
P.M. at three locations: Railway Union Hall in the east end of
Freetown, Cathedral School in central Freetown, and the Re-
form Club in the west end of the city. Out of 5,208 votes cast,
Alhaji Bah received 4,598 and was therefore duly declared
elected. Mamudu Allie obtained 502 votes, Ahmed Jamburia
83 votes, and A. B. Tejan-Jalloh 25 votes. The candidates had
spent thousands of leones to secure the votes of their fellow
Fula. In contrast to immigrant Fula, many Western-educated
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula did not participate in chieftaincy
politics, which they considered divisive and marginal to their
national political interests.
30
The evidence points to Alhaji Bahs promise to use his
wealth to continue Fula chieftaincy traditions in supporting
the elders, the needy, and the jamaa as a whole as a key factor
behind his election success. The general perception in the Fula
community was that Alhaji Bah, being the wealthiest among
the candidates, was in a better position to undertake the costly
traditional obligations of the chieftaincy. But most of the vot-
ers, who were immigrants from Fuuta Jalon, were also appre-
hensive that the Sierra Leoneanborn candidates, who were
not versed in chiey traditions, would reduce or eliminate tra-
ditional gifts by the Fula chief. This election victory also sug-
gests that Alhaji Bah had perfected the arts of cutting deals
with key members of opposing clans (such as Alhaji Abdulai
Jalloh and Alhaji Lamrana Bah), patronage, and promoting an
ideology centering on the preservation of traditional Fula val-
ues. Alhaji Bah exploited all these factors in undercutting the
opposition during the election.
31
Following the election the minister of the interior, C. A.
Kamara-Taylor, advised Governor-General C. O. E. Cole to
recognize Alhaji Bah as Fula chief under Section 2 (2) of the
Tribal Administration Act eective 11 October 1970. On 19
October the government recognized Alhaji Bah as Fula chief
Politics / 205
in a notice in the Sierra Leone Royal Gazette. His term of oce
was for a period of ve years unless the recognition is revoked
for any other reason.
32
Following his election victory, the Fula chief, Alhaji Bah
made several eorts to reconcile opposing factions by appoint-
ing some of their members, like Alhaji Lamrana Bah, to his
advisory council as well as to build on the earlier foundation
of Almamy Jamburia and Alhaji Momodu Allie in integrating
not just the traders but the entire Fula community. Alhaji Bah
constantly implored Fula traders to overcome their divisions
and promote ethnic solidarity in a competitive and sometimes
hostile Freetown environment. He frequently organized meet-
ings at his two-story residence on Kroo Town Road, which
brought together the earlier settlers and new immigrant trad-
ers as well as Sierra Leoneanborn Fula merchants to discuss
ways of promoting unity. Alhaji Bahs successful business
career, which gave him access to a large network of Fula in
Sierra Leone and beyond to Fuuta Jalon, greatly facilitated his
integrative goals in the Fula trading community.
33
From1971, when Alhaji Bah was imprisoned at Camp Boiro,
in Guinea, to 1975, when he was released, there was an inter-
regnum in the Fula chieftaincy. The Fula chief was accused by
the Guinean government of recruiting and training mercenar-
ies in the Waterloo area and providing them with two Toyota
lorries to invade Guinea in 1970 as part of a broader invasion
involving dissident Guineans, mercenaries, and Portuguese
soldiers to overthrow the government of President Tour. In
addition, the Fula chief was alleged to have received nancial
support from wealthy Fula merchants in Sierra Leone in his
subversive activities.
On 24 April 1972, the prime minister and Minister of the In-
terior C. A. Kamara-Taylor, acting in consultation with Presi-
dent Stevens,
34
appointed Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, Member of the
British Empire (M.B.E.) and J.P., as acting Fula chief. His prin-
cipal duty was to act as a channel of communication between
the government and the Fula in Freetown. He was to serve
until the fate of the substantive holder is known. According
to the terms of the appointment, Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh was in-
formed that the appointment is temporary and you hold it en-
tirely at the will and pleasure of government. It can therefore
be terminated at any time without notice. The vast experience
of Alhaji Tejan-Jallohwhich included being treasurer of the
Sierra Leone Muslim Brotherhood, treasurer of the Fourah
Bay College Mosque Fund, board member of the Sierra Leone
Blind Welfare Association, registrar of Fula marriages and di-
vorces, and treasurer of the Fula jamaawas a chief reason for
his appointment as acting Fula chief. In this capacity he re-
ceived a stipend of Le960 per annum.
35
As acting Fula chief Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh played a major role
in presenting the pleas of the Fula community to President
Stevens to secure the release of the substantive Fula chief Al-
haji Bah. He informed President Stevens that, given the im-
pending general election in 1973, the APC could increase its
support among the Fula by freeing the Fula chief. But it was
not until early 1975 that President Tour released Alhaji Bah
from prison and allowed him to return to Freetown. Alhaji
Tejan-Jallohs appointment was revoked by the APC govern-
ment on 25 July 1975, when Alhaji Bah resumed his position
as almamy.
36
In 1975 the APC government supervised new chieftaincy
elections for all sixteen ethnic groups in Freetown. The incum-
bent Fula chief, Alhaji Bah, was declared unopposed in the
election. Two reasons explain his unchallenged victory. First,
it was the decision of the Fula community that in the face of
political uncertainty in Sierra Leone and Guinea unqualied
support would be given to the incumbent Fula chief. The Fula
took the view that this was the time to put aside clan political
dierences, especially between the largest Timbi group and
Politics / 207
the oldest Timbo group, and to present a united political front
to the APC government. This meant uniting both Sierra
Leoneanborn Fula and immigrant Fula who had aspirations
for the chieftaincy. Second, the Fula community decided that
Alhaji Bah deserved the chieftaincy, given his unwarranted
persecution at the hands of President Tour for being the
leader of the Fula in Freetown. Alhaji Bahs commitment to
the Fula jamaa after his return from imprisonment despite
failing health convinced even his critics that he deserved an
unopposed reelection to the oce of almamy.
37
Following his reelection, Alhaji Bah encouraged all Fula in
Freetown to give their support to the APC government, con-
sistent with their long-standing position of supporting the
government in power. In addition, he worked hard to unite the
various clans of the Fula community and encouraged them to
unite in the face of President Tours resolve to silence his
Fula critics. To promote unity, Alhaji Bah appointed clan lead-
ers who had opposed him in previous elections as members of
his inner circle of advisers.
While it is true that chieftaincy politics aected Fula busi-
ness in terms of overhead and to a lesser extent business al-
liances, it did not end the commercial cooperation among the
Fula in Freetown. A small group of Fula traders, including Al-
haji Ibrahima Kasanel Jalloh, traded only with their political
patrons and avoided trade alliances with their political oppo-
nents because of strong ideological dierences. But among the
majority of Fula traders business partnerships and credit allo-
cation continued despite opposing political views. Agibu Jal-
loh, for example, despite his strong political support for Alhaji
Bah, was a major supplier of cattle to Alhaji Allie, the chief po-
litical opponent of Alhaji Bah. Even political elites like Alhaji
Allie and Alhaji Bah maintained business relations as butchers
despite their political rivalry. This is evidenced, for example,
by their sharing of business information about sources of cat-
tle supply and the loaning of cattle during periods of their
shortage in Freetown, and the willingness of Alhaji Allie to
allow Almamy Bah to weigh his cows free of charge on the
only scale at Cow Yard, which Alhaji Allie inherited from his
father. Following the death of Alhaji Allie, Alhaji Bah devel-
oped business relations with his brother Alhaji Baba Allie, who
was also a butcher. In addition, Fula julas like Alhaji Malal Jal-
loh, for example, sold their cattle to Fula butchers from dier-
ent clans whose political views were at variance with theirs.
For the vast majority of Fula traders, prots took precedence
over chieftaincy politics in their intraethnic relations.
38
National Politics
The political role of Fula merchants was not limited to chief-
taincy politics but extended into the national arena as well. In
fact, Fula chieftaincy politics was strongly connected with na-
tional politics because of the large Guinean Fula immigrant
population and the adversarial relationship between this com-
munity and President Tour of neighboring Guinea. This cre-
ated problems for Fula traders, especially immigrants, in the
postcolonial period as Sierra Leonean politicians indiscrimi-
nately exploited them to appease some of their political sup-
porters who disliked the growing business inuence of the
Fula or to placate President Tour. Despite political marginal-
ization prior to independence, the Fula gradually emerged in
the 1970s as one of the best-organized private-sector interest
groups in Sierra Leone. Generally speaking, Fula merchants
were not inclined to participate actively in politics because
they considered it inimical to their business interests. They fo-
cused mainly on business issues and were willing to accommo-
date themselves to the shifting political situation rather than
attempt to inuence political outcomes. Rather than a denite
Politics / 209
aliation to a political party, what existed among the Fula
mercantile community was a pragmatic tendency to support
and get the patronage of the party in power, which they fol-
lowed consistently. Unlike private-sector interest groups like
the Lebanese, the Fula rarely publicized their support for the
party in power and did not document the monetary contribu-
tions they made to it.
The SLPP Era
Under the rst postcolonial Sierra Leonean government by
the SLPP, from 1951 to 1967, Fula merchants, led by Fula
chief Alhaji Bah, forged a close relationship with the SLPP
leadership, especially Sir Albert Margai, who served as prime
minister from 1964 to 1967. Fula chieftaincy traditions, which
date back centuries, were a major factor in their support of the
SLPP, which promised to protect the institution of chieftaincy.
The SLPP leadership showed great respect for traditional
rulers, especially Mende paramount chiefs from southern
Sierra Leone. Paramount Chiefs were an integral part of the
SLPP since its inception, and their support was central to the
partys electoral success in the country. In fact, the SLPP
leader, Sir Milton Margai, the rst prime minister, and his
brother, Sir Albert Margai, who succeeded him following his
death in 1964, had blood ties and a long association with
chiefs. Both leaders worked with paramount chiefs and district
councils to gain support of the people.
39
The close relationship between the Fula and the SLPP was
evidenced by Alhaji Tejan-Jallohs unprecedented joining of
the party and becoming the rst Fula merchant to compete for
elected oce as an SLPP candidate. From 1957 to 1967 Alhaji
Tejan-Jalloh served as SLPP councillor representing the Free-
town East III constituency in the Freetown City Council,
which was dominated by Krio. As an SLPP politician, he not
only worked hard to protect Fula interests in Freetown, he
played an important role in presenting Fula concerns to the
SLPP government. He also cooperated with the Fula chief in
explaining SLPP policies to the Fula mercantile community
and the rest of the Fula population in Freetown.
Fula merchants were the key behind the large nancial con-
tributions estimated at over Le100,000 by the Fula community
to the SLPP Party from 1961 to 1967. The party used the
money mainly for political organizing across the country, es-
pecially during the highly competitive 1967 election. Besides
his own personal contribution, the Fula chief Alhaji Bah,
working with his subchiefs, solicited contributions from indi-
vidual merchants or clan-based groups. The Fula chief also
worked with the SLPP leadership in soliciting nancial con-
tributions from wealthy Fula merchants in the provinces, es-
pecially in the diamond-rich Kono and Kenema districts.
40
Fula nancial support for the SLPP and the strong friend-
ship between the Fula chief Alhaji Bah and Prime Minister
Albert Margai help explain the decrease in governmental per-
secution of the Fula during SLPP rule. Despite the friendship
between Prime Minister Albert Margai and President Tour
of neighboring Guinea, who was resolved to silence his Fula
opponents in Sierra Leone, the prime minister was not pres-
sured into persecuting the Fula. Not only did Prime Minister
Albert Margai encourage the Fula to contribute to national
development, he provided them with resources such as land in
Freetown to establish educational institutions.
Fula support for the SLPP during the 1967 election made
them a target of harassment by APC supporters. In fact, one
witness informed the Dove-Edwin Commission of Inquiry
that during the 1967 election APC supporters were told by
their leaders to drag Fula voters out of queues at polling sta-
tions across the country to prevent them from voting for the
SLPP.
41
In Freetown, APC supporters attacked the residence
of the Fula chief Alhaji Bah at Kroo Town Road during the
Politics / 211
election campaign. He responded by ring shots into the
crowd while his Fula supporters protected themselves with
machetes. Over sixty Fula and thirty APC supporters were in-
jured in the incident. In addition, APC supporters looted Fula
shops on Kroo Town Road; it took armed police and troops to
restore order in this area of the city. The police arrested Alhaji
Bah and over one hundred Fula merchants and detained them
at the central police station. The Fula chief was charged with
assault with a deadly weapon but was granted bail following
the intervention of Dr. Sarif Easmon, his personal physician
and a prominent politician. When the case went to trial, he
was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.
42
The APC Era
When the APC, under the leadership of Prime Minister
Siaka Stevens, came to power in 1968 following the 1967 elec-
tion, the Fula experienced a deterioration in their relationship
with the government. This is traceable to the period of APC
opposition prior to the election when the Fula chief Alhaji Bah
and his wealthy merchant supporters in the Fula community
refused to provide nancial support to Stevens despite his
many requests and assurances that his party would win the
1967 election. The Fula chief also had a personal disdain for
Stevens, whom he described as a gangster who led a party of
thugs. Not only did the Fula chief decline several invitations
by Stevens to attend APC political meetings in Freetown, he
made it clear that the Fula would not support an opposition
party against an incumbent government. This political strat-
egy of supporting the party in power was tried for a period,
but it led to diculties when the NRC entered the political
scene in 1967 and condemned tribalism, and especially when
the APC took over and saw the Fula as staunchly SLPP.
43
In December 1970 the Fula chief Alhaji Bah, to protect Fula
interests, led a delegation of Fula elders, including imam Alhaji
Seray Bah and Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, to meet with Prime Minis-
ter Stevens at the State House to pledge their loyalty to him and
the APC Party. In addressing the Fula representatives, Prime
Minister Stevens called on all Fula residents in Sierra Leone to
register with the government and urged them to respect the
oce of prime minister. He also pointed out that the APC Party
was for everybody and assured the Fula that Sierra Leone was
their country and he looked forward to their continued cooper-
ation for its development. This meeting with Prime Minister
Stevens was part of a broad political strategy involving lengthy
negotiations with the legendary Alhaji Bailor Barrie that would
allow Prime Minister Stevens access to Fula diamond money in
Sierra Leone through political contributions.
44
Despite the public support of the Fula for Prime Minister
Stevens and his assurances to the Fula community, in 1971, as
president, Stevens illegally imprisoned and deported the Fula
chief Alhaji Bah, a naturalized Sierra Leonean citizen, to face
imprisonment at Camp Boiro in Guinea. Following allegations
of subversion against the Fula chief by the Guinean ambas-
sador, the minister of the interior directed a letter to President
Stevens regarding the matter, and Stevens created a commit-
tee headed by the prime minister and Minister of the Interior
C. A. Kamara-Taylor to investigate the charges. The commit-
tee uncovered evidence that exonerated the Fula chief of the
allegations, but the president disregarded the evidence. This is
the clearest example of President Stevenss persecution of the
Fula to appease his close friend President Tour. Not only did
relations between Sierra Leone and Guinea involved a mutual
defense pact, but President Stevenss personal sta of body-
guards was comprised of Guinean soldiers, and a sizable con-
tingent of them protected his residence at Brookelds in the
west end of Freetown.
45
The chief was not the only Fula to suer at the hands of
President Tour. In Guinea, President Tours Fula political
Politics / 213
opponents, who included businessmen, professionals, and in-
tellectuals, were arrested, detained, and tortured for alleged
involvement in the Fifth Column Plot. Some, like Barry
Diawadou, who served as a government minister and Guineas
ambassador to Egypt before opposing President Tour, as well
as Diallo Telli, who was chosen the rst secretary-general of
the OAU in 1963, died after being tortured at Camp Boiro
prison. A few of the Fula detainees, such as Barry Ibrahima,
better known as Barry III, a strong opponent of the Parti D-
mocratique de Guine led by President Tour, were publicly
hanged. They were all characterized as counterrevolutionaries
and accused of either collaborating with the Portuguese in-
vaders, corruption, subversive activities, or ethnic favoritism.
46
The evidence suggests that in persecuting the Fula chief
Alhaji Bah, President Stevens was returning earlier political
favors by President Tour. Following the APC election vic-
tory in March 1967, President Stevens and his top leadership
were forced into exile in Guinea because of the two military
coups by Brig. David Lansana and the NRC. Although the
NRC released Albert Margai and Siaka Stevens, who had been
detained at Pademba Road Prison in Freetown, and promised
an early restoration to civilian rule, it banned all political ac-
tivities and any reference to either the SLPP or APC. Not only
did President Tour provide asylum to the APC leadership, he
allowed them to organize a military group of Sierra Leoneans
with the goal of restoring Siaka Stevens to power. Some of the
members were high-ranking military ocers such as Col. John
Bangura. The Sierra Leonean military group was trained with
the help of the Guinean army, but before it could implement its
plan the NRC was overthrown by noncommissioned ocers.
47
rtt. nr.crio ro .rc nttr
The hostile political climate under APC rule was the chief
factor that led Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn male
and female Fula high school students from diverse clans in
Freetown to spearhead the founding of the Fula Youth Orga-
nization (FYO) in August 1967. Not only were the founding
members children of Fula immigrants, this group had the
greatest potential to bridge the clan dierences that separated
their fathers and grandfathers because they had common ex-
periences and interests. The founding members included Al-
haji Jalloh (who later became a manager at CFAO), Dr. M.
Alpha Bah (who later became a university professor), Alpha
Bundu, Alhaji Musa Jalloh (who later became an accountant),
Kooto Umaru Jalloh, and Kadijatu Jalloh. In all, the FYO had
about seventy members in the city. The aims of the FYO in-
cluded promoting unity among Fula from all backgrounds,
protecting Fula from persecution, and working with the el-
ders, especially the Fula chief Alhaji Bah and his rival, Alhaji
Allie, to settle their dierences. But the FYOs membership
was limited to a small number of students and about thirty
taxi drivers. The bulk of the Fula businessmen, who viewed
the FYO with suspicion, and the few Fula university students
and professionals who then saw ethnic politics as divisive did
not join the organization. But this opposition to the FYO was
short-lived, and eventually most Fula, especially key business-
men such as Agibu Jalloh, Alhaji Bailor Barrie, Alhaji Abass
Allie, Alhaji Baba Allie, and Alhaji Sanu Barrie swung behind
the Fula Progressive Union (FPU), which replaced the FYO.
48
The FYO became the basis for the founding of the FPU, the
rst formal Fula interest group in Sierra Leone with a na-
tional membership, in 1973. This eort was led by Western-
educated Fula, many of whom were founding members of the
FYO. In addition to incorporating the goals of the FYO, the
FPU formulated a constitution that created a national govern-
ing council comprising well-known Fula dignitaries from all
districts of the country, including Freetown. In addition, a na-
tional committee with an administrative oce in Freetown
Politics / 215
was also created and availed itself of a variety of methods and
channels for communicating Fula interests to the state.
The FPUs membership, which numbered over three hun-
dred thousand, reected the broad socioeconomic diversity of
the Fula community. The early presidents of the FPU included
the merchants Alhaji Bailor Barrie and Alhaji Sanu Barrie. Be-
cause of the widespread and indiscriminate persecution of the
Fula, the FPU was more successful in its eorts to bring to-
gether the dierent groups among Fuuta Jalon Fula and to
unite them with Fula from Senegal and elsewhere. In addition,
the FPU united Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn Fula
and encouraged them to work with the mercantile community,
whose wealthy immigrant members had a long-standing dis-
trust of them.
With its headquarters in Freetown, the FPU opened
branches at the two constituent colleges of the University of
Sierra Leone, Fourah Bah College and Njala University Col-
lege, as well as in the northern, eastern, and southern prov-
inces of Sierra Leone. It also founded branches in Western
Europe and North America. Throughout the 1970s the FPU
received nancial contributions from its local and overseas
branches as well as from wealthy individual merchants to
lobby the APC government to protect and advance Fula mer-
cantile interests in such areas as government contracts, dia-
mond mining, and the cattle trade. In addition, the FPU fought
for better treatment of Fula immigrants by government o-
cials and the police.
From its founding the FPU undertook nationwide cam-
paigns to educate Fula about their rights and obligations as
citizens and resident aliens, the purpose being to integrate
immigrant and Sierra Leoneanborn Fula more fully into
Sierra Leonean society to prevent discrimination and harass-
ment. Moreover, the FPU encouraged Western-educated Sierra
Leoneanborn Fula to seek political oce to protect Fula
interests and implored all Fula citizens to participate actively
in the political process. The FPU informed the Fula commu-
nity that increased Fula representation in Parliament, which
was located in Freetown, would facilitate the passage of legis-
lation to protect Fula minority rights and to promote their
commercial interests. Both kinds of legislation were urgently
needed because of the increasing unlawful harassment of Fula
merchants by the police and politicians.
One prominent member of the FPU who took up the orga-
nizations political challenge was Alhaji Chernor Marju. He
joined the APC Party in 1973 with the express goal of win-
ning a seat in Parliament and securing a ministerial appoint-
ment in order to address the concerns of his fellow Fula. In
that year he won the general election to represent the Free-
town East I constituency in Parliament and held this position
throughout the 1970s. In addition, Alhaji Marju served as
minister of state under First Vice President S. I. Koroma for
thirteen years. During this period Alhaji Marju worked with
the APC leadership, the Fula chief and his advisory group, and
prominent Fula merchants such as Alhaji Bailor Barrie and
Agibu Jalloh, both members of the FPU, to resolve issues
aecting the Fula, such as immigration and trade. The FPU
leadership played a major role in lobbying President Stevens
and key members of the APC government, like Vice President
Koroma, to secure the release of the Fula chief Alhaji Bah in
1975.
49
By 1978 the Fula, led by the Fula chief Alhaji Bah, recog-
nized that they would have to continue their cooperation with
President Stevens and his government despite his poor record
in dealing with them; so rather than oppose President Stevens,
the Fula restated their public support for him and the APC. As
the chief power broker and intermediary between the Fula
community and the government, the Fula almamy now sought
to incorporate the Fula community into the national political
Politics / 217
system through a process of coalition formation and bargain-
ing. In addition, the Fula chief encouraged an eort by wealthy
Fula merchants to make nancial contributions to the APC
Party, which resulted in funds estimated at over Le500,000. On
the recommendation of the Fula chief, the Fula community also
resolved to avoid any appearance of interference in the political
aairs of neighboring Guinea. The decision of President Tour
in 1978 to initiate political liberalization in Guinea was greatly
welcomed by the Fula and led to the easing of tension as well
as an improvement in the relationship between President
Stevens and the Fula population in Freetown. This facilitated
the cross-boundary movement of the Fula and helped to pro-
mote commerce between Sierra Leone and Guinea.
50
The political crisis the Fula faced in the 1970s, which af-
fected Fula merchants greatly, led to a massive mobilization of
Fula traders from various sectors of the Sierra Leonean econ-
omy to adopt a proactive political stance to inuence national
politics. Led by the Fula chief Alhaji Bah, a major Fula entre-
preneur, Fula traders, through lengthy negotiations resulting
in substantial contributions in cash and kind to Sierra Leonean
politicians, including President Siaka Stevens, played a leading
role in protecting the interests of traders in Freetown and the
Fula community as a whole in Sierra Leone. The nancial con-
tributions of Fula merchants, which were derived from prots
from the livestock trade, merchandise trade, the diamond busi-
ness, and the motor transport business, as well as their promise
of continued nancial support for the APC, was the key to im-
proving the political climate for Fula in Sierra Leone during
the APC era.
Conclusion
This study has presented a historical account of how Fula im-
migrants from dierent countries in West Africa, especially
Guinea, and their Sierra Leoneanborn ospring exploited
economic opportunities through hard work and risk-taking to
become one of the most successful mercantile groups with
considerable entrepreneurial experience in the capital city of
Freetown between 1961 and 1978. Throughout this study at-
tention has focused on the upper group of Fula merchants who
engaged in both wholesale and large-scale retail trade and
were the highest-ranking members of the social hierarchy of
the Fula community.
Success in business was a strongly desired goal in the Fula
community, not only because of the money but also because of
the social status it brought. Faced with few alternative oppor-
tunities in a Westernized Freetown environment, commercial
success became the primary aspiration of most Fula. Eco-
nomic and social pressures in Freetown and from relatives in
their homelands combined to spur the Fula on to extra eorts
and new initiatives. Economic prosperity among Fula mer-
chants led to social predominance and local political power.
The successful Fula trader was also learned in Islam and the
crowning goal of success in life was pilgrimage to Mecca to
acquire the title Alhaji or Haja.
1
As a merchant group, the vast majority of the Fula were
male, which is largely explained by cultural reasons. The small
219
number of Fula women who participated in commerce were
mainly Sierra Leoneanborn and raised in Freetown, and they
were limited to the merchandise trade. There was occupa-
tional continuity between generations, and many Fula mer-
chantssuch as Alhaji Ibrahima Allie, Alhaji Bailor Barrie,
Alhaji Abass Allie, and Agibu Jallohwere sons of immigrant
merchants. The Fula merchants were knowledgeable in the
local business culture and worked full-time in buying and sell-
ing in the context of both wholesale and retail transactions.
In their search for prots Fula merchants pursued diverse
trading careers because they wanted to spread business risks,
increase prots, and provide employment to kinsmen. They
demonstrated business leadership and an ability to respond to
market opportunities and business organizations so as to ex-
ploit opportunities eectively. Despite strong competition
from local business groups like the Temne and foreign mer-
chants like the Lebanese, the Fula were able to position them-
selves in key sectors of the Freetown economy, like the
livestock trade, merchandise trade, and motor transport busi-
ness, and to make substantial prots that established them as
business leaders. The cattle trade, for instance, would have
been completely disorganized without Fula capital, initiative,
and experience; it was vertically integrated, with the Fula re-
sponsible for raising, purchasing, transporting, and distribut-
ing cattle.
2
This study of Fula merchants in postcolonial Freetown il-
lustrates many characteristics that can be compared to those
of other African businesses in Sierra Leone and elsewhere in
West Africa, such as Nigeria. Such features included family-
owned businesses and the use of kinship networks involving
established merchants, their sons, and sons-in-law in com-
mercial organization, business diversication, and owner-
centered business management style. Moreover, there was an
unwillingness among African owners to delegate authority to
supervisors and managers or to share ownership in genuinely
corporate business arrangements (other than between close
kin) that collectively aected business expansion. In addition,
owners used a combination of informal partnerships, which
did not involve legally binding written contracts, as well as in-
dividual enterprise in commerce. Other traits included inter-
generational business mobility among merchant sons, high
social overhead resulting from family, kinship, and religious
demands; the organization of credit based on trust and cul-
tural moral values; access to established commercial networks;
use of varied sources, such as gifts from senior relatives or sav-
ings acquired from previous work to accumulate capital; and
an emphasis on real estate investment.
3
No single reason explains the entrepreneurial success of the
Fula. Two sets of factors collectively contributed to the emer-
gence of a large and powerful Fula merchant group in Free-
town. The rst includes background factors such as family
mercantile tradition that involved risk taking. In addition,
there was access to start-up capital through inheritance or the
livestock trade, which was a major aspect of the traditional
lifestyle of the Fula. Successful Fula entrepreneurs, like Alhaji
Bailor Barrie, who shared these background factors were well
placed to take advantage of the second set of factors: historical
changes in the Sierra Leonean economy resulting from demo-
graphic and economic shifts, namely the diamond boom of the
late 1950s and 1960s, the need for increased housing and pub-
lic transport of goods and passengers in Freetown and be-
tween Freetown and the provinces in the 1960s and 1970s, the
strong demand for meat among the increasing population in
Freetown during the 1960s and 1970s, the need for convenient
retail shops of consumer goods in large residential areas, the
strong demand for produce production as well as produce buy-
ing and selling since the founding of the SLPMB, and the
strong demand for the staple food, rice, by the countrys rising
Conclusion / 221
population. In availing themselves of these opportunities, Fula
merchants, in contrast to a widespread practice among Sierra
Leonean businessmen in postcolonial Sierra Leone, did not use
state institutions or political oce to accumulate capital for
private enterprise.
4
Of these economic opportunities the diamond trade, which
was based in Kono and Kenema, was the single largest source
of Fula capital accumulation. Only a few Fula entrepreneurs,
like Agibu Jalloh, were successful without participation in the
diamond business. For Fula entrepreneurs like Alhaji Bailor
Barrie the diamond business was not just the core of capital
accumulation but the basis for expansion into other sectors
such as real estate and the motor transport business in the
1960s and 1970s. The diamond trade impacted Fula mercan-
tilism on two levels. First, it enabled the Fula to undertake
commercial activities for the rst time by providing them with
capital, including enough to expand and diversify their trad-
ing. Second, the diamond trade increased the purchasing
power of consumers who bought merchandise from Fula
traders, which expanded the scope of Fula private enterprise
and increased their prot margins. Although the Fula started
in marginal roles, which did not attract many local and foreign
entrepreneurs, they increased their commercial activities as
new opportunities arose in the economy. In their search for
prots in various sectors of the Freetown economy, Fula mer-
chants competed among themselves and with the multiethnic
mercantile population of the city.
The Fula displayed certain attributes that were crucial to
their commercial success. They were well organized, shrewd,
low-key, had considerable self-condence, enjoyed taking on
new problems and identifying solutions, and demonstrated a
considerable capacity for savings and reinvestment. Not only
could the Fula make decisions and stick to them, they demon-
strated an ability to develop an eective organizational frame-
work for dealing with production, marketing, procurement,
and nancial management. They were practical and had rea-
sonable expectations about what they and their employees
could accomplish. In addition, they were willing to do work of
marginal protability and had the patience to persevere, both
were often rewarded with a protable business career. This
was clearly evident in the transition of a large number of Fula
from hawkers in the colonial period to shopkeepers of varying
scale in the postcolonial period. Overall, the Fula had a long-
range business vision of what could be accomplished, both in
the short term and the long term.
5
Fula kinship networks also contributed to their commercial
success. All the major Fula entrepreneurs, including Alhaji
Momodu Bah, Alhaji Bailor Barrie, and Agibu Jalloh, estab-
lished extensive family connections throughout Sierra Leone;
some of these networks extended into their homelands. These
kinship ties were an important aspect of the organizational
structure of the internal and cross-boundary trading of the
Fula; characteristics included family cohesion and mutual
obligations among members of the extended family, which
constituted a rm foundation for Fula private enterprise. The
family was important in both local and cross-boundary trade,
and many of the successful merchants were related through fa-
milial ties. To promote commercial continuity, the Fula mer-
chants encouraged their sons to continue in commerce. The
daughters of Fula merchants were also used, through their
marriage to promising younger merchants, to perpetuate a
familys commercial interests, permanently linking the for-
tunes of a young man of talent with those of an established
mercantile clan. In fact, family continuity among Fula mer-
chants was provided as often by marriage as by birth. In a
community that valued kinship highly, the creation of these so-
cial linkages was vital to commercial success. The recruitment
of merchant sons-in-law helped to enlarge the clan and to give
Conclusion / 223
it the promise of additional economic power. The established
Fula merchant and his son-in-law often became like father and
son; a son-in-law, as a close and trusted member of the family,
became an important business associate rather than a possible
competitor.
Fula merchants preferred overwhelmingly to trust family
members in commercial transactions. If there were no family
members to turn to, merchants of the same homeland origin,
such as Lab, Timbo, or Fuuta Toro, were next in order of
preference. Commerce was a risky pursuit, and reliance on kin
or countrymen lessened the perilous nature of the enterprise.
Individual merchants sought to solidify their social and busi-
ness positions, and consanguineous and anal ties produced
groups of merchants who were loyal to each other and inter-
ested in each others prosperity. By employing kin, Fula mer-
chants also made their business operations cost-eective. Since
they shared the same culture, it took Fula business owners less
time to train kinsmen to run their operations. In the context of
the cattle trade, kinship networks were a key feature both from
the supply end in Fuuta Jalon and the marketing aspect of the
butchering business in Freetown. Fula butchers exploited their
kinship relations with Fula julas to stay ahead of competitors
in the Freetown meat business. In the merchandise trade, Fula
merchants formed trading alliances with, and oered credit to,
kinsmen.
The Fula owner-centered business management style en-
abled them to minimize costs and maximize prots in the
competitive Freetown economy. This management style dem-
onstrated the strong patriarchy of the Fula merchants, and it
reected their business conservatism and cultural belief that
commercial details should be kept within the family or kinship
group. Such centralization was a common feature of all Fula
mercantile activities, and it was also found among many
African entrepreneurs in Sierra Leone. As business owners the
Fula were divided over the use of bank loans and interest in
conducting business. Unlike the vast majority of immigrants,
Sierra Leoneanborn Fula were less constrained by religious
considerations in their search for prots in various sectors of
the Freetown economy that required substantial investment
capital.
6
Inasmuch as Fula merchants beneted from the Sierra Leon-
ean economy, they also invested a substantial amount of their
prots there during the 1960s and 1970s. Despite criticisms
from some Sierra Leoneans that the Fula, like the Lebanese,
repatriated most of their prots to their homelands, the evi-
dence suggests otherwise. The investments of Fula merchants
in Freetown were as diverse as their mercantile activities. Un-
like earlier Fula merchants, with the exception of a few like Al-
haji Momodu Allie, those in postcolonial Freetown invested
extensively in real estate, owning houses, stores, multiunit
rental properties, and vacant lots. In fact, real estate was the
single largest Fula investment in the Freetown economy be-
cause it was secure, provided regular rents, was mortgageable
and could thus be used to expand credit, and could also easily be
transferred to ones heir. In addition, the Fula merchants real-
ized that growth of the city during the 1960s and 1970s contin-
ually increased the value of urban property. Most of their
properties were in the east of Freetown, where population
growth was the fastest. In addition to properties in the east, be-
ginning in the 1960s a growing number of wealthy Fula mer-
chants began buying high-priced properties in the suburban
west of Freetown, where many of the countrys elites and expa-
triates resided and where property appreciated more rapidly.
7
In addition to properties, Fula merchants invested in com-
mercial vehicles and cattle during the 1960s and 1970s. Fula-
owned commercial vehicles played an important role in the
transportation of passengers and trade goods within Free-
town and between the city and the provinces. In the face of
Conclusion / 225
governmental budgetary constraints, in the 1970s Freetown
privately owned passenger transportation increasingly re-
placed state-run vehicles. As for cattle, historically the Fula
used cattle as an item of trade as well as a store of wealth, not
just in Freetown but throughout West Africa. However, in-
complete business records make it dicult to have an accurate
and comprehensive picture of the total cattle investment in
both Sierra Leone and Guinea by Fula merchants.
Despite their major investments in real estate and cattle,
Fula merchants, especially immigrants, did not achieve their
full investment potential in the postcolonial Freetown econ-
omy. Many did not take advantage of the opportunities to take
over failing African, Lebanese, and European businesses, to
expand from retailing merchandise to wholesale trade, or to
increase their real estate holdings by buying low-priced prop-
erties. The primary reason was that these Fula merchants
were unwilling to borrow the investment capital from foreign-
controlled banks because of their religious objection to inter-
est payment, even though, because of the Fulas well-earned
reputation as dependable and hardworking, senior European
and African banking ocials were ready to assist them in se-
curing business loans to expand their private enterprises.
In addition, despite their importance in the postcolonial
Freetown economy, Fula merchants did not become members
of the Sierra Leone Chamber of Commerce, which was founded
in 1961 to promote commerce within the country and between
Sierra Leone and other countries. By 1978 the chamber, which
was located in Freetown, had 135 members, mostly Sierra Le-
oneans. Three factors explain the absence of Fula merchants
in the organization. First, Fula immigrants, who formed the
bulk of the mercantile community, did not have the necessary
Western education to participate in the deliberations of the
chamber and therefore did not see it as relevant to their trad-
ing operations. Second, Fula traders distrusted the majority
Western-educated Christian Krio businessmen of the chamber,
whom they viewed as seeking to advance their mercantile in-
terests at the expense of such groups as the Fula. They also
perceived them as outsiders who could not be trusted with
business information and decisions.
8
Fula merchants made an important social contribution to
the development of Freetown society through their eorts in
spreading Islam. Not only was Islam vital to the shaping of
Fula business values, Islamic learning was a major determi-
nant of social status among the Fula and a conduit for social
mobility within their community. This was reected in the
strong Fula emphasis on Islamic education for adults and their
children in Freetown and their investment in sending their
children to pursue advanced Islamic studies in their home-
lands, where they also acquired cultural knowledge. But the
Fula were divided over whether to expose their children to
both Islamic and Western education. In contrast to mercantile
groups like the Krio, Fula merchants did not invest a signi-
cant amount of their prots in the higher education of their
children abroad. It was a common practice among Krio traders
to send their children to pursue law and medical studies in
Britain. This practice required substantial investments, and
the education thus obtained was perceived as prestigious and
protable. Nevertheless, this expense was a contributing fac-
tor to the commercial decline of the Krio. While a few wealthy
Fula merchants sent their children to undertake Islamic stud-
ies in Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Nigeria, and Mali, most of them
were content to provide their children with basic Islamic edu-
cation in Sierra Leone and neighboring Guinea. Compared to
the cost of overseas Western education, this Fula practice was
inexpensive.
9
Islam played an important role in the Fula mercantile com-
munity from three perspectives. First, it integrated Fula immi-
grants, who came from diverse backgrounds and had dierent
Conclusion / 227
commercial interests. Second, it provided guidelines for Fula in
their commercial activities on such issues as credit and invest-
ments. Third, it shaped the social life of Fula merchants from
the viewpoint of education, marriage, and charity. Islam also
led Fula merchants to create as well as strengthen solidarity
with other Fula and non-Fula of the multiethnic Muslim com-
munity in Freetown. But it also contributed to the low degree
of assimilation of Fula immigrant merchants into Freetown
society and constrained their commercial advancement in the
Westernized city.
Wealth acquired through trading was another major factor
in shaping the social conguration of the Fula community. Not
only was wealth a status symbol, it was the single most im-
portant factor in Fula social mobility in postcolonial Free-
town. The traditional ascriptive status of Fula immigrants
was increasingly replaced by self-achievement in commerce.
The bulk of Fula immigrants came from humble beginnings in
the social hierarchy of their homelands but achieved social
recognition in Freetown through commercial success. Mer-
cantile wealth also elevated Sierra Leoneanborn Fula mer-
chants to a social elite above those Sierra Leoneanborn Fula
with Western educations but no comparable wealth. Although
Western education was still important in dening elite status
in the broader postcolonial Freetown society, wealth was in-
creasingly becoming the single most important criterion for
elite status in the citys multiethnic social hierarchy.
This study has established that there was a correlation be-
tween Fula mercantile wealth and chieftaincy politics in Free-
town. That all Fula almamies were merchants who promised
to use their wealth to dispense chiey material obligations and
protect the Fula community demonstrates the importance of
mercantile wealth in electing Fula chiefs. The role of Fula
merchants in chieftaincy politics also demonstrates the impor-
tance of kinship networks in political mobilization. Chief-
taincy politics was characterized by strong clan loyalty and
dictated the business alliances of a small group of Fula traders
who worked only with their political patrons and avoided their
opponents in commercial transactions. However, political ri-
valry did not prevent commercial cooperation in such areas as
credit allocation in cash and kind, cattle supply, and sharing of
market and investment information among the vast majority
of Fula traders. At both the elite and grassroots levels, Fula
traders cooperated and formed business alliances in spite of dif-
fering political orientations. It appears that most Fula traders
did not allow chieftaincy politics to supersede prots in their
dealings with other Fula traders.
10
Fula merchants used their mercantile wealth to advance
their interests in the context of national politics, as well as
chieftaincy politics. Their voluntary nancial contributions as
a group to the party in power, estimated at thousands of leones,
was part of a broader Fula political strategy involving public
support for, and bargaining with, Sierra Leonean politicians to
secure the patronage of the seated government. Fula mer-
chants were capable of united political action based on com-
mon economic interests, but there was also much dissension as
a result of clan dierentiation and factionalism among the mer-
chants. A feeling of solidarity was strongest in times of crisis
or direct threat to the interests of the group. This was evi-
denced during the APC era, beginning in the late 1960s, when
a widespread anti-Fula political climate aected both Western-
educated and non-Western-educated Sierra Leoneanborn
Fula as well as immigrant Fula merchants on such issues as
immigration, business, and politics. This brought about un-
precedented cooperation, symbolized by the FPU, among Fula
that cut across occupational, generational, and national dier-
ences. The FPU played a major role in the political, social, and
commercial mobilization of the Fula in Freetown, throughout
Sierra Leone, and in the Fula diaspora in Western Europe and
Conclusion / 229
North America. The commercial mobilization made them one
of the most powerful private interest groups in postcolonial
Sierra Leone. Availing itself of a variety of methods and chan-
nels for communicating Fula interests to the state, the FPU
also made a great eort to change the widespread opposition of
Fula, especially among merchants, to politics, in the sense of
electoral participation and party politics. But successful Fula
merchants still saw their future in trade rather than national
politics.
The large Guinean immigrant population in Freetown and
their long-standing adversarial relationship with President
Tour of neighboring Guinea over the persecution of Fula and
their exclusion from the political process shaped signicantly
the political relationship between the Fula community and the
pro-Guinean APC government under President Stevens. In
displaying a negative stance toward the Fula community in
Freetown, President Stevens was inuenced by the memory of
Fula lack of support for the APC while in opposition to the
SLPP and by his personal obligations to President Tour for
assisting him while out of power. But the decision of President
Tour to introduce political and economic liberalization in
Guinea in 1978 aected the Fula community in two major
ways. First, it brought about an improvement in relations be-
tween the Guinean government and the Fula immigrant com-
munity that led to the mass return of immigrant Fula traders
from Freetown. Second, it paved the way for increased politi-
cal cooperation between the APC government and the Fula
community not just in Freetown but elsewhere in Sierra
Leone.
Not only does this study contribute to the important yet
understudied role of African entrepreneurs in the postcolonial
Freetown economy, the issues it exploressuch as sources of
capital accumulation, business management, xed and short-
term investments, business diversication, the impact of social
overhead on capital accumulation, business succession, the
role of kinship networks in commercial organization, the role
of religion in shaping business values, and the interface be-
tween business and politics on a local and national levelwill
prove useful to researchers investigating the entrepreneurial
history of Sierra Leone on a macro level. The present study
also demonstrates the range of possibilities for interdiscipli-
nary and innovative research on Fula and African entrepre-
neurship during the interesting yet insuciently researched
postcolonial period in Sierra Leone.
Conclusion / 231
232
Notes
Introduction
1. The Fula, who are mostly nomads, are also known elsewhere in
West Africa as Fulbe, Fulani, or Fulatta. Their languages, Pulaar (in
Senegal, Republic of Guinea, and the Gambia) and Fulani (in Nige-
ria), belong to the West Atlantic group of the Niger-Congo family,
which also includes Wolof and Temne. There are variants of the
spelling of Fula in Sierra Leone: Foulah, Fullah, Fulah, and Fulla.
See R. V. Weekes, ed., Muslim Peoples: A World Ethnographic Survey
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,1984), 1:25761.
2. Freetown is located on the peninsula at the mouth of the Sierra
Leone River. According to the 1963 census the area of Freetown was
thirteen square kilometers. By 1973 the municipal boundary of the
city had been extended to cover an area of sixty-eight square kilo-
meters and the city had been renamed Greater Freetown. In the
1963 census Kissy, Calabar Town, Wellington, Allen Town, Hill Sta-
tion, Aberdeen, Lumley, Murray Town, and Wilberforce were
treated as separate localities. By 1973 these areas had come under the
Greater Freetown municipality. See R. J. Olu-Wright, The Physical
Growth of Freetown, in Freetown: A Symposium, ed. C. Fyfe and E.
Jones (Freetown: Sierra Leone University Press, 1968), 2437.
3. This title is used by Muslim men who have made the hajj, or
pilgrimage, to Mecca.
4. Jamburia is a village in Dalaba, a town in Fuuta Jalon. Dalaba
was once an important regional market and center of cattle produc-
tion. Some Fula, like Alhaji Malal Jalloh-Jamburia, add their place of
birth to their family name.
5. Moodi is a title of respect in Pulaar; almamy designates a politi-
cal leader of high rank.
6. See, for example, M. Alpha Bah, Fulbe Presence in Sierra Leone:
A Case History of Twentieth-Century Migration and Settlement among
the Kissi of Koindu (New York: Peter Lang, 1998) and C. Magbaily
Fyle, Fula Diaspora: the Sierra Leone Experience, in History and
Socio-Economic Development in Sierra Leone, ed. C. Magbaily Fyle
(Freetown: SLADEA, 1988), 10123.
7. See Fyle, Fula Diaspora.
8. See Bah, Fulbe Presence in Sierra Leone.
9. See Mahdi Adamu and A. H. M. Kirk-Greene, eds., Pastoralists
of the West African Savanna (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1986).
10. For a historiographical treatment of African business history,
see A. G. Hopkins, Big Business in African Studies, Journal of
African History 28 (1987): 11940.
11. See, for example, Janet MacGaey, Entrepreneurs and Parasites:
The Struggle for Indigenous Capitalism in Zaire (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1987); and William Reno, Corruption and State Pol-
itics in Sierra Leone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
12. See, for example, Abner Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban
Africa: A Study of Hausa Migrants in Yoruba Towns (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1969); and Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural
Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 159.
13. See N. A. Cox-George, Report on African Participation in the
Commerce of Sierra Leone (Freetown: Government Printer, 1957); and
Report of the Working Party on Capital Availability and Sierra Leone En-
trepreneurship (Freetown: Bank of Sierra Leone, 1969); see also
Kelfala M. Kallon, The Economics of Sierra Leonean Entrepreneurship
(Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1990).
14. For additional information on Islam in postcolonial Sierra
Leone, see Alusine Jalloh and David E. Skinner, eds., Islam and Trade
in Sierra Leone (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press,1997).
Chapter 1
1. For a discussion of the multiethnic merchant class in Freetown,
see A. M. Howard, The Role of Freetown in the Commercial Life of
Sierra Leone, in Freetown: A Symposium, ed. C. Fyfe and E. Jones
Notes to Pages xx1 / 233
(Freetown: Sierra Leone University Press, 1968), 3864; and J.
McKay, Commercial Life in Freetown, in Freetown: A Symposium,
6576.
2. There were Temne inhabitants in the Sierra Leone peninsula
long before the British acquired this area to build Freetown in the
eighteenth century. For more information about the Temne, see Ken-
neth C. Wylie, The Political Kingdoms of the Temne: Temne Government
in Sierra Leone, 18251910 (New York: Africana Publishing, 1977).
3. The geographic area French Guinea took shape only in 1895,
when an Anglo-French agreement on the boundary of Sierra Leone
and Guinea was reached. The name Sierra Leone was limited to the
colony until 1896, when it became applicable to both the colony and
the protectorate. The colony of Sierra Leone consisted essentially of
the peninsula on whose northern point Freetown is located. The
protectorate, which was declared by the British colonial administra-
tion in 1896, covers the area outside Freetown, comprising the
northern, eastern, and southern provinces (see map 2).
4. An almamy is also referred to as a tribal headman in Sierra
Leone. See B. E. Harrell-Bond, Allen M. Howard, and David E. Skin-
ner, Community Leadership and the Transformation of Freetown
(18011976) (The Hague: Mouton, 1978).
5. See James Watt, Journal of James Watt: Expedition to Timbo, the
Capital of the Fula Empire in 1794, ed. Bruce L. Mouser (Madison:
African Studies Program, University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1994).
6. See Edward W. Blyden, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race
(Baltimore: Black Classic Press, 1994).
7. For more information about the Fula presence in the Sierra
Leone interior, see A. Wurie, The Bundukas of Sierra Leone, Sierra
Leone Studies 1 (1953): 1425; and The Encyclopaedia Africana: Dic-
tionary of African Biography, vol. 2 (Sierra Leone-Zaire) (Michigan:
Reference Publications, 1979).
8. See chapter 6.
9. See chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6.
10. The early Fuuta Jalon settlers included Almamy Jamburia; Al-
haji Chernor Mohamed Jalloh (Chernor Mahamadu Madina); Alhaji
Misbahu Jalloh; Alhaji Abdulai Jalloh, better known as Moodi (title
of respect in Pulaar) Abdulai Fulatown; Alhaji Lamrana Bah; Alhaji
Momodu Alpha Bah; Alhaji Amadu Sajor Bah; Alhaji Malal Jalloh;
Alhaji Sulaiman Bah; and Alhaji Momodu Bah.
11. Allie is a corruption of Ly, which is the family name in Senegal.
234 / Notes to Pages 14
12. See Alusine Jalloh, The Fula Trading Diaspora in Colonial
Sierra Leone, in The African Diaspora, eds., Jalloh and Stephen E.
Maizlish (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1996), 2238; and Al-
haji Momodu Allie: Muslim Fula Entrepreneur in Colonial Sierra
Leone, in Islam and Trade in Sierra Leone, ed. Jalloh and Skinner,
6586.
13. See chapter 6.
14. For more information about the Fula in West Africa, see Louis
Tauxier, Moeurs et histoire des Peuls (Paris: Payot, 1937); Andr Arcin,
La Guine Franaise: Races, religions, coutumes, production, et commerce
(Paris: Methuen, 1907); and Victor Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change:
The Fulbe in Guinea, Nigeria, and Cameroon (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1978).
15. See Mohammed Suleiman Jallo, A Short Sketch of the Life
and Work of the Late Almamy Jamburia, Tribal Ruler of the Free-
town Foulahs, in Freetown: A Symposium, ed. C. Fyfe and E. Jones
(Freetown: Sierra Leone University Press, 1968), 8285.
16. For an extensive treatment of social stratication in Free-
town, see Arthur T. Porter, Creoledom: A Study of the Development of
Freetown Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).
17. For demographic data on the Fula during this period, see
table 1.
18. See Sierra Leone: Report of the Census for the Year 1931 (Free-
town: Government Printer, 1931); in Freetown, Fula women are gen-
erally known as Fulamusus.
19. See map 2 for geographic areas.
20. See Joko Sengova, The National Languages of Sierra Leone:
A Decade of Policy Experimentation, in Sierra Leone, 17871987,
ed., Murray Last and Paul Richards (Manchester: University of
Manchester Press, 1987), 51930.
21. Interview with Alhaji A. B. Tejan-Jalloh, Freetown, 21 June
1990. There is no documentary evidence on the demographic char-
acteristics of the Fula immigrants regarding age, sex, economic
background, and social characteristics. See R. R. Kuczynski, Demo-
graphic Survey of the British Colonial Empire, 3 vols. (London: Oxford
University Press, 1948), 1:20285.
22. See Milton Harvey, Implications of Migration to Freetown:
A Study of the Relationship between Migrants, Housing, and Occu-
pation, Civilizations 18 (1968): 24767.
23. Interview with Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh. For more information
Notes to Pages 48 / 235
about Fula in the colonial economy of Sierra Leone, see Alusine Jal-
loh, Fula Trading Diaspora.
24. See J. B. Riddell, The Spatial Dynamics of Modernization in
Sierra Leone: Structure, Diusion, and Response (Evanston, Ill.: North-
western University Press, 1970); and Enid Forde and Milton Har-
vey, Graphical Analysis of Migration to Freetown, Sierra Leone
Geographical Journal 13 (1969): 1327.
25. See Allen M. Howard, Big Men, Traders, and Chiefs: Power,
Commerce, and Spatial Change in the Sierra LeoneGuinea Plain,
18651895, Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1972.
26. Interview with Nicholas Mends, Freetown, 24 July 1992.
27. Sierra Leone Archives (hereafter SLA), Colonial Secretarys
Oce (hereafter CSO), le N/440/42, Commissioner of Police to
Commissioner of Labor, 15 May 1945.
28. SLA, CSO le N/115/40, Attorney General to Colonial Sec-
retary, 28 November 1943.
29. SLA, CSO le N/115/40, Commissioner of Labor to Honor-
able Colonial Secretary, 23 November 1943.
30. SLA, CSO le N/115/40, Acting Attorney General to Hon-
orable Colonial Secretary, 12 March 1943.
31. SLA, Ministry of Internal Aairs and Development (hereafter
MIAD), le T2/5/4, petition to Honorable Chief Minister, Dr. M. A.
S. Margai, 23 September 1957; interview with Alhaji Lamrana Bah,
Freetown, 4 August 1990.
32. See chapter 6 for Fula chieftaincy politics.
33. Baraka is a spiritual blessing bestowed by Allah; to possess
baraka is to be endowed with this blessing or grace. This personal
baraka can be recognized in a variety of attributes: piety, spirituality,
and therapeutic gifts. Baraka can be transmitted from one person to
another, and it can be inherited.
34. Interview with Alhaji Baba Allie (oldest surviving son of
Alhaji Momodu Allie), Freetown, 20 June 1990; see Vernon R. Dor-
jahn and Christopher Fyfe, Landlord and Stranger: Change in Ten-
ancy Relations in Sierra Leone, Journal of African History 3 (1962):
39197.
35. They are also known as Mandingoes in Sierra Leone. In this
study, the name refers to the Malinke, Jahakanke, and Sarakule.
36. This province is now part of the region called Sind in Pakistan.
37. For more information about the Lebanese and Indians, see
chapters 3 and 4. See also H. V. Merani and H. L. van der Laan, The
Indian Traders in Sierra Leone, African Aairs 78 (1979): 24050;
H. L. van der Laan, The Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone (The Hague:
Mouton, 1975).
38. For more information about the Krio, see Akintola J. G. Wyse,
The Krio of Sierra Leone (London: C. Hurst, 1989).
39. For a detailed discussion of residential patterns in colonial
Freetown, see Michael Banton, West African City: A Study of Tribal
Life in Freetown (London: Oxford University Press, 1957); see also
Harrell-Bond et al., Community Leadership, 175.
40. For more information about the challenges facing Fula
women in Sierra Leone, see Assanatu Jalloh, Problems and Chal-
lenges of an Educated Fullah Woman, B.A. thesis, Fourah Bah Col-
lege (University of Sierra Leone), 1986.
41. Interview with Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh.
42. See C. S. Okoye, An Analysis of the Sierra Leone 1974 Population
Census Data, 4 vols. (Freetown: Central Statistics Oce, 1981),
4:2075.
43. Ibid.
44. Daily Mail, 27 December 1963, p. 1.
45. See Ladipo Adamolekun, Skou Tours Guinea: An Experiment
in Nation Building (London: Methuen, 1976); and Claude Riviere,
Guinea: The Mobilization of a People (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1977).
46. See chapter 6 for a detailed discussion of Guineas politics;
also see Amnesty International, Guine: Emprisonnement, dispari-
tions, et assassinats politiques en Republique populaire et revolutionnaire
de Guine (Paris: francophones d Amnesty International, 1982).
47. I obtained this information over a period of ve years in dis-
cussions with Fula political refugees who were merchants in Free-
town. See Azarya, Aristocrats Facing Change, 14754.
48. The exchange rate uctuated between 1,200 and 1,600 syli to
Le1 between the 1960s and 1970s; see Sierra Leone Trade Journal
(Freetown: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1970s).
49. See Okoye, Sierra Leone Census Data.
50. K. C. Zacharia and Julian Conde, Crossing Borders in West
Africa, West Africa, 27 April 1981.
51. Ministry of Interior Archives (hereafter referred to as MIA),
le T2/6/1, Alhaji Momodu Bah to Permanent Secretary, Ministry
of Interior, 5 September 1975; see also Sierra Leone Republican Con-
stitution (Freetown: Government Printer, 1971).
52. Sunday Flash, 18 April 1976, p. 14.
53. MIA le T2/5/3, release from the Fula Tribal Headman Al-
haji A. M. Bah, 22 May 1976.
54. We Yone, Sunday, 14 April 1978.
55. This data was adapted from the National Registration, Na-
tional Registration Secretariat, Freetown.
56. I was informed by senior police immigration ocers that the
fear of deportation was the single most important reason behind the
low registration of Fula immigrants in Freetown.
57. Interview with Rashid Jalloh-Jamburia, Freetown, 30 June
1990; see also Jallo, Almamy Jamburia.
58. For a discussion of the problems of citizenship in Africa, see
William A. Shack, Open Systems and Closed Boundaries: The Rit-
ual Process of Stranger Relations in New African States, in
Strangers in African Societies, ed. William A. Shack and Elliot P. Skin-
ner, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 3747; and A. I.
Asiwaju, ed., Partitioned Africans: Ethnic Relations across Africas Inter-
national Boundaries, 18841984 (New York: St. Martins Press, 1985).
59. I was informed of such incidents by many Fula immigrants in
Freetown. There is little evidence of Fula harassment and expulsion
by the host society in such countries as Senegal and Cte dIvoire,
where there was a large Fula diaspora from Guinea. The harassment
of Fula immigrants in Freetown compares to the experience of many
immigrants elsewhere in West Africa. See Margaret Peil, The Ex-
pulsion of West African Aliens, Journal of Modern African Studies 9
(1971): 20529.
60. See C. M. Tejan-Jalloh, Why This Campaign of Hate against
Foulahs? Unity (21 March 1969): 2.
61. See O. Aluko, The Expulsion of Illegal Aliens from Nigeria:
A Study of Nigerias Decision-Making, African Aairs 84 (1985):
53960; and P. Nugent and A. I. Asiwaju, eds. African Boundaries:
Barriers, Conduits, and Opportunities (New York: Pinter, 1996).
62. See, for example, J. S. Eades, Strangers and Traders: Yoruba Mi-
grants, Markets, and the State in Northern Ghana (Trenton, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 1994); and Mahdi Adamu, The Hausa Factor in West
African History (Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1978).
64. Holy Quran 4:35.
65. See H. M. Joko Smart, Sierra Leone Customary Family Law
(Freetown: Atlantic Printers, 1983); and Barbara E. Harrell-Bond,
Modern Marriage in Sierra Leone: A Study of the Professional Group
(The Hague: Mouton, 1975).
66. See Assanatu Jalloh, Educated Fullah Woman.
67. Holy Quran 17:32, 24:26.
68. Endogamous marriages among Fula immigrants compare to
those in other immigrant communities in West Africa. See, for ex-
ample, Eades, Strangers and Traders, 42106.
69. Interview with Ijatu Barrie (daughter of Alhaji Bailor Barrie),
Maryland, 21 December 1993.
70. See Household Survey of the Western Province (Freetown: Cen-
tral Statistics Oce, 1967).
71. Interview with Alhaji M. Seray-Wurie, Freetown, 17 June
1990; see also W. R. Bascom, The Esusu: A Credit Institution of the
Yoruba, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 82 (1952): 6369.
73. For more information about Fula attitudes toward Islamic ed-
ucation and Western education, see chapter 5.
74. The extensive internal and cross-boundary kinship networks
of the Fula in Sierra Leone compare to those of immigrants in simi-
lar trading diasporas in West Africa. On the Hausa trading diaspora,
for example, see Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa, 197 and
Paul E. Lovejoy, Caravans of Kola: The Hausa Kola Trade, 17001900
(Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1980).
Chapter 2
1. See Allen M. Howard, The Relevance of Spatial Analysis for
African Economic History: The Sierra LeoneGuinea System, Jour-
nal of African History 17 (1976): 36588; and Trade and Islam in
Sierra Leone, Eighteenth-Twentieth Centuries, in Islam and Trade
in Sierra Leone, ed. Jalloh and Skinner, 2164.
2. See C. Magbaily Fyle, Indigenous Commerce and Entrepre-
neurship: The Sierra Leone Hinterland in the Nineteenth Century,
in History and Socio-Economic Development in Sierra Leone, ed. Fyle,
6180.
3. See Polly Hill, Studies in Rural Capitalism in West Africa (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 53132.
4. The term jula derives from the Mandinka term Dyula (trader),
which is more generally used in West Africa.
5. See R. A. A. Kumpayi, The Livestock Industry in Sierra
Leone, B.S. (Hons) thesis, Fourah Bah College (University of Sierra
Leone), 1966; and M. O. Awogbade, Fulani Pastoralism: Jos Case Study
(Zaria: Ahmadu Bello University Press, 1983).
6. SLA, CSO le N/440/42, Governor to District Commission-
ers, 16 December 1945.
7. See Odile Goerg, Commerce et Colonisation en Guine, 18501913
(Paris: Editions LHarmattan, 1986).
8. SLA, CSO le 1440/42, Director of Commerce and Industry
for Sierra Leone to Colonial Secretary, 5 January 1944.
9. SLA, CSO le 1169/1, 1945.
10. See chapter 13 of the 1946 Laws of Sierra Leone.
11. See Kumpayi, Livestock Industry in Sierra Leone; and H. L.
van der Laan, The Sierra Leone Diamonds: An Economic Study Covering
the Years 19521961 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 6274.
12. See Josie A. Beckley, The Northern Province: The Livestock
in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone. B.A. (Hons) thesis,
Fourah Bay College (University of Sierra Leone), 1973, p. 48.
13. See Sierra Leone Livestock Development Study, vol. 1 (London:
Hunting Technical Services Limited, 1979); and National Livestock
Policy and Programme Workshop (Freetown: Ministry of Agriculture,
Forestry, and Fisheries, 1991).
14. See Kevin Waldie, Cattle and Concrete: Changing Property
Rights and Property Interests among the Fula Cattle Herders
around Kabala, North East Sierra Leone, in Property, Poverty, and
People: Changing Rights in Property and Problems of Pastoral Develop-
ment, ed. P. T. W. Baxter and R. Hogg (Manchester: University of
Manchester, Department of Social Anthropology and International
Development Center, 1989), 22939.
15. See R. W. Touchberry, A Study of the Ndama Cattle at the Mu-
saia Animal Husbandry Station in Sierra Leone (Urbana: University of
Illinois Agricultural Experimental Station, 1967).
16. See Beckley, Northern Province, 14.
18. We Yone, 5 June 1978, 34.
19. We Yone, 13 August 1978, 78.
20. Interview with Alhaji Baba Allie; see also Peter M. Kaindaneh,
State Provision of Transport and Communication Services in Sierra
Leone, in The State and the Provision of Social Services in Sierra
Leone since Independence, 19611991, ed. C. Magbaily Fyle (Dakar:
CODESRIA, 1993), 2043.
21. Interview with Alhaji Malal Jalloh, Freetown, 3 June 1990.
22. Interview with Sakati Barrie (employee of Alhaji Momodu
Allie), Freetown, 15 July 1990; see also Dorjahn and Fyfe, Landlord
and Stranger; and Howard, Big Men, Traders, and Chiefs.
23. Interview with Kadijatu Jalloh, Freetown, 3 June 1990.
24. See Alusine Jalloh, Alhaji Momodu Allie.
25. Interview with Alhaji Alpha Koko Kamara, Freetown, 30 June
1990.
26. See Abner Cohen, The Social Organization of Credit in a
West African Cattle Market, Africa 35 (1965): 820; and Hill, Rural
Capitalism in West Africa, 53132.
27. See Alusine Jalloh, Fula Trading Diaspora.
29. Interview with Alpha Amadu Bah (employee of Alhaji Mo-
modu Bah), Freetown, 5 August 1990.
30. See Aerial Survey of Livestock and Resources in Sierra Leone
31. Interview with Alpha Amadu Bah; see also the business pa-
pers of Alhaji Momodu Bah, with the Bah family in Freetown.
32. Interview with Mohammed Cham, Freetown, 10 June 1990.
33. Interview with Dr. M. Alpha Bah, Washington, D.C., 9 March
1991. See also Sule Ahmed Gusau, Prospects and Problems of Is-
lamic Banking in Africa, in Islam in Africa, ed. Nura Alkali, Adamu
Adamu, Awwal Yadudu, Rashid Motem, and Haruna Salihi (Ibadan:
Spectrum Books, 1993), 35463.
34. Interview with Alpha Amadu Bah.
35. For more information about Agibu Jalloh, see chapter 4.
36. Interview with Agibu Jalloh, Freetown, 29 June 1990. The
title prime minister was changed to executive president on 21 April
1971, following Sierra Leones adoption of a republican constitution
on 19 April 1971.
37. See Aerial Survey of Livestock, 102; National Livestock Policy,
50; and business papers of Juntu Jalloh, with the Jalloh family in
Freetown.
38. See Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa, 171.
39. Holy Quran, 2:275.
40. For more information about Islamic banking, see Gusau, Is-
lamic Banking in Africa.
42. Interview with Alhaji Baba Allie.
43. Interview with Olu Deen, Freetown, 14 June 1990.
44. Interview with Sheikh Mohammed A. Barrie, Freetown, 3
June 1990. See also Cohen, Social Organization of Credit.
45. Interview with Alhaji Musa Jalloh, Maryland, 13 October
1991.
46. See John Ilie, The Emergence of African Capitalism (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983), 69.
47. See Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone (London: Ox-
ford University Press, 1962), 168.
48. See Ilie, African Capitalism, 66470.
49. See Howard, Role of Freetown.
50. See Register of Property Titles (Oce of the Administrator-
General, Freetown, 1920 to present).
51. See Taylor, Money and Banking in Sierra Leone.
Chapter 3
1. See Fyle, Indigenous Commerce; Howard, Role of Free-
town; and Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone.
2. See Cox-George, African Participation in Commerce; and Fyle,
Indigenous Commerce.
3. See Cox-George and Working Party, Capital Availability and
Sierra Leonean Entrepreneurship.
4. For more information about the European companies, see A. G.
Hopkins, Imperial Business in Africa, part 1: Sources, part 2: In-
terpretations, Journal of African History 17 (1976): 2948, 26790.
5. See Laan, Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone, 22133.
6. For more information about the diamond trade, see chapter 4;
see also Laan, Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone; and Merani and Laan,
Indian Traders in Sierra Leone.
7. Business records of Agibu Jalloh, with the Jalloh family in Free-
town.
9. See F. H. Rankin, The White Mans Grave: A Visit to Sierra Leone
in 1834 (London: Richard Bentley Press, 1836),128; and Banton,
West African City, 41121.
10. Interview with Alhaji Lamrana Bah.
12. Private papers of Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, with the Tejan-Jalloh
family in Freetown.
13. See the private records of Alhaji Bah and Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh,
with the Bah and Tejan-Jalloh families in Freetown.
14. See Directory of Business and Industry for Western Area and
Multiunit Firms (Freetown: Central Statistics Oce, 1968).
15. For details about the Trade Acts, see Sierra Leone Gazette
(1965, 1966, 1967).
17. See Directory of Business and Industry for Western Area and
Multiunit Firms (Freetown: Central Statistics Oce, 1970).
18. Interview with Alpha Morgan Jalloh, Freetown, 15 June
1990.
19. Interview with Salieu A. Camba, Freetown, 1 June 1990.
20. See D. A. L. Fowler, The Urban Informal Sector in Sierra
Leone: Some Conceptual and Policy Issues, Africana Research Bul-
letin 6 (1976): 433.
21. Business records of Alhaji Allie, with the Allie family in Free-
town.
22. See Laan, Lebanese Traders in Sierra Leone, 3269; and Kwame
Arhin, Kwame Arhin, Paul Hesp, and Laurens van der Laan, eds.,
Marketing Boards in Tropical Africa (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1985).
23. See Barry L. Isaac, Business Failure in a Developing Town:
Pendembu, Sierra Leone, Human Organization 30 (1971): 28894.
26. The motor transport business is the subject of the next
chapter.
27. See Arhin et al., eds., Marketing Boards in Tropical Africa; and
F. M. B. Sawi, The S.L.P.M.B.: 194967, M.Soc.Sc. thesis, Birming-
ham University, 1972.
28. Interview with Agibu Jalloh.
29. Interview with Agibu Jalloh; for more information about the
role of the Lebanese in the produce trade, see Laan, Lebanese Traders
in Sierra Leone, 3269.
30. See the business records of Agibu Jalloh, with the Jalloh fam-
ily in Freetown.
31. See M. J. J. Karimu and P. Richards, Upland and Swamp Rice
Farming Systems in Sierra Leone: The Social Context of Techno-
logical Change, Africa 51 (1981): 596620.
32. See K. W. Knickel, Farming Systems Development: Smallholder
Swamp Rice Systems in Sierra Leone (Hamburg: Verlag Weltarchiv,
1988).
33. For a history of rice farming in colonial and postcolonial
Sierra Leone, see S. A. Jabati, Agriculture in Sierra Leone (New York:
Vantage Press, 1978).
34. See M. H. Y. Kaniki, Attitudes and Reaction towards the
Lebanese in Sierra Leone during the Colonial Period, Canadian
Journal of African Studies 7 (1973): 97113; and A . J. G. Wyse, The
1919 Strike and Anti-Syrian Riots: A Krio Plot? Journal of the His-
torical Society of Sierra Leone 3 (1979): 114.
35. See Dunstan S. C. Spenser, Rice Policy in Sierra Leone. Rice
Production in Sierra Leone, in Rice in West Africa: Policy and Eco-
nomics, ed. S. R. Pearson, J. D. Stryker, and C. P. Humphreys (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 1981), 175225.
36. Interview with Amadu Timbo (nephew of Agibu Jalloh), Free-
town, 18 August 1996; see also the business records of Agibu Jalloh,
with the Jalloh family in Freetown.
37. See Laan, Sierra Leone Diamonds, 167.
38. For a detailed treatment of the business career of Alhaji Bailor
Barrie in the diamond business and the motor transport business, see
chapter 4.
39. Interview with Hon. Alpha Barrie, Freetown, 14 July 1990;
see also business records of Alhaji Barrie, with the Barrie family in
Freetown.
40. Haja is the title used by a Muslim woman who has made the
pilgrimage to Mecca.
41. Interview with Haja Fatmata Bah, Freetown, 19 June 1990.
42. See business records of Agibu Jalloh, Alhaji Bah, and Alhaji
Barrie, with their families in Freetown.
43. Ibid.
45. See Register of Property Titles.
46. Interview with Alhaji Musa Jalloh; see also Cox-George,
African Participation in Commerce.
47. See Sierra Leone: Twelve Years of Economic Achievement and Po-
litical Consolidation under the APC and Dr. Siaka Stevens, 19681980
(Freetown: Oce of the President, 1980), 42526.
48. Interview with Alhaji Seray-Wurie.
Chapter 4
1. See Kaindaneh, Transport and Communication Services;
and J. Barry Riddell, Transport Network Evolution in the Post-
Independence Period, Sierra Leone Geographical Journal 14 (1970):
2030.
2. See S. M. Sesay, Drivers in the Motor Transport Industry: A
Case Study of Road Transport in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Studies
19 (1966): 8697.
4. For details about rural migration to Freetown, see Harvey,
Migration to Freetown.
5. See N. A. Cox-George, Finance and Development in West Africa:
The Sierra Leone Experience (London: D. Dobson Books, 1961); and
S. M. Sesay, Transport in Relation to Social and Economic Devel-
opment in Sierra Leone, Ph.D. diss., University of Durham, 1967.
6. See H. R. Jarrett, Recent Port and Harbour Developments at
Freetown, Scottish Geographical Magazine 71 (1955): 15764; and
G. J. Williams and D. F. Hayward, Recent Development of the Sierra
Leone Airways System, Geography 58 (1973): 5861.
7. See H. P. White, The Railways of Sierra Leone, Railway Mag-
azine 106 (1960): 23137; and H. R. Jarrett, Rents, Roads, and Rail-
ways, Sierra Leone Studies (December 1955): 3643.
8. See Riddell, Spatial Dynamics of Modernization, 1327; G. J.
Williams and D. F. Hayward, The Changing Land-Transportation
Pattern of Sierra Leone, Scottish Geographical Magazine 89 (1973):
10718; and Transportation Consultants, Transportation Survey of
Sierra Leone (Washington, D.C.: Transportation Consultants, 1963).
9. See Kaindaneh, Transport and Communication Services.
10. See S. M. Sesay, Factors Inuencing the Pattern of Road
Density in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Geographical Journal 12
(1968): 1726.
12. See Porter, Creoledom, 6695.
13. See Okoye, Sierra Leone Census Data.
15. Interview with Mohammed Texaco Bah, Freetown, 26 May
1990; see also Sesay, Drivers in the Transport Industry.
16. Interview with Mrs. Adama Jalloh, Freetown, 15 June 1990.
17. See Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Price Structure of
Motor Vehicles and their Spare Parts (Freetown: Government Printer,
1962).
18. See H. R. Jarrett, Some Aspects of the Urban Geography of
Freetown, Sierra Leone, Geographical Review 46 (1956): 33454.
20. For a discussion of the problems facing Africans in the trans-
port business, see Cox-George, African Participation in Commerce.
21. For details about this act, see Legislation of Sierra Leone, 1969
(Freetown: Government Printer, 1969), A35A40.
22. Interview with Amadu Timbo.
24. See A. Zack-Williams, Tributors, Supporters, and Merchant Cap-
ital: Mining and Underdevelopment in Sierra Leone (Brookeld, Vt.:
Ashgate, 1995).
25. For more information about the Fula in the Koinadugu Dis-
trict, see C. Magbaily Fyle, The Solima Yalunka Kingdom (Freetown:
Nyakon Publishers, 1979), 6133.
26. Interview with Ijatu Barrie.
27. Interview with Alhaji Sanu Barrie, Freetown, 4 August 1990.
28. By the 1980s Jamil had expanded an import-export business
empire that included cement, shing, soap, gold, and salt; see also
Reno, Corruption and State Politics, 10454.
29. See D. M. Rosen, Diamonds, Diggers, and Chiefs: The Poli-
tics of Fragmentation in a West African Society, Ph.D. diss., Uni-
versity of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, 1973.
30. Interview with Mohammed Cham.
31. For a discussion of diamond mining in Kenema, see Laan,
Sierra Leone Diamonds, 141.
32. Interview with Amadu Barrie (son of Alhaji Bailor), Silver
Spring, Maryland, 30 December 1991.
33. See Sahr John Kpundeh, Politics and Corruption in Africa: A
Case Study of Sierra Leone (Lanham, Md.: University Press of Amer-
ica, 1995), 9099.
34. See the business records of M. B. Barrie and Sons, with the
Barrie family in Freetown.
35. Interview with Amadu Barrie.
36. See Register of Property Titles.
37. See Gusau, Islamic Banking in Africa.
Chapter 5
1. For more information on the relationship between trade and
Islam in West Africa, see Nehemia Levtzion and Humphrey J. Fisher,
eds., Rural and Urban Islam in West Africa (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Ri-
enner, 1987); and Mervyn Hiskett, The Development of Islam in West
Africa (London: Longman, 1984).
2. For a discussion of the role of the Fula in the spread of Islam in
West Africa, see, for example, Alusine Jalloh, The Fula and Islamic
Education in Freetown, Sierra Leone, American Journal of Islamic
Social Sciences 14 (Winter 1997): 5168.
3. See, for example, Jalloh and Skinner, eds., Islam and Trade in
Sierra Leone; M. Saif ud Deen Alharazim, The Origin and Progress
of Islam in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Studies 21 (1939): 1326; and
Christopher Fyfe and J. S. Trimingham, The Early Expansion of
Islam in Sierra Leone, Sierra Leone Bulletin of Religion 2 (1960): 324.
4. See Thomas Winterbottom, An Account of the Native Africans in
Neighbourhood of Sierra Leone (London: Frank Cass, 1969), 1:32.
5. See E. F. Sayers, foreword to Islam in Guine by Paul Marty,
Sierra Leone Studies 19 (1935): 4748.
6. See Fyle, Solima Yalunka Kingdom, 646; and Walter Rodney, A
History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 15451800 (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1970), 22339; and Jihad and Social Revolution in Futa Jal-
lon, Journal of the Historical Society of Nigeria 4 (1968): 314.
7. See Bah, Fulbe Presence in Sierra Leone; and Fyle, Fula Dias-
pora.
8. See Fyfe, History of Sierra Leone, 149; and Leslie Proudfoot,
Mosque-Building and Tribal Separatism in Freetown, Africa 29
(1959): 40515.
9. See Lamin Sanneh, The Crown and the Turban: Muslims and West
African Pluralism (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), 16178.
10. See David E. Skinner, Islamic Organization and Inuence
in Sierra Leone, in Islam and Trade in Sierra Leone, ed. Jalloh and
Skinner.
11. See Wurie, Bundukas of Sierra Leone.
12. See Gibril R. Cole, Krio Muslim Society of Freetown: A Case
Study of Fourah Bay and Foulah Town, 18101910, B.A. (Hons)
thesis, Fourah Bay College (University of Sierra Leone), 1978; Wyse,
Krio of Sierra Leone, 118; and Fyle, History of Sierra Leone, 186415.
13. See J. M. Abun-Nasr, The Tijaniyya: A Su Order in the Modern
World (London: Oxford University Press, 1965); J. S. Trimingham,
The Su Orders in Islam (London: Oxford University Press, 1971);
and D. B. Cruise OBrien, The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and
Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971).
15. It was in recognition of the historical and contemporary im-
portance of Muslims that the Sierra Leone Studies Association (USA)
in 1994 sponsored an interdisciplinary conference titled Islam, Cul-
ture, Commerce, and Politics in Sierra Leone at Howard University
to study their varied contributions to Sierra Leonean society from
the preindependence era to the present. The proceedings of this con-
ference are published in Jalloh and Skinner, eds., Islam and Trade in
Sierra Leone.
16. See Lamin Sanneh, Christian-Muslim Encounter in Free-
town in the Nineteenth Century and the Implications for Mission
Today, Bulletin of the Secretariat for Non-Christian Religions (Rome)
12.12, (1977): 1331; see also L. Rasmussen, Christian-Muslim Rela-
tions in Africa (London: British Academic Press, 1993).
17. See David E. Skinner, Islam and Education in the Colony and
Hinterland of Sierra Leone, Canadian Journal of African Studies 10
(1976): 51213.
18. See Lamin Sanneh, West African Christianity: The Religious Im-
pact (New York: Orbis Books, 1983), 12767.
19. See Skinner, Islam and Education, 51213; and Sanneh, West
African Christianity, 21017.
20. See Edward Wilmot Blyden, Black Spokesman: Selected Pub-
lished Writings of Edward Wilmot Blyden, ed. H. R. Lynch (London:
Frank Cass, 1971), 273316; and A. J. G. Wyse, H. C. Bankole-Bright
and Politics in Colonial Sierra Leone, 19191958 (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990).
21. The name Fujalto was derived from Fuuta Jalon and Fuuta
Toro. Interview with Salieu Camba (son of Abass Camba).
22. See W. F. Conton, The Educational System of Sierra Leone,
Journal of Education 1 (1966): 37; and Davidson Nicol, West
Africas First Institution of Higher Learning, Journal of Education 1
(1966): 811.
23. See Proudfoot, Mosque-Building and Tribal Separatism;
and Towards Muslim Solidarity in Freetown, Africa 31 (1961):
14756.
24. See Fyle, Fula Diaspora; Wyse, Krio of Sierra Leone, 118;
and K. L. Little, The Political Function of the Poro: Part 1, Africa
35 (1965): 34965.
25. Quoted from M. M. Ali, A Manual of Hadith (London: Curzon
Press, 1983), 232.
26. See Lamin Sanneh, Modern Education among Freetown
Muslims and the Christian Stimulus, in Christianity in Independent
Africa, ed. Edward Fashole-Luke et al. (Bloomington: Indiana Uni-
versity Press, 1978), 31633.
27. Holy Quran 4:9799.
28. See Jibril Aminu, Towards a Strategy for Education and De-
velopment in Africa, in Islam in Africa, ed. Nura Alkali et al. (Ibadan:
Spectrum Books, 1993), 8796.
29. Leslie Proudfoot and H. S. Wilson, Muslim Attitudes to Ed-
ucation in Sierra Leone, Muslim World 2 (1960): 8696.
30. See Skinner, Islam and Education.
31. See D. B. Cruise OBrien and C. Coulon, eds. Charisma and
Brotherhood in African Islam(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988);
and Sanneh, Crown and Turban, 11746.
32. Interview with Sheikh Mohammed Barrie.
34. See Porter, Creoledom, 11218.
35. Interview with Rashid Jalloh-Jamburia (son of Almamy Jam-
buria).
36. See Blyden, Christianity, Islam, and the Negro Race.
37. Interview with Alhaji Baba Allie; see also J. R. Willis, ed.,
Studies in West African Islamic History, vol. 1 (London: Frank Cass,
1979).
39. See Assanatu Jalloh, Educated Fullah Woman.
41. Interview with Alhaji Mohammed Jalloh (one of the founders
of the Ansarul Islamic Mission), Freetown, 15 June 1996.
42. Interview with Alhaji Musa Jalloh.
46. See the private papers of Alhaji Seray Bah, with the Bah fam-
ily in Freetown; for more information about Malik Sy, see Michael A.
Gomez, Pragmatism in the Age of Jihad (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1992).
47. This gure was arrived at from interviews with Alhaji Tejan-
Jalloh, Agibu Jalloh, and Alhaji M. Seray-Wurie.
Chapter 6
1. See Banton, West African City; and Harrell-Bond et al., Commu-
nity Leadership.
2. See Cohen, Custom and Politics in Urban Africa.
5. See Jallo, Almamy Jamburia.
6. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Governor Leslie Probyn to Elgin, 18
August 1905.
7. For details about the Tribal Administration Ordinance of 1905,
see Michael Banton, The Origins of Tribal Administration in Free-
town, Sierra Leone Studies 2 (1954): 10919.
9. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, District Commissioner to Chernor
Mohamadu Koola et al., 24 August 1939.
10. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Colonial Secretary to Chernor Mo-
hamadu Koola et al., 20 May 1939.
12. SLA, Commissioner, Headquarters Judicial and Freetown Po-
lice Districts, to Hon. Colonial Secretary, 19 March 1951.
13. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Colonial Secretarys Oce Minute
Paper, 13 July 1951.
14. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Colonial Secretary to R. B. Marke, 2
November 1951.
15. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, R. B. Marke to Colonial Secretary,
27 October 1951.
16. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Chernor Amadu Tejani Barrie et al.
to Governor, 24 December 1956.
17. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Acting Secretary, Ministry of Local
Government, Education, and Welfare to M. Juheh Jalloh-Jamburia,
30 January 1957.
18. SLA, MIAD le T2/5/4, Ibrahima Allie to Governor, 19 De-
cember 1956.
19. MIA le T2/5/3, Fula Jamaa to the Minister of Internal Af-
fairs and Development, 13 January 1958.
20. MIA le T2/5/3, Sierra Leone Government Minute Paper, 11
December 1958.
21. Interview with Alhaji Musa Jalloh.
23. MIA le T2/5/3, Sierra Leone Government Minute Paper, 11
December 1958.
24. MIA le T2/5/3, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Internal
Aairs to Alhaji Momodu Bah, 13 January 1958.
25. MIA le T2/5/3, Attorney-General to Ministry of Internal
Aairs, 9 December 1958.
26. See J. R. Cartwright, Politics in Sierra Leone, 19641967 (To-
ronto: University of Toronto Press, 1970); S. T. Cox, Civil-Military
Relations in Sierra Leone: A Case Study of African Soldiers in Politics
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976); and Harrell-
Bond et al., Community Leadership, 26673.
27. See Barbara Harrell-Bond, The Unocial Urban Courts in
Freetown: The Institutionalization of Tribal Headmen, American
Universities Field Sta Reports (Hanover, N.H.: American Universities
Field Sta, 1979); and Gustav H. K. Deveneaux, Power Politics in
Sierra Leone (Ibadan: African Universities Press, 1982).
28. MIA le T2/5/3, Ahmed Akim Jalloh-Jamburia to Permanent
Secretary, Ministry of Interior, 1 October 1970; see also Harrell-
Bond, Howard, and Skinner, Community Leadership, 27478.
29. MIA le T2/5/3, press and broadcast release, 21 June 1970.
32. Sierra Leone Gazette, no. 74 (22 October 1970).
33. Interview with Dr. M. Alpha Bah.
34. On 21 April 1971, Prime Minister Stevens was sworn in as the
rst executive president after he declared Sierra Leone a republic
following approval of a republican constitution by parliament on 19
April 1971.
35. MIA le T2/5/3, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of the Inte-
rior, to Alhaji A. B. Tejan-Jalloh, 28 April 1972.
36. MIA le T2/5/3, C. A. Kamara-Taylor, Prime Minister and
Minister of the Interior, to H. E. President Siaka Stevens, 18 De-
cember 1975.
37. Interview with Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh; see also Harrell-Bond et
al., Community Leadership, 29096.
38. Interview with Alhaji Baba Allie; interview with Agibu Jalloh;
and interview with Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh, and interview with Alhaji
Kasanel Jalloh, Freetown, 14 June 1990.
39. See Gershon Collier, Sierra Leone: Experiment in Democracy in
an African Nation (New York: New York University Press, 1970); and
Martin Kilson, Political Change in a West African State: A Study of the
Modernization Process in Sierra Leone (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1966).
41. West Africa, 5 August 1967, p. 1032.
42. Interview with Dr. Sarif Easmon, Freetown, 3 August 1992.
45. Interview with Dr. Sarif Easmon; see also West Africa, 27 Au-
gust 1971.
46. See LAgression portugaise contre la Republique de Guine;
Ibrahima B. Kak, Skou Tour: Le hros et le tyran (Paris: Jeune
Afrique Livres, 1987); and V. D. Du Bois, The Rise of an Opposition to
Skou Tour, part 6: The Activation of the Guinean Exiles: The Front de
Liberation Nationale de Guine (FLAG), AUFS Reports, West African
Series 9, no. 6 (New York: AUFS, July 1966).
47. See Siaka P. Stevens, What Life Has Taught Me (Bourne End,
Buckinghamshire: Kensal Press, 1984); Cartwright, Politics in Sierra
Leone; and Cox, Civil-Military Relations.
49. Interview with Alhaji Chernor Marju, Freetown, 14 Novem-
ber 1991.
50. Interview with Alhaji Tejan-Jalloh; see also Stevens, What
Life Has Taught Me, 28063; and Lansin Kaba, From Colonialism
to Autocracy: Guinea under Skou Tour, 19571984, in Decolo-
nization and African Independence: The Transfer of Power, 19601980,
ed., P. Giord and W. R. Louis (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1988), 22544.
Conclusion
3. See, for example, Tom Forrest, The Advance of African Capital:
The Growth of Nigerian Private Enterprise (Charlottesville: Univer-
sity Press of Virginia, 1994); and E. Wayne Nafziger, African Capi-
talism: A Case Study in Nigerian Entrepreneurship (Stanford, Calif.:
Hoover Institution Press, 1977).
6. See Cox-George, African Participation in Commerce.
8. Interview with Mrs. Faye Iscandari (secretary of the Sierra
Leone Chamber of Commerce), Freetown, 15 June 1990.
9. See Porter, Creoledom.
254
Glossary
alfa Muslim scholar.
alhaji or al-Hajj Title used by Muslim men who have made the
almamy Political leader of high rank.
banga Palm kernel.
baraka Blessing or grace transmitted by holy men and
holy places. (barki.)
beyngu Wife.
beynguly Wives.
beyngu aranoh First wife.
beynguure Family.
biddo debbo Daughter.
biddo wrewbe Daughters.
cherno(r) Muslim teacher or scholar (Fula).
dennabo Child-naming ceremony.
diiwe Administrative regions in Fuuta Jalon.
esusu Rotating-savings-credit association found among
many ethnic groups in Sierra Leone, especially
the Temne.
fanda Gift.
Fatiha Opening sura of the Quran.
fennu Higher studies.
qh Islamic jurisprudence.
fulamusu Fula woman.
fulamusus Fula women.
gara Tie-dyed cloth.
hadith Prophetic traditions in Islam.
haja Title used by Muslim women who have made the
hajj Pilgrimage to Mecca.
ibada Act of Muslim devotion.
id ul-adha Muslim holiday commemorating Ibrahims (Abra-
hams) sacrice of a ram in lieu of his son.
id ul-tr Celebration of the end of Ramadan, the Muslim
month of fasting.
imam Muslim leader in prayer.
jamaa Muslim community.
jananbe Newcomers.
jangugol Reading.
jawdi Wealth.
jihad Islamic holy war.
jokereendhan Social solidarity among Fula.
jorkal Fula cattle middlemen.
jula Cattle trader.
julaabe Fula merchants.
julaagol Trading career of a Fula.
karamoko Muslim teacher or scholar.
karanda Pupil.
karanta Muslim primary school.
kata Curse.
kerebe Cattle credit.
kooto Title of respect (Pulaar).
maccube Servile status (Fula).
madrasa Muslim school.
manonor Cows milk.
maulid ul-nabiy Birthday of the Prophet Muhammad.
mawbe Elders.
moodi Title of respect (Pulaar); husband.
morimen Mystics.
muqaddam A superior.
murtude To rebel by becoming Westernized.
Glossary / 255
nagge Cattle.
nyamande Credit.
ojeh Secret society among Krio and Temne peoples,
derived from the Yoruba in Nigeria.
omolanke Handcart.
poda-poda Light van used mostly in Freetown.
poro Male secret society.
riba Usury (Arabic).
rimbe Noble class (Fula).
sadaqa Charity (Arabic).
sebeh Protective amulet.
shaykh Highest level of leadership in a Su order.
sheikh Learned and respected Muslim.
Su Islamic mystic.
sura Chapter of the Quran.
tafsir Commentary on the Quran.
tasawwuf Mysticism.
tawhid Islamic theology.
tijaniyya Religious brotherhood founded by Ahmad al-
Tijani.
wareh Cattle ranch in Sierra Leone.
windugol Writing.
worok Fula porters in Freetown.
yettooje Fula family names.
256 / Glossary
257
Interviews
The fty-one interviews on the following list were all conducted by
the author in Krio and Pulaar. Persons within a family, all with the
same last names, are alphabetized by rst name, ignoring a preced-
ing title (Alhaji, Sheikh, Dr., Mrs.). The interviews were tape-
recorded and then transcribed by the author in English. Copies of
the texts will be deposited in the Sierra Leone Collection of Fourah
Bay College, University of Sierra Leone.
Name Place Date
Alhaji Baba Allie Freetown 20 June 1990
Mrs. Binta Allie Freetown 1 July 1990
Momodu Allie Freetown 15 July 1992
Sheikh Abubakr Bah Freetown 10 July 1990
Alpha Amadu Bah Freetown 5 August 1990
Alhaji Chernor Bah Freetown 14 July 1990
Chernor Marju Bah Freetown 25 June 1990
Haja Fatmata Bah Freetown 19 June 1990
Ibrahim Bah Freetown 30 June 1990
Alhaji Lamrana Bah Freetown 4 August 1990
Dr. M. Alpha Bah Washington, 9 March 1991
D.C.
Mohammed Texaco Bah Freetown 26 May 1990
Alpha Barrie Freetown 15 July 1992
Hon. Alpha Barrie Freetown 14 July 1990
Amadu Barrie Silver Spring, 30 December 1991
Maryland
Ijatu Barrie Silver Spring, 21 December 1991
Maryland
Sheikh Mohammed A. Barrie Freetown 3 June 1990
Sakati Barrie Freetown 15 July 1990
Alhaji Sanu Barrie Freetown 4 August 1990
Anis M. Blell Freetown 19 July 1990
Salieu A. Camba Freetown 1 June 1990
Mohammed Cham Freetown 10 June 1990
Olu Deen Freetown 14 June 1990
Dr. Sarif Easmon Freetown 3 August 1992
Mrs. Faye Iscandari Freetown 15 June 1990
Abdulai Jalloh Freetown 14 July 1990
Abubakr Jalloh Freetown 8 July 1990
Mrs. Adama Jalloh Freetown 15 June 1990
Alhaji Malal Jalloh Freetown 3 June 1990
Agibu Jalloh Freetown 29 June 1990
Alhaji Ali Jalloh Freetown 15 August 1990
Alpha Morgan Jalloh Freetown 15 June 1990
Bailor Jalloh Freetown 25 June 1990
Chernor Momodu Alpha
Jalloh Freetown 15 July 1992
Alhaji Ibrahim Jalloh Freetown 4 August 1992
Alhaji Mohammed Jalloh Freetown 15 June 1996
Kadijatu Jalloh Freetown 3 June 1990
Alhaji Kasanel Jalloh Freetown 14 June 1990
Alhaji Musa Jalloh Maryland 13 October 1991
Salieu Jalloh Freetown 14 July 1990
Rashid Jalloh-Jamburia Freetown 30 June 1990
Alhaji Alpha Koko Kamara Freetown 30 June 1990
Alhaji Chernor Marju Freetown 14 November 1991
Nicholas Mends Freetown 24 July 1992
Alhaji M. Seray-Wurie Freetown 17 June 1990
Chernor Bubakr Sesay Freetown 30 July 1990
Sambo Singateh Freetown 24 June 1990
258 / Interviews
Demba Tarawally Freetown 13 July 1990
Alhaji A. B. Tejan-Jalloh Freetown 21 June 1990
Amadu Timbo Freetown 18 August 1996
Mrs. Fatu Wurie Freetown 28 June 1990
Interviews / 259
260
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Index
Aberdeen, 40, 50, 167
Abibu, Almamy, 192
African and Eastern Trade Corpora-
tion, 78
Agriculture and Natural Resources,
Ministry of, 38
agriculture, 34, 115; and transporta-
tion, 118; and diamonds, 143. See
also produce trade and food
Aku, 49, 50, 157; and cooperation with
Fula, 160; and education, 167
Alfa, Alhaji Momodu, 62
Algeria, 159
Alhadi, Ahmad, 160, 180
All Peoples Congress (APC), 19; and
government contracting, 6166,
105; and merchandise trade, 86;
and transportation, 117; and
road development, 11819; and
police corruption, 127; and dia-
mond smuggling, 136; and Fula
politics, 2079; and national pol-
itics, 21218, 22930
Allie, Alhaji Abass, 81, 8793, 99; and
entrepreneurship, 8890; and
real estate, 10812; and sadaqa,
184; and politics, 215
Allie, Alhaji Baba, 5963, 68, 70; and
education, 176; and sadaqa, 184;
and politics, 215
Allie, Alhaji Ibrahima, 45, 5963, 68,
70; and government contracts,
6165; and education, 176; and
sadaqa, 184; and politics, 197
Allie, Alhaji Momodu, 46, 11, 22, 30;
and cattle trade, 33, 39, 45, 48,
49, 133; and butchering, 50, 51,
59; as entrepreneur, 71, 74; and
textile trade, 87; and real estate,
108, 148, 160; and Islamic educa-
tion, 172; and sadaqa, 182, 184;
and politics, 189, 19295, 201,
209
Allie, Fanta, 9293
Allie, Mamudu, 203, 205
Alluvial Diamond Mining Scheme,
134
Amadu-Sie, Alhaji, 4
Amaria School, 158
Animals Diseases Ordinance, 35
Annie Walsh Memorial School, 161
Ansarul Islamic Mission, 17980
Antar, Alusine, 98
Arabic, 153, 156; and education, 157,
169, 170
Austin, 145
Azhar University, al-, 156
Aziz, Alfa Abdul, 190
Ba, Karamoko Alfa, 152
Bah (Ururbe), 3
Bah, Abu Bakarr, 179
Bah, Alhaji Lamrana, 185, 199200,
205, 206
Bah, Alhaji Misbaahu, 155, 185
Bah, Alhaji Momodu, 1718, 20, 31,
104; and cattle trade, 33, 37,
3940, 45, 46, 48, 49, 133; as
277
entrepreneur, 5759, 68, 70,
7374, 223; and government
contracts, 59, 6166, 105; and
rice trade, 1056; and education,
185; and politics, 189, 197, 198,
200201; and interaction with
Sierra Leone government,
2029; and Fula elections,
2059; and sadaqa, 205; and
Guinea, 2079; and SLPP,
21012; and APC, 21218
Bah, Alhaji Seray, 155, 184, 21213
Bah, Dr. M. Alpha, 63, 215
Bah, Haja Fatmata, 1046
Bah, Iye, 64
Bahm Alhaji Sajallieu, 179
Bahsoon, A, 127
Bailor, Alfa Amadu, 194
Bamin, A. J., 127
Banga Store, 98
Bangladesh, 99
Bangura, Col. John, 203, 214
Bank of Sierra Leone, 77, 78, 143
Bank, National Development, 78
banking, 4749; and merchandise
trade, 7475; and textile trade,
9293; and Islamic values,
6970, 88, 9293, 107, 108, 111,
114, 133, 14849, 18687,
22526
Bantikel, 3
baraka, 12, 24, 25, 171; and sadaqa,
18287
Barclays Bank, 92
Barrie (Dayyibe), 3
Barrie, Alhaji Ba Demba, 13738
Barrie, Alhaji Mohammed Bailor, 26,
27, 81, 99; and rice trade, 102,
1034, 106; and entrepreneur-
ship, 1034, 13744, 14548,
221, 223; and real estate,
10812, 14849; and motor
transport trade, 114, 124; and
diamond trade, 13637, 13843,
222; and education, 137, 141; and
language, 140; and centraliza-
tion, 147; and kinship network,
147; and views on gender, 147;
and interest, 14748; and poli-
tics, 213, 21517
Barrie, Alhaji Sanu, 13839, 21516
Barrie, Tejan, 142
Barry, Ibrahima, 16, 214
Bathurst, Gambia, 4
Baydoun and Abess, 127
Bedford, 119, 128, 129, 130, 145
Big Market, 83
Binbinkoro, Fula Mansa, 166
Bindi, 36
Blama, 94, 116
Blyden, Dr. Edward W., 158, 162,
17475
Bo, 57, 79, 94, 104, 110, 138; and
transportation, 117, 128, 132;
and diamonds, 139; and educa-
tion, 180
Board of Imams, 155
Bombali district: and Fula settlement,
2, 3, 7, 9, 17; and cattle trade, 31,
37, 132; and produce trade, 96;
and rice trade, 102, 103; and
Islam, 153
Bombay Street, 56, 83
Britain, 2, 107; and colonial Sierra
Leone, 13, 19, 97, 100101, 188;
and cattle, 3437; and butcher-
ing, 5052; and banking, 7475;
and merchandise trade, 7678;
and motor transport trade, 119,
131; and diamond trade, 13436;
and Christianization, 16162;
and Christian-Muslim relations,
162; and education, 174; and
indigenous politics, 188; and cre-
ation of Fula almamy, 19092;
and Fula politics, 192201; and
Fula chieftaincy elections,
19499, 2056
Brookelds, 213
Brussels, 142
Bullom, 44
Bundu, Alpha, 215
Bunduka, 157
Burkina Faso, 33
278 / Index
Butchers Association, 47
butchers, 11, 4952, 224; and domes-
tic cattle trade, 3742; and gov-
ernment contracts, 5356, 59,
6166; public demand for,
5657; sheep and goats, 6667;
and Islam, 160; and politics,
2089
Calabar Town, 39, 108, 109
Camba, Alhaji Abass, 163, 180, 199
Camba, Salieu, 200
capital, 7075; and merchandise trade,
7780, 82; and textile trade, 88;
and produce trade, 94; and
motor transport, 114, 124, 132;
and motor mechanics, 126; and
diamond trade, 13437, 146; and
sadaqa, 18687. See also diversi-
cation
Cathedral School, 205
Cattle Purchase Scheme, 34
cattle trading, 1, 4, 7, 9, 11, 17, 96,
114, 220, 224; and status, 22,
2730; organization of, 3337;
Ndama cattle, 33, 66; Zebu cat-
tle, 33; and disease, 33, 40
domestic cattle sources, 3743;
and landlords, 4449; and mid-
dlemen, 45, 63; and transport,
12830, 132; contrasted to dia-
mond trade, 146; cattle and
political patronage, 190, 208
central business district (CDB), 12, 57,
7273; and merchandise trade,
80; and transportation, 126, 145
Cham, Mohammed, 62
Choithram, T., 80
Christian Marriage Act, 24
Christianity, 2; Maronites, 12; Greek
Orthodox, 12; and class, 13, 14;
and holidays, 56; and Muslim
relations, 16064
Church Missionary Society (CMS),
16162, 164
Civil Marriage Act, 24
class: Fula elites, 46, 22, 51, 72, 74,
110, 219; Fula stereotypes of, 5,
87; Fula as commoners, 6; mer-
chant class, 1113, 22, 2630,
51, 68; Krio elites, 13, 14, 83;
educated elites, 110, 225. See also
status
clientage, 1112, 6264, 8384, 187,
205. See also kinship
Cline Town, 94, 99, 145; and trans-
portation, 116, 128
cocoa, 80, 93, 94, 97, 98, 107
coffee, 80, 93, 94, 97, 107, 116
cold storage, 57
Cole, Governor-General C. O. E.,
2056
colonialism. See Britain
Commerce, Department of, 101
Compagnie Francaise de lAfrique
Occidentale (CFAO), 78, 93, 94,
97, 110, 215
Conakry, Guinea, 4, 16, 111, 126
Consolidated African Selection Trust
(CAST), 134
conversion. See Islam, spread of
corruption, 77, 78, 111; and police,
127, 133; and diamond trade,
14244; allegations of, 192, 197
counterfeiting, 144
Cow Yard, 43, 52, 209
credit (nyamande), 1112, 23, 28, 107,
221; and cattle trade, 44, 45,
4749, 64, 67, 69; and merchan-
dise trade, 7778, 82; and textile
trade, 91; and politics, 208
Daihatsu, 119, 145, 146
Daniyah, Haja Umu, 158
Datsun, 119, 145
Deen, Hadir ul-, 155
Dembelia, 153
demography: growth of Fula in Free-
town, 7, 1011, growth of Free-
town, 72, 84, 90, 108, 109; and
diamond mining, 103; population
density, 115
diamond trade, 17, 37, 62, 80, 82, 85,
91, 92, 103, 114; and capital
Index / 279
accumulation, 88, 124, 13437,
146, 22122; and smuggling,
13536, 141; and immigration,
141; and technology, 143; and
school construction, 179; and
politics, 213
Diawadou, Barry, 214
Dinguiraye, 60, 158, 17576
diversication, 81, 87, 95, 99, 103,
108, 113, 145, 18687; and dia-
mond trade, 222
Dogoloya, 185
domestic servitude, 9, 68, 83, 124
Dorman, Governor Maurice H.,
200201
Dove Cot Market, 83
Dove-Edwin Commission, 211
Dukar, Abdulai, 193, 195
Easmon, Dr. Sarif, 212
East Street, 89
Education, Ministry of, 59, 180
education: Western, 8, 28, 63, 64, 92,
137; Western and social mobility,
14, 1922, 30, 164, 215, 22627;
Western and trade, 78, 1067,
and values, 16770; interaction
of Islamic and Western systems,
169, 173; contrast of Islamic and
Western systems, 17273; and
colonial state, 174; growth of,
211. See also Islam and education
Egypt, 68, 156, 214
ethnicity: and Islam, 165; and politics,
191, 206, 207. See also Aku; Fula;
Indians; Kissi; Krio; Lebanese;
Limba; Mandinka; Mende; Soso;
and Temne
Europe, 12, 32, 74, 78, 107; and pro-
duce trade, 95; and transporta-
tion, 116; and diamonds, 136,
142; and missionization, 161; and
Fula organizations, 216; and
Fula immigration, 229
family, 2427; and status, 2627; and
cultural values, 1067
Fez, Morocco, 159
Fifth Column Plot, 214
Finance, Ministry of, 55
Folosaba, 153
food, 34, 115, 22122; and transporta-
tion, 128
Ford, 130
Forecaria, 94
Forna, Sembu, 41
Fourah Bay College, 29, 164, 216
Fourah Bay mosque, 158, 207
Fourah Bay, 157, 159, 167
France, 7, 8, 94, 107; and cattle,
3446; and motor transport
trade, 119; and Fula politics, 198
Freetown Cold Storage Company,
Ltd., 57
Freetown Motors, 128, 145
Freetown: founding of, 12; and Fula
settlement in, 67, 1011, 15,
219; eastern, 14, 44, 67, 73, 82,
92, 94, 98, 108, 126, 132, 148,
154, 174, 225; opposition to Fula
migration, 1722; and trade, 32;
and cattle trade, 37, 39, 43, 44,
47; and butchering, 5053, 56;
western, 52, 7374, 79, 10910,
126, 225; central, 59; and bank-
ing, 6870; and real estate,
7275, 22526; and rice trade,
104; as transportation hub, 114,
221; and economic opportunity,
115; and urbanization, 124, 148,
221, 22526; and population
density, 126; and Islam, 155; City
Council, 210
Fujalto Muslim Orchestra, 16364
Fula Mosque Building Committee,
183
Fula Progressive Union (FPU), 138,
21517, 22930
Fula Town, 2, 154, 157, 158, 167
Fula Tribal Committee, 196, 199
Fula Youth Organization, 215
Fula: and settlement of Sierra Leone,
14, 1011, 15, 125; and dias-
pora, 23, 229; ethnic divisions
280 / Index
of, 34, 11011, 149, 165, 181,
182, 18889, 2078, 215, 224,
229; Hacundemaje clan, 3,
19697; Lab clan, 3, 19697;
political persecution of, 1516,
211, 21314, 21618, 229; and
culture, 2230, 177, 205,
21920; and family, 2427,
17677, 223; and organization
of the cattle trade, 3337; and
butchering, 4953; and govern-
ment contracts, 5356; and
entrepreneurship, 5766,
22024; and economic values,
6770, 7778, 1067, 22224;
and investments, 7075; and
hawking, 8183; and shopkeep-
ing, 8387; and textile trade,
8793; and produce trade,
9399; and rice trade, 1026;
culture and trade, 1067; and
emigration, 11112; and entry
into motor transport trade, 120;
and passenger transport,
12428; and spare parts trade,
128; and goods transport,
12830, and diamond mining,
13435; and diamond smug-
gling, 13738; and diamond
trade, 13843; and Islamization,
15260; and Islamic education,
158; and tijaniyya, 15859; and
Muslim cooperation, 15960;
and inter-religious relations,
16064; and secret societies,
166; and educational values,
16770; and karanka education,
16973; and madrasa education,
17475; and fennu education,
17576; and sadaqa, 18287;
Timbi clan, 19697, 2012,
2078; Maasi clan, 199200;
Timbo clan, 208; and APC,
21418; and generations,
22021
Fullah, Ahmad Naya, 190
Fullah, Alieu, 190
Fullah, Sori, 190
Fuuta Jalon, 12, 6, 68, 94; and migra-
tion, 3, 8, 29, 49; and cattle
trade, 32, 33, 224; and Islamiza-
tion, 15253; and Fula cultural
education, 17677; politics and
ethnic division, 19192, 19495,
198
Fuuta Toro, 4, 6, 159, 176; and ethnic
division, 191
G. B. Ollivant and Company (GBO),
78, 93, 97
Gambia, 4, 19, 35, 140
Garrison Street, 79, 83, 88, 90
Gbentu, 36
Gberie, 36, 43
Gbinti, 152
gender. See women
Germany, 118; and motor transport
trade, 119, 131
Ghana, 13, 2122, 35, 93, 94, 97
gold, 1, 32
Government Diamond Ofce (GDO),
143
groundnuts, 94
Guard Street, 178
Guinea, Republic of, 1, 4, 7; and Fula
emigration, 1011, 1517, 29,
30, 146; and perception of
nationals in Sierra Leone, 2022,
87, 135; and cattle trade, 3437,
42, 51, 57, 66, 68; and banking,
68; and merchandise trade, 85;
and rice trade, 102; and Fula im-
migration, 11112; and expul-
sion of nationals from Sierra
Leone, 11112, 135; and inter-
ference in Fula politics, 2069
Habibu, Almamy, 192
hajj. See pilgrimage
Hangha, 116
Hassan, Allie, 119
Hassan, Mustapha, 119
Hassaniyeh, N. R., 79
Hastings, 39
Index / 281
Hausa, 23, 4849, 67, 189
hawking, 7, 11, 13, 8183, 90
Health, Ministry of, 52, 54
Holy Trinity Church, 163
hospitals, 59
Ibadan, 23, 48
Ibrahima Allie and others vs.
Momodu Bah, 201
immigration: and diamond trade, 140;
and politics, 188, 199
Income Tax Department, 55
Indian Mercantile Association, 80
Indians, 9, 59, 68, 107; and relations
with Fula, 12, 124; and merchan-
dise trade, 7780, 83, 8687;
and motor transport trade, 131
industry, 78, 99
Infant Schools, 175
informal economy, 90
interest. See Islam and economic val-
ues; and banking
Interior, Ministry of, 2034, 206, 213
Internal Affairs, Ministry of, 199, 201
Islam: and culture, 2; spread of, 3, 5,
29, 15160, 169, 179, 190, 227;
and education, 3, 8, 14, 2730,
60, 96, 137, 15658, 163; Sunni,
12, 151; Shiite, 12; and polygamy,
24; and status, 28, 18687, 219,
227; and holidays, 56, 67, 91,
105, 165, 18586, 189, 190, 200;
and economic values, 6970, 88,
9293, 107, 108, 111, 114, 133,
14849, 18687, 22526; and
trade, 15152; and Islamic orga-
nizations, 15456, 180; and
brotherhoods, 156, 15859;
Susm, 159; and inter-ethnic co-
operation, 160, 169; and trade
relations, 160; and inter-reli-
gious relations, 16064; and
intra-religious relations, 16466;
karanta education, 16973; and
madrasa education, 17475; and
jennu education, 17576; and
higher education, 179; and
sadaqa, 18287; and capital accu-
mulation, 18687
Italy, 119
J. T. Chanrai and Co., 80
Jaiama, 139
Jalloh, Agibu, 65, 81, 222; and entre-
preneurship, 9599, 13034,
223; and produce trade, 9599;
and rice trade, 1023, 106; and
real estate, 10812; and motor
transport trade, 114, 124,
13034; and politics, 208, 217
Jalloh, Alhaji Abdulai, 43, 46, 50; and
sadaqa, 18283; and politics,
19697, 205, 215
Jalloh, Alhaji Almamy Wuro, 96
Jalloh, Alhaji M. S., 175
Jalloh, Alhaji Malal, 44; and Islamic
education, 172; and politics, 209
Jalloh, Alhaji Misbaahu, 160
Jalloh, Alhaji Mohammed, 179
Jalloh, Alhaji Moodi Ibrahim Kasanel,
194, 19596, 208
Jalloh, Alhaji Musa, 71, 110, 181, 200,
215
Jalloh, Alhaji Wuro, 130
Jalloh, Amadu, 166
Jalloh, Bilo, 96
Jalloh, Chernor Mamadu Borbo,
18485
Jalloh, Chernor Mohammed, 15758
Jalloh, Kadijatu, 215
Jalloh, Kooto Umaru, 215
Jalloh, Moodi Amadu Wurie, 4647
Jalloh, Moodi Juntu, 66
Jalloh Brothers, 130
Jalloh-Jamburia, Abdul Aziz, 174, 193
Jalloh-Jamburia, Ahmed Akim, 203
Jalloh-Jamburia, Alhaji Juheh, 193, 195
Jalloh-Jamburia, Alhaji Sulaiman, 180
Jalloh-Jamburia, Almamy Oumarou,
56
Jalloh-Jamburia, Moodi Tija, 4344
Jamburia, Abdul, 195
Jamburia, Ahmed, 205
Jamburia, Almamy, 11, 19, 94; and
282 / Index
education, 17374, 175; as
almamy, 19092
Jami ul-Foulanien, 182
Jami ul-Jalil, 156
Jami ul-Ruh ul-Kudus, 154
Japan, 119, 145
Jawara, 153
Jaward, A. M., 97, 142
Jaward, Ramez Mohammed, 139
jawdi, 5
Jenkins Street, 92, 174
jihad, 15253
jokereendhan, 2728
jute, 9899
Juxon-Smith, Lt. Col. A. T., 202
K. Chelleram and Sons, 80
Kabala, 35, 36, 43, 104, 105, 137; and
transportation, 128, 138
Kai Kai, 3, 157
Kailahun district, 2, 94
Kaimachende, Chief, 140
Kamakwie, 36, 43, 44, 103
Kamara, A. B. M., 137
Kamara, Alhaji Boie, 48
Kamara, Alhaji Yikiba, 50, 167
Kamara, Almamy Barakah, 167
Kamara-Taylor, C. A., 1819, 205,
206, 213
Kambia Bridge, 111
Kambia district, 7, 37, 43
Kanu, Ibrahim, 156
Karene, 139
Kassiri, 43, 100, 105
Kebu, 38
Kenema district, 57, 79, 92, 94, 98,
103, 110; and transportation,
116, 128, 132; and diamonds,
143, 222; and education, 180; and
politics, 211
King George VI Mental Home, 59
King Jimmy Market, 83
King-Harman, Governor, 190
kinship network, 9; and Fula society,
1112, 22, 2327, 17677; and
trade, 2730, 107, 22021; and
cattle trade, 31, 37, 4344, 133;
and butchering, 51, 5859,
6263, 67; and merchandise
trade, 77, 79; and textile trade,
91; and produce trade, 95; and
rice trade, 103; and motor trans-
port trade, 114, 12425, 130;
and diamond trade, 139, 147; and
politics, 22829
Kissi, 9495, 98; and Islam, 153
Kissy Bye Pass Road, 98
Kissy Dockyard, 132
Kissy Road, 56, 72, 98, 99, 174
Kissy Street, 52, 72, 79, 80, 88, 90,
108, 109; and transportation,
126
Koinadugu district, 137; and Fula set-
tlement, 2, 7, 9, 17; and cattle
trade, 31, 37; and Islam, 153, 185
Koindu, 37, 42, 107; and education,
180
kola nuts, 9, 82, 94
Kombayende, 37
Kono district, 17, 37, 62, 92, 103; and
diamonds 13435, 143, 146, 179,
222; and education, 180; and pol-
itics, 211
Koola, Chernor Mohamadu, 194
Koranko, 137
Koroma, S. I., 86, 217
Krio: language, 7, 20, 82, 177; culture,
9, 28; and relations with Fula,
12, 29, 68, 124; as ethnic group,
13, 14, 72, 74, 163, 227; and
protest of Fula immigration, 21;
and butchering, 49, 56; and mer-
chandise trade, 81; and shop-
keeping, 84; and real estate, 108,
110; and transportation, 116;
and motor transport trade, 120;
and Islam, 157; and Christianity,
162; and politics, 210
Kroo Town Road, 56, 80, 83, 206,
21112
Kukuna, 36
Lab, 158, 17576
Lakish Brothers, 79
Index / 283
land, 41; and diamonds, 143, 144
landlords, 4449, 6970, 74
language, 4, 7, 25, 82, 177. See also
Krio and Pulaar
Lansana, Brigadier David, 202, 214
Lebanese, 9, 68, 74, 107; and relations
with Fula, 12, 73, 124; and live-
stock trade, 56, 67; and merchan-
dise trade, 7780, 83, 8687;
and textile trade, 88; and pro-
duce trade, 93, 94, 97; and rice
trade, 100; and transportation,
113, 117, 131; and spare parts
trade, 12728; and diamond
trade, 136, 141; and Islam, 155
Leona Hotel, 148
Liberia, 7, 42, 107; and cattle trade,
4142; and textile trade, 88; and
rice trade, 102; and diamond
smuggling, 136
Limba, 32; and laborers, 98, 102, 104
Little East Street, 72, 79, 88, 90
Luke, Livesey, 15
Lumley Street, 126
Lungi International Airport, 132
M. A. Basma and Sons, 79
M. B. Barrie and Sons, 145, 146
Madrasa Amaraia, 17475
Madrasa Harunia, 17475
Madrasa Islamia, 17475
Madrasa Omaria, 175
Madrasa Sulaimana, 175
Magazine, 43, 67, 174
Makeni, 35, 43, 79, 104, 110; and
transportation, 11617, 128,
130, 132, 138, 139
Makotolo, 105
Mali, 19, 33, 140
Mambolo, 105
Mamou, 137
Mandinka, 12, 13, 15; and cattle trade,
43, 44; and butchering, 49, 50,
66; and textile trade, 88, 92; and
Islam, 15354; and education,
167
Mann, C. W., 163
Mansaray, 153
Mansaray, Alhaji Kuda, 48
Maraka, 92; and diamond mining, 136
Marampa, 116
Margai, Prime Minister Albert,
6364, 140; and education, 178;
and SLPP, 202, 21012; and
NRC, 214
Margai, Sir Milton, 210
Marjue, Alhaji Chernor, 179, 217
Marke, R. B., 198
marriage: inter-ethnic, 3, 19, 2526,
176, intra-ethnic (Fula), 12, 25,
188, 207; polygamous, 2327;
and trade, 178, 22324
Masadugu, 36
Mateboi, 35
Matturi, S. L., 140
Mauritania, 60
Mazda, 126, 145
meat inspection, 52
Mecca, 8, 26, 219
Mende, 98, 140; and politics, 210
Mercedes-Benz, 119, 128, 133
merchandise trade: history of, 7680;
and textiles, 8793; and produce,
9399; and rice, 1026; and
transport, 12830
Metzger, M. A., 174
migration, Fula: internal to Sierra
Leone, 23, 7, 84; in West
Africa, 3, 45; chain, 4; and
hometown linkages, 4, 2930,
73, 112, 193, 230; and employ-
ment, 8; circular, 9, 218; and
colonialism, 1011; and post-
colonial Sierra Leone, 1417;
and protest of, 1722; emigra-
tion from Sierra Leone, 11112,
230; registration of, 204
migration: international, 2022,
11112, 124, 218
Mile 91, 102
milk, 39
Mines, Ministry of, 135
Mobil, 132
Mohammed, Jamil Said, 139, 142
284 / Index
Mohammedan [Islamic] Marriage
Act, 24
Mohammedan Board of Advice, 175
Mohammedan Education Ordinance,
175
Montague, F. A., 198
mosques, 153, 154, 156
motor transport trade, 96, 14950;
and Freetown, 11920, 150; and
passenger transport, 120,
12428; and mechanics, 12526;
and spare parts, 12728, 145;
and goods transport, 12830;
and importation, 133, 134
Mould, P. S., 199
Muhammad, 159, 163, 168, 169, 191
Muhammadan Education Board, 155
Muslim Association, 180
Muslim Board of Education, 175
Muslim Brotherhood Mission, 156
Mustapha, Alhaji M. S., 158
National Dance Troupe, 59
National Diamond Mining Corpora-
tion (NDMC), 142
National Interim Council (NIC), 203
National Reformation Council (NRC),
117, 202, 212, 214
National Registration Secretariat, 19
Niass, Ibrahim, 159
Nigeria, 13, 2122, 33, 35, 97; and
spare parts trade, 128
Nimikoro: and diamonds, 134, 139
Nissan, 145
Njala University College, 41, 216
Non-Citizen (Trade and Business) Act
of 1969, 111, 132
Ofce of Food Controller, 34
oil tankers, 13132
Ojeh, 16566
Organization of African Unity (OAU),
15, 16, 214
palm produce, 9, 80, 93, 94, 95, 97, 98,
107; and transportation, 116,
117, 128, 130
Parti Dmocratique de Guine (PDG),
1516, 214
Paterson, Zochonis and Company
(PZ), 78, 97, 110
Pendembu, 94, 116
Pepel, 116
petty trading, 8687, 8990, 130
Peugeot, 145
pilgrimage (hajj), 8, 166; and status,
27, 30, 166, 219
Pilgrims Association, 156
poda-podas, 126
police, 133, 140, 14445; and politics,
212
politics: foundation of Fula chieftaincy
in Freetown, 19092; Fula chief-
taincy, 19499, 2046, 22829;
and trade, 195, 2089, 218; con-
ict between Guinea and Sierra
Leone, 2079, 22930; of Sierra
Leone, 20918; and SLPP,
21012, 230; and violence,
21112 and APC, 21218,
22930. See also Sierra Leone
Peoples Party and All Peoples
Congress
Pony, 119, 145, 146
Poro, (Bullom-Sherbro), 16566
Port Loko, 37, 117, 130, 139
porterage, 7, 124
Portuguese, 1, 16; and invasion of
Guinea, 64, 206, 213
produce trade, 78, 80, 9399, 104,
118; and transport, 12830, 139
provisions, 78, 85, 87
Public Health Ordinance no. 23, 52
Public Works Department (PWD),
119
Pujeh, Ansumana Mohammed, 98
Pujehun district, 2, 3
Pulaar, 29, 163, 177, 178
Queen Elizabeth II Quay, 116
railroads. See transportation.
Railway Union Hall, 205
Ramadan Vision, 18081
Index / 285
Ramadan. See Islam: and holidays.
Rawdon Street, 72, 126
real estate, 57, 58, 7175, 88, 10812,
14849, 221; and Fula contribu-
tions to Freetown, 22526
Reform Club, 205
Remanded and Approved Schools, 59
Renault, 119, 145
Rice Corporation, 102
Rice Department, 101
rice: trade in, 8081, 96, 99106;
growth of, 99100
Rio Pongas, 94
Road Transport Corporation, 124
roads. See transportation
Rogalan, 96
Rogers-Wright, C. B., 201
Rokulan, 130
Rokupr, 43, 100
Saccoh, Sidi Mohammed, 140
sadaqa (charity), 18287, 189, 228
Saint Georges Cathedral, 161
salt, 32
Samu, 105
Samura, 153
Sanda Kamaranka, 102
Sanda Loko, 102
Sanda Magbolonto, 152
Sanda Tenderin, 102
Sankoh, Lamina, 181
Sanusi, Alfa Mohammed, 158, 163,
167
Savage, Legally, 158
Scott, Michael, 201
secret societies, 16566. See also Ojeh
and Poro
Sefadu, 62, 134, 179; and diamonds,
138, 139
Segbwena, 116
Senegal, 4, 13, 19, 33, 50, 60, 68, 93,
140, 216
Seray-Wurie, Alhaji Mohammed, 147
Seray-Wurie, Chernor Ahmed, 158
Serekunda, Gambia, 18485
Sesay, Alhaji Sheikh Jibril, 156
Sharp, Granville, 2, 13
Shell, 132
shopkeeping, 8387
Sie, Alhaji Amadu, 185
Sierra Leone Blind Welfare Associa-
tion, 207
Sierra Leone Chamber of Commerce,
226
Sierra Leone Citizenship Act, 20
Sierra Leone Company, 12
Sierra Leone Development Company
(DELCO), 11617
Sierra Leone Government Railway
(SLGR), 94, 11617
Sierra Leone Grammar School, 161
Sierra Leone Muslim Brotherhood,
207
Sierra Leone Muslim Congress,
15456, 166, 180
Sierra Leone Muslim Reformation
Society, 156
Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP),
6364, 86, 105, 140; and dia-
mond smuggling, 136; and edu-
cation, 178; and Fula politics,
202; and national politics,
21012, 230
Sierra Leone Petty Traders Associa-
tion, 86
Sierra Leone Police Immigration
Department, 111
Sierra Leone Produce Marketing
Board (SLPMB), 95, 9697, 99,
128, 133. 22122
Sierra Leone River, 132
Sierra Leone Royal Gazette, 192, 201,
206
Sierra Leone Selection Trust (SLST),
134
Sierra Leone: settlement by freed
slaves, 12, 13; and anti-
immigrant legislation, 1516,
102, 111, 129, 132; and foreign
cattle trade, 3437; and domes-
tic cattle trade, 3742; and
butchering contracts, 5356,
6166; and banking, 68; and
identity, 73; eastern, 97, 134; and
286 / Index
emigration, 11112, 135; and
diamond contracts, 142; north-
ern, 153
Simon Aboud and Sons, 79
Sindhi, 12
Sinkunia, 153
slaves, 1, 13, 32
smuggling, 16; and cattle trade, 3436,
68; and sheep and goat trade, 67;
and diamond trade, 13536
Social Welfare, Ministry of, 59, 202
socialism, 1517
Socit Commerciale de lOuest
Africaine (SCOA), 78, 93, 97; and
motor transport trade, 128, 145
Sokrala, 137
Solima Yalunka, 153
Solima, 32, 153
Sori, Ibrahima, 152
Sorie, Alhaji, 156
Soso, 15, 18, 20; and cattle trade, 43,
44; and butchering, 49, 66
Sow (Ferrobe), 3
Spur Road, 110, 148
Standard Charter Bank, 92
status: and social mobility, 14, 2230,
219, 228; and butchering busi-
ness, 4952; and real estate,
6768; and Islam, 18687; and
sadaqa, 189, and politics, 189,
194, 199
Stevens, Prime Minister Siaka, 6265,
71; and corruption, 14243; and
Fula politics, 203, 2069, 230;
and APC, 21218
students, 215
Supreme Islamic Council (SIC), 180
Swarray-Deen, Sheikh Mahmoud, 167
Sy, Alhaji Malik, 185
Taju-Deen, Alpha, 158
Tal, al-Hajj Umar, 159
taxation, 8, 19; and cattle trade, 34, 36,
42, 68
taxis, 126, 145, 146
Tejan-Jalloh, Alhaji Abubakr, 3,
2324, 29, 94, 95; and Islam,
15960, 180, 181; and politics,
199, 203, 205, 2067, 210, 212;
and sadaqa, 207
Teliko, 38
Telli, Diallo, 16, 214
Temne, 1, 12, 140; and relations with
Fula, 12, 19, 2526; and Free-
town, 14; and cattle trade, 32, 43;
and butchering, 49, 50, 66; and
merchandise trade, 81; and petty
trading, 8687, 90; and textile
trade, 90; and produce trade, 98;
as laborers, 102, 104; and motor
mechanics, 125; and spare parts
trade, 128; and diamond mining,
146; and Islam, 152; and secret
societies, 166
Tender Board, 54, 101
Tengbeh Town, 185
textile trade, 1, 32, 81, 8793
Tijani, Shaykh Ahmad al-, 159
tijaniyya, 156, 15859. See also Islam
Timbe Madina, 3
Timbe Tuni, 3
Timbe, 3, 59
Timbo, Guinea, 2, 60; and migration,
3, 96; and Islamic education, 158,
17576
Timbo, Moodi Ahmadu, 19596
Tonkolili district: and Fula settlement,
2, 9, 17; and cattle trade, 37; and
rice trade, 102
topography, 37, 99100
Touba, 176
Tour, President Skou, 1517, 42,
111; and anti-Fula politics,
2069, 230; and Sierra Leone
politics, 21014
Toyota, 119
Trade Acts, 8587
trade: long-distance, 1; international,
17, 115; middlemen, 42, 45, 63,
91, 9396, 98, 104, 138, 141;
domestic cattle trade, 3743;
wholesale and butchering,
4952, 5859; sheep and goats,
6667; and economic values,
Index / 287
6775, 7778, 9293, 108;
import-export, 77, 81; joint-
stock, 11011, 149; and marriage
alliances, 178; and politics,
18990, 195, 2089, 218. See
also cattle, produce, merchandise,
textiles, motor transport, and
diamonds
transportation, 31, 94, 22526; and
cattle trade, 31; and butchering,
51, 52, 6667; and rail, 78,
9495, 11617; roads, 93,
11719; and produce trade,
9899; and rice trade, 103; and
national unity, 115; varieties of,
11617; shipping, 116; air, 116;
growth of roads, 118
Tribal Administration Act, 205
Tribal Administration Ordinance,
19192, 197, 201
Tribal Fund, 183
trypanosomiasis, 33, 40, 67
tsetse y, 33
Tunisia, 68
Umboror, Alieu, 193, 195
United Africa Company (UAC), 84, 93,
97; and motor transport trade,
119, 128, 145
United States, 107; and motor trans-
port trade, 119; and diamonds,
136; and Fula organizations, 216;
and Fula immigration, 230
University of Sierra Leone, 216
urbanization, 78, 72, 84, 90, 108, 109,
114; and transportation, 116,
118, 120, 221
vertical integration, 31, 7071, 81;
and produce trade, 96; and rice
trade, 103; and cattle trade, 220
wareh (cattle ranch), 3842, 50, 130,
132, 133, 137
Wareh Tax, 42
watchmen, 9, 83, 124
Water Street, 59, 116
Waterloo, Guinea, 118, 206
Watfa brothers, 98
wealth. See status
Wellington, 108, 109; and transporta-
tion, 126
West Africa, 72, 149; and Fula migra-
tion, 219
Western culture, 13, 23, 200. See also
Krio; and education
Wilberforce, William, 13
women: and gender roles, 7, 14, 147,
21920; and cattle trade, 39; and
produce trade, 95; and rice trade,
1045; and education, 161,
17778; and merchandise trade,
220
World Bank, 117
Wurie, Haja Dausi, 158
Yadali, Alfa, 158
Yalunka, 20, 15253
Yazbeck, A., 119, 142
Yengema: and diamonds 134, 138, 139
Yoni, 166
Yoruba, 13, 23, 49, 67, 157
Youens, Commissioner P., 196
288 / Index
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