The politics of football in post-colonial Sierra Leone

Abstract

Sierra Leone, like Ghana, was one of several British West African colonies where British seamen and colonial officials introduced football (soccer) in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By the first half of the twentieth century, football was gaining popularity in Freetown, the capital city, where British and Sierra Leonean civil servants, company officials, and soldiers played matches to foster good relations and camaraderie. Likewise, students, faculty, and staff of institutions such as Fourah Bay College (later the University of Sierra Leone) and the Church Missionary Society Grammar School (later Sierra Leone Grammar School) in Freetown played football regularly as part of their sports program. Today, however, unlike Ghana that has represented Africa in the FIFA Football World Cup competitions at both senior and junior levels, Sierra Leone’s “soccerscape” has been dysfunctional for the best part of its postcolonial existence since independence in 1961. 1 Paradoxically, even with the myriad problems associated with “professional” football in contemporary Sierra Leone, it is by far the country’s most popular sport and an important facet of the cultural and socioeconomic lives of the people.