Ask most people in the UK what they associate with the small west African nation of Sierra Leone, and it’s likely it will be one of three things: blood diamonds, Ebola, or the country’s civil war, which killed an estimated 50,000 people between 1991 and 2002. It’s a set of associations that is understandably frustrating for the country’s leaders.
“I was just at the UN, of all places, and when you meet someone and say, ‘I am from Sierra Leone’, they go, ‘oh yes blood diamonds’. This was not in 2000 or even 2010, this was last week,” says David Sengeh, chief minister of Sierra Leone, which is a position equivalent to prime minister. “These stories are stuck in people’s minds until you are able to replace them with a new one.”
