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 Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the president of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 2007, was an ethnic Mandingo | |
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 360,080[1] | |
| Languages | |
| Maninka, Krio | |
| Religion | |
| Sunni Islam (over 99%) | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Bambara, Konyake |
Mandingo people of Sierra Leone (commonly referred to as the Mandinka, Mandingo or Malinke) is a major Muslim ethnic group in Sierra Leone[citation needed] and a branch of the Mandinka people of West Africa. The Mandingo first settled in Northeast in what is now Sierra Leone from Guinea over 650 years ago as farmers, traders and Islamic clerics in the time of the Mali Empie, an Islamic Empire under the rule of the famous Muslim ruler Mansa Musa. About 500 years later, Beginning in the late 1870s to the 1890s under the rule of prominent Mandinka Muslim cleric Samori Ture, an even larger group of Mandingo immigrated from Eastern Guinea settled in northeastern Sierra Leone on lands conqured by the Muslim ruler Samori Toure as part of the Wassoulou Empire, a Muslim Empire. The Mandingo are partly responsible for the spread of Islam in Sierra Leone. The Mandingo people of Sierra Leone have a very close friendly and allied relationship with their neighbors the Mandingo people of Guinea and Liberia, as they share very similar identical dialect of the Mandingo language, tradition, culture and food.
The Mandingo constitute 5% of Sierra Leone's population.[1] Like the larger Mandinka people, the Sierra Leonean Mandingo are over 99% Muslim and they follow the Sunni tradition of Islam based on the Maliki Jurisprudence. Islam has become the basis of their religious and cultural practices. The Mandingo are well known for their conservative Islamic tradition. The Mandingo people of Sierra Leone are historically predominantly traders and rural subsistence farmers. The most famous Mandingo from Sierra Leone is Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the president of Sierra Leone from 1996 to 2007.
Other famous Mandingo from Sierra Leone include Sierra Leone former vice president Sorie Ibrahim Koroma, current Sierra Leone first lady Fatima Maada Bio, and former chairman of the Sierra Leone national electoral commission Mohamed Nfa Alie Conteh.
The Mandingo people of Sierra Leone speak the Maninka language as their native language. The Mandingo dialect of Sierra Leone is Virtually identical to the Mandingo dialect of Guinea and Liberia. Like other Sierra Leonean ethnic groups, the overwhelming majority of the Mandingo people in Sierra Leone also speak the Krio language, the defctor national language of Sierra Leone.
In the 21st century, the Mandingo live in virtually all parts of Sierra Leone; they make up the majority of the population of several towns in the North and East of Sierra Leone. Their population is largely concentrated in Koinadugu District in the North, particularly in the towns of Kabala and Falaba, where they form the majority of the population. The Mandingo make up the majority of the population in Yengema, Kono District in Eastern Sierra Leone. They also make up the majority of the population in the town of Karina, Bombali District, in the north of Sierra Leone.
- ^ a b "Sierra Leone 2015 Population and Housing Census National Analytical Report" (PDF). Statistics Sierra Leone. Retrieved 28 March 2020.