Youth marginalisation and the burdens of war in Sierra Leone

The transformation of the world system after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 provided a new era of free democratic uncertainties in the lives of the youth population in both West and Eastern Europe. Uncertainties that have never been free or democratic, yet always part of the lives of most youth in Africa. In the case of Sierra Leone, young people have been struggling for a factual democratisation process and participatory governance since its independence in 1961, thus revealing the role the Sierra Leonean youth has been keen to play in the country’s political, social and economic processes.