The Upper Guinea Coast
Sierra Leone is a case study with all the attendant influence of migrations from other parts of the Upper Guinea Coast on the present social and economic structures which inadvertently impact the country's politics and other social relations.
These relationships have been the backbone for the formation and institution of beliefs, cultures, and perceptions about the world. These have shaped our attitudes and characters regarding our abilities to relate to others. The composite of these social conditions has always been the parameter to measure the level of social and cultural development of any social group and how these distinguish each from the other...
The Mano River Union is a part of the upper Guinea coast of West Africa comprising Guinea (Conakry), Liberia and Sierra Leone as the basic commonalities where there are many similar cultures and even place names. This part of West Africa has a jagged and puzzling history which is rich but hidden. In the wider context, this part of West Africa, having a harbour at what is Freetown today, with safety has been known to Europeans and other earlier travellers going to the Americas and even round the cape of Good Hope to Asia and India.
The upper Guinea Coast is geographically a part of West Africa located between the banks of the river Gambia to the coast of present-day south-eastern Liberia (Knorr and Filho,2010).
People from inland extending up to the former Mali empire had always come to this part for trade. This trade, according to Wylie, Kenneth C. (Sep. 1973) had been known for centuries by every European who visited what we today call Sierra Leone after the partitioning of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884 /85.[1]
As indicated inter alia, The port of what is today known as Freetown in the western area peninsula, which was originally known by the name Romarong, from the echoes of thunder heard from faraway places during the rainy season, had been known by traders of Fulani and Malinke origin in the upper Guinea and inland areas of west Africa since the days of Hanno from Carthage in north Africa when it was under Roman control. Traders mainly the Djulasso[2] dialect of the Malinke group of languages would walk for months from inland to trade with ships passing to the Americas or around the Cape of Good Hope.
[1] The Berlin Conference was held to formalise the Scramble for Africa met on 15th November of 1884 and was formalised with the General Act of Berlin on 26th February of 1885. This saw the partitioning of Africa into forty European colonises and protectorates from ten thousand African polities. Today the continent has a total of fifty-four countries that are demarcated on the boundaries of the Berlin conference.
[2] Djulasso is a dialect of the Malinke group of languages found across West Africa that are mostly traders engaged in business and industry. They are mostly of the Konyaka and DJakanka clans who are known to be proud and travel widely in search of fortunes. Today they live in La Cote D’Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Mali and Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Excerpts from the Audacity of Change, Koya Kingdom and the Mano River Union(Work in progress for publication) 
