The Sierra Leone Railway Symbol Analysis

The Sierra Leone railway represents how the leaders of extractive institutions prefer to harm their people rather than give up power, as well as how the iron law of oligarchy locks developing countries into poverty for generations. When the British colonized Sierra Leone, they built a railway through the country’s southern region in order to transport resources out of the area and send equipment into it in the case of rebellion. But when Sierra Leone gained independence, it became an important economic lifeline because it allowed the nation to export goods like chocolate and diamonds. However, Sierra Leone’s leader, Siaka Stevens, went on to dismantle the railway because his opposition was strongest in the southern region of the country, and he thought he could improve his chances of staying in power if he weakened that region economically.

Thus, the railway served the British colonial government’s extractive economic purposes during its rule, and then Stevens tore it down in order to advance his own extractive political goals. Although they made opposite decisions, the British and Stevens both governed with the same mindset: they wanted to increase their own power at any cost, no matter what it meant for the people of Sierra Leone. As a result, both the railway’s construction and its destruction further impoverished the country. Independence didn’t guarantee functional or well-intentioned government—instead, as the iron law of oligarchy suggests, the postcolonial government kept ruling for the sake of a small elite, exactly like the colonial one.