Siaka Stevens dismantles the railway to Bo

Siaka Stevens dismantled the railway to Bo to weaken a region whose political support threatened his hold on power. The line, first built to extend British control into Mendeland, had become the principal route for the country’s exports; Stevens removed and sold its track and rolling stock, sacrificing a major economic connection to make his political advantage more secure.

From colonial route to economic lifeline

The railway to the south had been planned under British rule as a means of reaching Mendeland, the heart of the 1898 rebellion, and other parts of the hinterland where resistance might emerge. During that rebellion, the railway works stopped and staff were withdrawn to Freetown. Rotifunk, initially outside the planned route, was brought onto it when the line was redirected south toward Bo. The route thus bore the imprint of its original purpose: access for a colonial government seeking to govern and contain opposition.

By 1967, however, the line served a different function. It transported most of Sierra Leone’s coffee, cocoa, and diamonds. Mende farmers produced the coffee and cocoa, and the railway gave Mendeland a direct connection to wider markets. What had been laid out as an instrument of rule had become an economic channel on which farmers and exporters depended.

Electoral conflict and dismantling

The railway’s economic role intersected with a sharply divided political landscape. After independence in 1961, the Sierra Leone People’s Party, led first by Sir Milton Margai and then by his brother Sir Albert Margai, drew much of its support from the south, particularly Mendeland, and the east. In the contested 1967 election, the Sierra Leone People’s Party narrowly lost to the All People’s Congress, led by Siaka Stevens, whose support was concentrated among northern groups including the Limba, Temne, and Loko.

Stevens treated the railway’s benefits as politically consequential: Mendeland had voted overwhelmingly for Sir Albert Margai, and he reasoned that what helped Mende farmers and exports helped the Sierra Leone People’s Party and harmed his own position. He therefore pulled up the railway to Mendeland. He then sold the track and rolling stock, making the interruption harder to reverse. The account presents this not as a neutral transport decision but as an act that connected regional economic damage to the suppression of a rival political base.

Economic and political consequences

The dismantling badly damaged some of Sierra Leone’s most vibrant economic sectors. The loss of rail service cut off the route that had carried agricultural produce and other exports southward. The abandoned stations at Hastings and Waterloo became visible remnants of the former network; there were no longer trains to Bo. The harm fell especially heavily on the productive hinterland whose farmers had relied on the railway as Mendeland’s outlet to the world.

The episode illustrates the book’s broader account of extractive rule: political leaders may obstruct economic activity when its gains could strengthen opponents. Stevens’s decision resembles that of Tsar Nicholas I, who feared railways as a source of revolution; both rulers are presented as willing to restrict infrastructure because of the challenge it might pose to their authority. The comparison underscores the political logic of the dismantling, rather than implying that the two cases were otherwise identical.

The railway’s removal was one element in Stevens’s wider consolidation of power. He ruled through violence against political opponents, made himself president in 1971, and established one-party rule under the All People’s Congress in 1978. By 1985 he remained in power without having been popularly reelected. The railway’s fate therefore belongs to a larger pattern in which political control took precedence over national economic development, leaving Mendeland and the hinterland to bear the cost.