Bo is a city in Mendeland whose connection to Freetown by rail became a measure of the changing uses of infrastructure and the costs of political control in Sierra Leone. The British built the line to reach and govern the hinterland; after independence, it carried much of the country’s coffee, cocoa, and diamond exports. Siaka Stevens later dismantled the route to Bo, damaging the region’s economy in order to consolidate his power.

The railway reaches Mendeland

The railway from Freetown was already under construction when the Hut Tax Rebellion erupted in 1898. The British altered its planned route: rather than continue northeast, the line ran south through Rotifunk and on to Bo, into Mendeland. The rebellion had exposed the difficulty of controlling the hinterland, and the new route gave the colonial government quicker access to Mendeland, the revolt’s heartland, and to other areas where resistance might break out. The railway’s path thus reflected a political calculation as much as a transport plan.

The line reached Songo Town in December 1898, during the rebellion. Railway work had been disrupted, staff disorganized, and workers withdrawn to Freetown; Rotifunk was in rebel hands. The southward route was a practical response to this contested landscape, tying the interior more directly to the colonial administration’s reach.

Mendeland’s export connection

By 1967 the railway’s function had changed. It transported most of Sierra Leone’s exports, including coffee, cocoa, and diamonds, and linked the Mende farmers who grew coffee and cocoa to markets beyond the region. For Mendeland, the railway was a window to the world. Its economic importance made the line more than a colonial instrument: it had become essential to the livelihoods and commercial activity of the south.

That importance also made the railway politically consequential. Mendeland had voted overwhelmingly for Albert Margai in the 1967 election, which his Sierra Leone People’s Party narrowly lost to the All People’s Congress led by Siaka Stevens. The railway connected an economically vibrant region whose political loyalties lay with Stevens’s opposition. The infrastructure that could carry its produce outward could therefore also strengthen the constituency he feared.

The line to Bo is dismantled

Stevens chose to pull up the railway to Mendeland. He then sold the track and rolling stock, making the break difficult to reverse. The decision fatally damaged some of Sierra Leone’s most vibrant economic sectors. The abandoned stations at Hastings and Waterloo, on the road east out of Freetown, marked a route on which trains no longer ran to Bo.

The book presents the closure as a deliberate sacrifice of growth for political security: Stevens judged that what benefited the Mende benefited the opposition. Like rulers elsewhere who feared the political effects of railways, he treated transport not simply as a means of commerce but as a possible source of strength for opponents. Dismantling the line helped him consolidate power while impoverishing much of the hinterland.

A contested legacy of infrastructure

The railway’s history links colonial rule to the independent government that followed it, without making their purposes identical. The British had rerouted the line to improve access to a rebellious region; Stevens destroyed it because its economic benefits accrued to a region aligned with his rivals. In both cases political authority shaped the railway’s fate, but under Stevens the instrument of access became an object to be removed.

Bo’s place at the end of the line makes the loss concrete. The railway had connected Mendeland’s farms and exports to the wider economy; its dismantling left the region without that route and served a broader strategy of power consolidation. The episode illustrates how extractive rule can persist after independence, and how a ruler’s fear of political challenge can outweigh the gains that trade and transport might bring.