Sierra Leone's 300-mile coastline is now officially the Cocaine Coast

West Africa has a rich rice cultivation history, making it an excellent region for growing this crop.

Yet, experts point out that the increasing dependency on rice imports stems from a need for more significant agricultural investment, rapid population growth, and low-cost rice availability from Asia. 

European colonialists once referred to parts of West Africa as the Rice Coast (Sierra Leone) and the Gold Coast (Ghana).

Today, however, these regions are often called  cocaine coasts, particularly in countries like Colombia.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro stated during a live government meeting that cocaine is viewed as "no worse than whiskey" and is only considered illegal because it originates from Latin America.

 Colombia is the world's largest producer and exporter of cocaine, primarily supplying the United States and Europe. The country has spent decades battling drug trafficking.

During the war in Sierra Leone, abducted kids were often supplied with drugs. Marijuana was the most common drug, but kids were given cocaine, too, and amphetamines.

All this was done to make kids brave enough to gun people down within their houses, round them up and massacre them on the streets, throw people from the upper floors of buildings, burn them alive in cars and homes, hack off limbs with machetes, gouge out eyes with knives, smash hands with hammers, and rape.

The Sierra Leone Civil War officially ran from March 23, 1991, through January 18, 2002, following the First Liberian Civil War 1989 – 1996 and the Second Liberian Civil War 1999 – 2003.

During these years, a whole swathe of West Africa was in turmoil. 

On January 18, 2002, President Kabbah declared the eleven-year-long Sierra Leone Civil War officially over. While most people turned their attention to some reconstruction and rehabilitation, the borders of both Liberia and Sierra Leone, about 185 miles long and marked by rivers and pillars, remained open.

In 2008,  more than 700 kilograms of cocaine worth $35 million was caught at Lungi airport, Sierra Leone's national airport.  The flight distance between an airport in Bogotá, Colombia, and Lungi International Airport in Freetown, Sierra Leone, is approximately 5,267 miles. 

According to United States embassy cables, on August 15, 2008,  then Sierra Leone President Ernest Bai Koroma called to request U.S. government assistance to arrest a fugitive trafficker linked to the seizure of 750 kilos of cocaine.

Koroma believed he could not make the request directly to the Guinean President without the president's inner circle tipping off the trafficker before he could be captured.

Koroma and an assistant also clarified information on the temporary detention of Conte's "wife" at the border with nearly a million dollars in gold and currency.

In 2011, a forty-foot container of cocaine arrived at Freetown's water quay protected by a person who had a government duty waiver attached to a major mining company.

In 2012, a U.S. Office of Terrorism and International Narcotics, the U.S. Department of Justice Office of International Affairs, the U.S. State Department, and the Special Operations Division of the Drug Enforcement Administration successfully led the prosecution of a Sierra Leone narcotics trafficker. He was sentenced in a Manhattan federal court to 20 years in prison on international cocaine conspiracy charges.

Jibril "Gibrilla" Kamara was sentenced for conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. Kamara's prosecution was part of the joint undercover operation, "Operation Relentless," between the United States and the Government of Liberia.

From approximately 2007 until his arrest, Kamara sought to recruit members of South American drug trafficking organizations to establish operations in countries including Liberia, Guinea Conakry, Guinea Bissau, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

Kamara also made efforts to corrupt and influence West African government officials to establish safe havens for the receipt, storage, and shipment of thousands of kilograms of cocaine. Kamara attempted to bribe senior officials in the Liberian Government to protect large cocaine shipments and to use Liberia as a trans-shipment point for further cocaine distribution in Africa and Europe.

In furtherance of these efforts, Kamara met with two individuals he knew to be Liberian government officials working jointly with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) in an undercover capacity, unbeknownst to Kamara.

In several of the meetings with these Liberian officials, Kamara also met with a confidential source who was working with an undercover DEA agent who purported to be a business partner.

Kamara frequently corresponded and held meetings with cooperating Liberian officials to negotiate prices and coordinate the transport of cocaine shipments from South America through Liberia.

These shipments included a shipment of 4,000 kilograms of cocaine from Colombia. In the meetings, Kamara understood that the individual was to be paid in the form of cocaine and would send a portion of that payment to Ghana, where it would be imported into New York aboard commercial flights. In 2023, 1.3 tons of cocaine worth £140 million arrived in Wigan in the United Kingdom from  Sierra Leone.

Fast forward to December 2024, a driver attached to the embassy of Sierra Leone in Guinea was arrested with seven suitcases of cocaine.

When it was announced in January 2025 that a cocaine drug lord was hiding in plain sight in Sierra Leone, one blogger said: "I'm sure for every shipment of cocaine that gets caught, many others make it to Europe from Sierra Leone," adding that Sierra Leone's place in the cocaine drug corridor is not going to change anytime soon. "We have porous borders and open waterways; locals will always be bold enough to join in for big pay. Many houses, businesses, cars, and luxury lifestyles have been financed by illicit wealth. Sierra Leone has, for the past two decades, been a major hub for drug trafficking. All of West Africa, from Senegal to our land, is a cocaine corridor."

Recent developments have shed light on the situation involving Dutch drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, also known as "Bolle Jos," who has been residing in Sierra Leone.

Leijdekkers was sentenced in absentia to 24 years in prison by a Rotterdam court in 2023 for smuggling over seven tons of cocaine. He is also implicated in the disappearance and murder of Naima Jillal, dubbed Europe's "Godmother of Cocaine."

Visual evidence placed Leijdekkers at a New Year's Day church service in Sierra Leone, seated near President Julius Maada Bio and connected to the president's daughter.

The Dutch government formally requested Leijdekkers' extradition. However, the absence of an extradition treaty between the Netherlands and Sierra Leone complicated this process, and the fugitive went free.

These developments highlight the complexities of international law enforcement collaboration.

Sierra Leone maintains membership in several international organizations, including the United Nations, the African Union, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Commonwealth of Nations.