‘They took it over by force’: Corruption and palm oil in Sierra Leone’ 30 June 2020

he day they came, Margaret Fascia was in her forest garden of cocoa trees, pineapple plants, palms, ferns and cassavas. Like most days of the week, she was working, looking after the crops that feed her family. But she was afraid. Word had gotten around that a foreign company was going to take their land. And when they came, they came with a bulldozer. “I stood in front of the machine,” Fascia said. “ ‘Peep peep peep’ made the bulldozer as it came right up to my foot. I didn’t move. So they stopped there. They don’t touch my palm trees.”

Fascia is a woman of around 50, who was recounting the story as she was standing in the middle of her garden, wearing a ripped turquoise shirt and a blanket around her waist. She is an exception in the Chiefdom of Sahn Malen in the Southern Province of Sierra Leone, because, unlike the majority of people here, she still owns a few acres of land. Most others either gave theirs up voluntarily or lost it in 2011 when the company Société Financière des Caoutchoucs (Socfin) arrived in the province to establish a large oil palm plantation.

…Paramount Chiefs and heads of land owning families still dominate land tenure. Dependent land users have no formal right to land and disputes over space are frequent in rural areas.” This hierarchical structure, Welthungerhilfe researchers write, means a company can acquire community land with the consent of just one person. “The [Paramount Chief] as the highest custodian of traditional land in his chiefdom has a central role in accessing land,” the report says. “He may provide the contact to the landowning families and has to give the final consent for the land deal with his signature.”