Sierra Leone guide — sources, map scope and attribution
Prepared 30 October 2026

Reading
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Sierra Leone: geography, history, languages, society,
culture and economy: https://www.britannica.com/place/Sierra-Leone
Statistics Sierra Leone: https://www.statistics.sl/
Parliament of Sierra Leone: https://www.parliament.gov.sl/
Bank of Sierra Leone (including the 2022 currency redenomination): https://bsl.gov.sl/
UNESCO, Sierra Leone and Gola-Tiwai Complex (inscribed 2025):
https://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/sl/
Cotton Tree context: the historic Freetown tree fell in a storm in May 2023.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-65697294
The landmarks photograph is explicitly a historical view.

Administrative map
Government of Sierra Leone, distributed by OCHA through HDX Common Operational
Datasets. Dataset valid 15 December 2023; metadata date range through October 2025.
https://data.humdata.org/dataset/cod-ab-sle
Resource: sle_admin_boundaries.geojson.zip
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 IGO (CC BY 3.0 IGO).
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/igo/
Four provinces (Eastern, Northern, North Western, Southern) plus Western Area.
The 2017 North Western division is included. These are first-level divisions,
not the sixteen districts. OCHA's Western label is displayed as Western Area.
ISO identifiers are used for game codes rather than OCHA p-codes.
Geometry is simplified at 0.0002 degrees with topology preserved. The five
polygons are unioned to make the national outline. Small coastal islands and
minor boundary details may be generalized. Map boundaries are learning references.
The retained normalized inputs allow an offline rebuild.

Cities and towns
Sixteen approximate settlement centres, manually curated from settlement map
references and checked against the national land geometry. Coordinates use
longitude, latitude; they are neither municipal boundaries nor navigation points.
HDX settlement reference: https://data.humdata.org/dataset/sierra-leone-settlements

Rivers
OpenStreetMap contributors, distributed by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team
through HDX national waterway extracts for Sierra Leone and Guinea:
https://data.humdata.org/dataset/hotosm_sle_waterways
https://data.humdata.org/dataset/hotosm_gin_waterways
https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright
Licence: Open Database Licence (ODbL) 1.0.
https://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1-0/
These GeoJSON files are an adapted database; OpenStreetMap-derived river
geometry is available here and in the retained source under the ODbL.
Great Scarcies includes Kolente; Little Scarcies includes Kaba; Moa includes
Makona; Jong includes the Pampana upper course. Overlapping duplicate reaches
are removed, connected lines merged, and courses simplified at 0.0001 degrees.
Unnamed or missing OSM reaches can leave gaps; no straight connectors are added.
The Mano reuses the Liberia guide's retained cross-border mainstem geometry:
/data/liberia-guide-sources.txt and scripts/liberia-map-source-metadata.json.
River lines extend beyond national borders and are not national boundary claims.
Pan and zoom out to explore the courses. The map does not describe river levels,
flood risk, navigability or seasonal access.

Sights
Ten approximate site or landscape locations, including Bunce Island, the
National Museum, the Cotton Tree historic site, Tacugama, Tiwai, Gola, Bintumani,
Banana Islands, Bureh and Bonthe. Park and mountain pins are representative
locations rather than entrances or protected-area boundaries.
https://www.tacugama.com/
https://whc.unesco.org/en/statesparties/sl/

Photographs
Existing locally retained Sierra Leone topic photographs are reused with their
individual Commons file links, authors and licences in each displayed credit.
Machine-readable credits: src/lib/african-facts-heroes.json (SL) and
src/lib/sierra-leone-guide-content.json. Photograph subjects are described in
alt text; the Cotton Tree image predates the storm of May 2023.

Rebuild and validation
node scripts/build-sierra-leone-map.mjs
node scripts/test-sierra-leone-guide.cjs
SLE_BASE_URL=https://worldly.academy node scripts/test-sierra-leone-guide.cjs