For their secret meeting, they’ve chosen a very small village surrounded by forest in Kpaka Chiefdom in southern Sierra Leone. About one hundred men – chiefs, elders and youth leaders from all over the chiefdom – have gathered in the shade of a very large tree. Conspicuously absent is their Paramount Chief, the supreme traditional authority in the chiefdom, without whose approval they should not even be here. But this is no ordinary meeting; its purpose is to contest the Paramount Chief’s authority to sign away their land. Also absent are women, but in neighboring villages they express support for the men meeting here and for their cause.

One after another, the men stand up to complain. They say the Paramount Chief leased their land to a foreign company without consulting them, without the consent of the family heads who are the customary landowners. They have never even laid eyes on the lease agreement, which was signed in January 2011 by the Paramount Chief. It gives an Indian company, Biopalm Energy, control of nearly 20,000 hectares (close to 50,000 acres) of land in Kpaka Chiefdom for 50 years, with a possible extension of 21 years.

Tempers flare in the afternoon heat. Some at the meeting want to write a letter of protest right now to the government authorities in Pujehun, the headquarters town of Pujehun District, which includes Kpaka Chiefdom. Others say that they want the company representatives to come and negotiate directly with them. Meanwhile, they say if anyone enters their “bush” – their land – without their permission, there will be big, big problems. The threats of violence do not bode well for peace in the chiefdom.

Land – the new blood diamonds?

It’s March 2013 and Sierra Leone has just celebrated 11 years of peace following a horrific decade-long civil war that was fueled by blood diamonds. Vast amounts of donor money, US $2.5 billion from the United Nations alone, were spent restoring the peace and billions more have been spent consolidating it. While Sierra Leone remains one of the poorest countries in the world, recently it has been experiencing high GDP growth linked with iron ore and diamond mining. Since 2002, the country has undergone three largely peaceful elections. In 2011, at great expense and with great fanfare, it celebrated the 50th anniversary of its independence from Britain.

But in Kpaka Chiefdom, and elsewhere in the country where large foreign investors are moving in, the mood is not all that celebratory. District authorities in Pujehun express concern that the seeds of the next conflict are already being sown. This time it is not diamonds at the heart of the matter; it’s something far more valuable to local people – farmland.

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