Kenema

Kenema is the principal city of eastern Sierra Leone, set in the Eastern Province and serving as the administrative capital of Kenema District. It lies about 173 metres above sea level in a valley at a natural gap in the Kambui Hills, with the Kambui Hills Forest Reserve immediately to the west. The 2021 mid-term census recorded 255,110 residents, making it the second most populous city in the country after Freetown, and its population has grown nearly eightfold since 1974 through mining, trade, post-war resettlement and the expansion of public services. Local oral tradition says a hunter named Ngombulango founded the settlement, and the former Sierra Leone Government Railway shaped its early commercial layout. The discovery of alluvial diamonds in 1931 and the Government Diamond Office, set up in 1959, tied the city to the diamond trade, which also drew it into the civil war of 1991 to 2002. Kenema Government Hospital runs a dedicated Lassa fever unit and diagnosed the country's first Ebola case in May 2014.