Bonthe is the homeland of the Sherbro, one of Sierra Leone's oldest coastal peoples, who shared this shoreline with passing European traders from the earliest days of Atlantic contact. Today they are a large minority in the district, outnumbered by the Mende who farm the mainland interior. The two groups live alongside a mix of Muslim and Christian communities, a religious blend common across Sierra Leone. Life follows the rhythms of water and season: fishing canoes work the creeks, rice grows in the paddies, and palm oil plantations supply one of the region's oldest exports. These are not glamorous industries, but they have sustained the district through generations, and they remain the backbone of its economy even now.

Bonthe holds a secret in its soil. Beneath the district lie some of the largest deposits of rutile, a titanium ore, anywhere on Earth. Sierra Rutile Limited, backed by American and European investors, was founded in 1971 and reached full commercial production by the late 1970s and early 1980s, tapping a resource that should have transformed the local economy. It did not. Decades of poor mining policy meant the wealth flowed outward while the district saw little return, a familiar story across resource-rich corners of Africa. The mine became the area's largest employer and tax contributor all the same, and the ore still draws global demand. The promise of titanium remains real; the question of who benefits from it has never been fully answered.

Bonthe District governs itself in two halves, a quirk rooted in geography. The mainland answers to a District Council Chairman based at Mattru Jong, while the island capital of Bonthe town has its own Municipal Mayor. The town sits on Sherbro Island yet belongs to neither of the two chiefdoms that share the island, Sittia and Dema. Instead it stands apart as the Bonthe Sherbro Municipality, outside the traditional chiefdom structure entirely. The rest of the district divides into chiefdoms with names like Imperri, Sogbini, and Kwamebai Krim, each a small world of villages, paddies, and palm groves linked more often by boat than by road.

The Sierra Leone Civil War reached even this remote coast. In 1995 fighting forces attacked and damaged the Sierra Rutile operation, the district's economic engine, and the company shut down. Internally displaced people streamed out, and the local economy collapsed alongside the mine. Yet Bonthe also became a place of early recovery. In 1997, before the war had ended elsewhere, the district was the first in the Southern Province to begin voluntary resettlement of displaced families, bringing people home amid continuing hardship. Residents pinned their hopes on two things returning together: their neighbors and the mine. The slow knitting back of ordinary life here was, in its quiet way, an act of defiance against the war's long reach.