麻豆社

From child soldier to scholar. That's the long journey taken by a Sierra Leonean who was forced to take up arms in his country's civil war in the 1990s - aged just 11.

Now John Idriss Lahai is an academic, currently working as a research fellow at the School of International Studies at Flinders University in Australia.

He will soon move to the US to take up a position at an Ivy League university.

He has described his journey to Focus on Africa's Veronique Edwards.

(Photo: Child soldier in the field. Credit: Chris Hondros/Getty Images)