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Many African Americans are fascinated by Liberia, a small West African country founded 200 years ago by freed slaves from the United States. Some visit the country, others even move there. But Liberia still bears the scars of the brutal civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s. Report by Sophie Lamotte and Sadia Mandjo of France 24.
In 1822, the American Colonization Society financed the purchase of land for some 30,000 people who crossed the Atlantic to resettle on the west coast of Africa. The city they founded, which became Liberia’s capital, Monrovia, was named after then-US President James Monroe.
Liberia did not officially become an independent republic until 1847. But the relative newcomers were by then the masters of the country, relegating the indigenous populations to second-class citizens. The latter only obtained the right to vote a century later.
Hostility between the two groups continued. In 1980, for the first time, an indigenous man, Samuel Doe, assumed the presidency through a coup. Over the next two decades, the country was torn by two bloody civil wars that killed more than 250,000 people.
Peace returned in 2003, but despite the country’s immense natural wealth, Liberia remains among the world’s 20 least developed nations.
