Liberia celebrates the bicentenary of its founding by freed slaves

Many African Individuals are fascinated by Liberia, a small nation in West Africa based 200 years in the past by freed slaves from america, some visiting the nation, whereas others shifting there.

However Liberia nonetheless bears the scars of the brutal civil wars of the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties. Reporting by Sophie Lamotine and Sadia Mandjou for FRANCE 24.

In 1822, the American Colonization Society financed the acquisition of land for about 30,000 individuals who crossed the Atlantic Ocean for resettlement on the West African coast, and the town they based, which turned the Liberian capital Monrovia, was named after then-US President James Monroe.

Liberia didn’t turn into an formally unbiased republic till 1847. However the relative newcomers had been then the masters of the nation, making the natives second-class residents. The latter didn’t achieve the fitting to vote till a century later.

The animosity between the 2 teams continued. In 1980, an indigenous man, Samuel Doe, turned president for the primary time by way of a coup. Over the following 20 years, the nation was torn aside by two bloody civil wars that killed greater than 250,000 individuals.

Peace returned in 2003, however regardless of the nation’s huge pure wealth, Liberia nonetheless ranks among the many twenty least developed nations on the planet.