47 Fun Facts About Liberia

What is the capital and largest city of Liberia?

Monrovia was named for US President James Monroe, in whose term the settlement was founded as a home for free Black settlers from the US.

The site of Liberia's capital was bought in 1821 for guns, tobacco and which spirit?

Rum went into the bargain with gunpowder, umbrellas, hats and mirrors: a US naval officer and the settlers' agent struck the deal with local rulers for a strip of coast at Cape Mesurado, and the settlers moved in the next year.

Which organisation, formed in 1816, sent free Black settlers from the United States to West Africa?

The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 with backers including Henry Clay, planted its first lasting settlement in 1822; its members ranged from Quakers to slaveholders.

Liberia's early settlers included thousands of 'recaptives', Africans freed from what?

Intercepted slave ships supplied them: after the Atlantic slave trade was banned, the US Navy put several thousand Africans freed from seized slavers ashore in Liberia.

When Liberia declared independence in 1847, it became the world's second Black republic after which country?

Haiti had won its independence from France in 1804; Liberia followed on 26 July 1847, when its settlers broke from the private organisation that had governed them.

Who was elected the first president of independent Liberia, serving from 1848 to 1856?

Joseph Jenkins Roberts, a Virginia-born merchant, governed the colony before independence; he was called back to the presidency in 1872 after Edward Roye was deposed.

Besides Liberia, which was the only African country to escape European rule during the Scramble for Africa?

Ethiopia kept its independence by defeating an Italian army at Adwa in 1896, while Liberia was treated as under the protection of the United States; every other part of the continent was claimed.

Portuguese traders named the coast of modern Liberia after which local product?

Pepper, specifically melegueta pepper or 'grains of paradise', grew abundantly here, so Europeans called it the Pepper Coast or Grain Coast.

What do the eleven stripes on Liberia's flag honour?

Declaration signers: eleven men signed Liberia's Declaration of Independence in 1847, so the flag's makers cut the thirteen stripes of the colony's US-style flag to eleven.

The Liberian flag is occasionally called by what nickname?

The Lone Star is the flag's single white star, chosen to mark Liberia as Africa's first independent republic; the flag was first raised on 24 August 1847, now Flag Day.

Which political force ruled Liberia without a break for over a century, until the 1980 coup?

True Whig Party presidents governed continuously from 1878 until soldiers killed President William Tolbert in the 1980 coup, ending the party's 102 years in power.

Which American company won a concession of a million acres of Liberia in 1926 to grow rubber?

Firestone wanted rubber free of the European colonial planters who controlled supply; with the 1926 concession came a $5 million loan arranged through one of its subsidiaries.

Who was Liberia's longest-serving president, in office from 1944 until his death in 1971?

William Tubman's Open Door policy invited unrestricted foreign investment into Liberia, and he stayed in office for 27 years until his death.

Which master sergeant seized power in the 1980 coup, becoming Liberia's first indigenous leader?

Samuel Doe, a Krahn master sergeant, led the 12 April 1980 coup in which President Tolbert was killed; ten days later thirteen officials were publicly executed.

The 2003 peace agreement that ended Liberia's second civil war was signed in which city?

Accra, Ghana's capital, hosted the talks; the peace agreement signed there in August 2003 set up a transitional government and cleared the way for the 2005 election.

Which rebel leader, after splitting from Charles Taylor, captured and killed Liberia's president in 1990?

Prince Johnson, whose INPFL had broken away from the National Patriotic Front, seized the president at the peacekeepers' base in the capital's port on 9 September 1990 and had him tortured and killed.

Charles Taylor's rebels launched Liberia's first civil war in 1989 by invading from which country?

Ivory Coast was the springboard: only a small band of rebels crossed the border on Christmas Eve, yet within a year Taylor's forces held most of Liberia.

Roughly how many people died in Liberia's two civil wars?

About 250,000 people are thought to have died in the two wars, which ran on and off for 14 years, and far more were driven from their homes.

Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in 2012 for backing diamond-funded rebels in which conflict?

The Sierra Leone Civil War was the basis of the charges: Taylor, in exile in Nigeria from 2003, was handed to a UN-backed court in 2006 and tried in The Hague for arming the rebels.

Who was elected in 2005 as the first female president in Africa?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf had been handed a 10-year prison sentence in 1985 for criticising the military government; two decades later she won the presidency and served two terms.

Which activist led the women's protests that pushed Liberia's warring sides to peace in 2003 and later shared a Nobel Prize?

Leymah Gbowee rallied thousands of Christian and Muslim women, dressed in white, to picket day after day; at the peace talks they blocked the hall until the delegates made progress.

Which former footballer was sworn in as Liberia's president in January 2018?

George Weah, the 1995 Ballon d'Or winner, won at his second attempt, twelve years after losing the 2005 runoff; his inauguration was Liberia's first handover between elected leaders since 1944.

Liberia's footballer-president was at which club when he received the 1995 Ballon d'Or?

AC Milan signed him from Paris Saint-Germain in 1995, months before he received the Ballon d'Or, and he went on to help the club win the 1996 and 1999 Serie A titles.

Who won Liberia's 2023 presidential runoff and took office in January 2024?

Joseph Boakai won a rematch of the 2017 runoff he had lost, edging the incumbent by 50.6% to 49.4%; his rival conceded once the result was clear.

The 2014 Ebola outbreak spread into Liberia from which country?

Guinea was where the outbreak began; within months it had spread to Liberia and Sierra Leone and reached all three capitals, becoming the largest Ebola epidemic ever recorded.

In the 2000s, Liberia's flag-of-convenience registry ranked second in the world behind which country's?

Panama's registry was the only one ahead of Liberia's in that decade; Liberia's own had grown into the world's largest by the late 1960s.

What is Liberia's official language?

English is the official language, a legacy of the American settlers; more than 20 indigenous languages are spoken by the 16 officially recognised ethnic groups.

Which is Liberia's largest ethnic group, at about a fifth of the population?

The Kpelle live mainly in central Liberia, and their paramount chiefs double as government officials, mediating between their people and the state.

Alongside its own currency, which foreign currency is legal tender in Liberia?

The US dollar is legal tender beside the Liberian dollar; for decades Liberia minted its own coins but printed no banknotes, leaving American notes to do the job.

A planned increase in the cost of which staple food set off deadly riots in Liberia in 1979?

Rice was the spark: a government plan to make it dearer brought protesters onto the streets in 1979, dozens were killed, and a year later the government fell to a coup.

Which country pledged Liberia $150 million in 2014 to stop cutting down its rainforest?

Norway made the pledge in return for Liberia pausing new logging concessions and protecting at least 30% of its forest; Liberia holds around 40% of what is left of West Africa's great rainforest belt.

Which small, nocturnal mammal, native mainly to Liberia, is one of only two living species in its family?

The pygmy hippopotamus is the only other living member of the hippo family; far smaller than its giant cousin, it is also less aquatic, spending its nights walking well-worn trails through the forest.

Which image appears on the shield of Liberia's national seal?

A sailing ship: it stands for the vessels that carried the settlers across the Atlantic, beneath the motto 'The love of liberty brought us here'.

Which river on Liberia's northwestern border names a regional union?

The Mano River marks part of the frontier with Sierra Leone; the two neighbours founded the union to boost their economic cooperation, and two more West African states later joined.

Declaring war on Germany in 1917 earned Liberia a seat at which post-war gathering?

The Versailles Peace Conference of 1919 seated Liberia among the victors, and it signed the League of Nations covenant; the war had reached its shores in 1918, when a German submarine shelled the capital.

Liberia's deep-water Freeport, completed in 1948, was built under which US wartime programme?

Lend-Lease, the programme for supplying wartime allies, paid for the Freeport under a 1943 agreement; Washington wanted a harbour to ship out rubber and supply its forces in Africa.

Liberia's two Africa Cup of Nations appearances, in 1996 and 2002, both ended in which round?

Group stage both times: in 1996 Liberia beat Gabon and finished level on points with both group rivals, only to go out on goal difference.

Which two secret societies, for men and women, do many Liberians belong to?

Poro and Sande are the men's and women's societies that initiate adolescents in secluded bush schools, a tradition found across much of Liberia and neighbouring countries.

Which country pressured Liberia into surrendering territory to Sierra Leone in the 19th century?

The United Kingdom sent warships in 1882 to press Liberia to drop its claim to the disputed coast, which was annexed to Sierra Leone by 1885; a treaty with France redrew the other frontier in 1892.

Which Allied leader stopped in Liberia in 1943 to meet its president?

Franklin D. Roosevelt flew in on his way home from the Casablanca summit; four months later his host returned the visit, travelling to Washington and addressing the US Congress.

Liberia's economy shrank by roughly what share during its civil wars?

About 90% of Liberia's output was gone by the time the fighting stopped, leaving schools, hospitals and government buildings in ruins.

Which US president finally recognised Liberia's independence, 15 years after it was declared?

Abraham Lincoln extended recognition in 1862, during the Civil War; Washington had held back until then for fear of what recognising a Black republic would mean for slavery at home.

Which reference book once listed Liberia's 1927 presidential election as the most fraudulent ever reported?

Guinness World Records gave the 1927 election that title in its 1982 edition: President Charles D. B. King was credited with well over 200,000 votes when fewer than 20,000 people were entitled to vote.

Which iron-rich mountain near the mining town of Yekepa rises on Liberia's northern border?

Mount Nimba, whose massif tops out at 1,752 m, is rich in iron ore; the LAMCO mine at Yekepa worked its Liberian slopes from 1963 until the civil war.

Alongside customary law, Liberia's courts apply a system based on which legal tradition?

Common law, in its Anglo-American form, governs the modern sector, a legacy of the settlers, while customary law handed down by word of mouth still governs much of village life.

Which US state gave its name to a separate settler colony at Cape Palmas that joined Liberia in 1857?

A separate Maryland-based venture founded the colony, which declared itself a republic in 1854; unable to defend itself, it joined Liberia three years later as Maryland County.

Which port city in Grand Bassa County honours the first governor of the Commonwealth of Liberia?

Buchanan honours Thomas Buchanan, a relative of the future US president James Buchanan, who governed the Commonwealth from 1839 until his death in 1841; it grew into the port that ships out Liberia's iron ore.