50 free Liberia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Liberia is Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed Black Americans and named for liberty, with a capital named after a US president and a flag that looks like the Stars and Stripes. It has been a rubber empire, a Cold War ally, the scene of two devastating civil wars, the home of Africa's first elected woman president and a Ballon d'Or-winning president, and the flag on more than a tenth of the world's ships. This Liberia trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-four questions run from geography (Monrovia and Cape Mesurado, Mount Wuteve, Nimba, the Mano and Cavalla rivers, Sapo National Park, the pygmy hippo) through history (the Pepper Coast, the American Colonization Society, 1822, Joseph Jenkins Roberts and 1847, the True Whig Party, Firestone's 99-year lease, Tubman, the 1980 coup, Doe, Taylor, the civil wars, Sirleaf and Gbowee, Ebola, Weah and Boakai) to culture and economy (the Lone Star flag, the Kpelle, English, the Liberian dollar, the ship registry, iron ore, football). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know West Africa. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Liberia?
Monrovia
Founded in 1822 at Cape Mesurado, it holds roughly a third of the national population.
Q 02Liberia's capital is named after which US president?
James Monroe
The American Colonization Society founded the settlement in 1822 for formerly enslaved and freeborn African Americans.
Q 03Which organisation, formed in 1816, began sending free Black Americans to West Africa in 1822?
American Colonization Society
It was made up mostly of Quakers and slaveholders, and backers included Lincoln, Henry Clay and James Monroe.
Q 04How many freed and free-born African Americans moved to Liberia between 1822 and 1861?
More than 15,000
Another 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans joined them, and their descendants became the Americo-Liberians.
Q 05On what date did Liberia declare its independence?
26 July 1847
The United States did not recognise the new republic until 5 February 1862.
Q 06Who was elected the first president of independent Liberia, serving from 1848 to 1856?
Joseph Jenkins Roberts
Born free in Norfolk, Virginia, he emigrated in 1829, was governor from 1841 and returned as seventh president in 1872.
Q 07Liberia holds what distinction among African republics?
The first to gain independence
It is Africa's oldest continuously independent country; only it and Ethiopia escaped the Scramble for Africa.
Q 08The Portuguese named the Liberian shore Costa da Pimenta after which product?
Pepper
The "grain" was melegueta pepper, abundant in the region.
Q 09How many stripes does the flag of Liberia have?
Eleven
They stand for the signers of the 1847 Declaration of Independence; a single white star sits in the blue canton.
Q 10The Liberian flag is occasionally called by what nickname?
The Lone Star
It was adopted on 24 August 1847 and closely resembles the US flag that inspired it.
Q 11Which political force dominated Liberian politics from 1877 until the 1980 coup?
True Whig Party
Its 1927 election was called one of the most rigged ever, with the winner credited with 15 times more votes than there were voters.
Q 12Which American company took a 99-year lease on a million acres of Liberia in 1926 to grow rubber?
Firestone
British export duties on rubber drove the deal, which came with help clearing Liberia's debts.
Q 13Who was Liberia's longest-serving president, in office from 1944 until his death in 1971?
William Tubman
The "father of modern Liberia" announced an Open Door policy in 1944 that drew foreign investment.
Q 21Which Liberian activist led the women's movement that helped end the war in 2003 and shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize?
Leymah Gbowee
Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace piled pressure on Taylor; her memoir is Mighty Be Our Powers.
Q 22Which former footballer was sworn in as Liberia's president in January 2018?
George Weah
He is the only African to have won the Ballon d'Or and FIFA World Player of the Year, both in 1995.
Q 23Liberia's footballer-president won the Ballon d'Or in 1995 while playing for which club?
AC Milan
Arsène Wenger had brought him to Europe at Monaco in 1988; he later won Serie A twice in Milan.
Q 14Which master sergeant seized power in the 1980 coup, becoming Liberia's first indigenous leader?
Samuel Doe
The Krahn soldier's men killed President Tolbert and executed most of his cabinet on a Monrovia beach.
Q 15Doe's 1980 coup ended how many years of Americo-Liberian rule?
133
The settler elite had held power since independence in 1847.
Q 16Who captured and executed President Doe in the capital in September 1990?
Prince Johnson
His INPFL was a breakaway faction of Taylor's National Patriotic Front.
Q 17Charles Taylor's rebellion began the First Liberian Civil War in December of which year?
1989
Backed by Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, it ended with his election as president in 1997.
Q 18Roughly how many people died in Liberia's two civil wars?
250,000
That was about 8% of the population, and the economy shrank by 90%.
Q 19Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2012 for crimes committed in which conflict?
The Sierra Leone Civil War
He had funded the RUF rebels with blood diamonds and illegal timber, and resigned in 2003 to exile in Nigeria.
Q 20Who was elected in 2005 as the first female president in Africa?
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
The Harvard-trained economist and former finance minister served two terms, from 2006 to 2018.
Q 24Who defeated Weah in the 2023 election and was sworn in as president in January 2024?
Joseph Boakai
The 2005 election had been the first in which the president's party lacked a legislative majority.
Q 25The 2014 Ebola outbreak reached Liberia from which neighbouring country?
Guinea
By 17 November 2014 there were 2,812 confirmed deaths in Liberia.
Q 26Liberia's flag-of-convenience registry is the world's second largest after which country's?
Panama
Some 3,500 vessels, about 11% of the world's ships, fly the Liberian flag.
Q 27What is Liberia's official language?
English
More than 20 indigenous languages are also spoken by 16 officially recognised ethnic groups.
Q 28Which is Liberia's largest ethnic group, at over a fifth of the population?
Kpelle
They live mostly in Bong County and central Liberia and form the largest single language group.
Q 29Alongside its own currency, which foreign currency is legal tender in Liberia?
US dollar
The country used the US dollar outright from 1943 to 1982, and the economy remains heavily dollarised.
Q 30Into how many counties is Liberia divided?
15
The oldest, Grand Bassa and Montserrado, date from 1839; Nimba is the largest and Montserrado the smallest.