Liberia
Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed slaves
Liberia holds a singular place in African history as the continent's oldest republic, founded in the early nineteenth century by freed and formerly enslaved African Americans resettled on the West African coast under the banner of the American Colonization Society. Never formally colonized by a European power, it built a society in which the Americo-Liberian settlers long dominated the indigenous majority, a tension that helped fuel decades of upheaval. Its roughly 5.7 million people inhabit a humid, forested land on the Atlantic, and the country still bears deep American imprints in its flag, capital name, and constitution.
Behind a low, lagoon-fringed coast the land rises through dense tropical rainforest, part of the Upper Guinean forest belt that harbors rare species like the pygmy hippopotamus, to rolling plateaus and the Nimba and Wologizi mountains near the Guinean border. The highest point, Mount Wuteve, reaches about 1,440 meters. Heavy rainfall feeds numerous rivers and one of the wettest climates in West Africa. The economy rests on iron ore, rubber, gold, and the world's largest ship registry, a flag of convenience that registers a huge share of global merchant tonnage, though most Liberians remain very poor.
Settlers began arriving in 1822 and declared an independent republic in 1847, modeling its institutions on the United States. For over a century an Americo-Liberian elite ruled until a 1980 coup overturned the order, leading to the brutal regime of Samuel Doe and then two devastating civil wars in the 1990s and early 2000s that killed hundreds of thousands. Peace in 2003 paved the way for Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state and a Nobel laureate. Liberia has since rebuilt, surviving the 2014 Ebola epidemic and consolidating its fragile democracy.