Liberia

Top 10 Largest Cities or Towns of Liberia

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• published: 29 Oct 2014
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Thanks for watching.... 1. Monrovia 2. Gbarnga 3. Kakata 4. Bensonville 5. Harper 6. Voinjama 7. Buchanan 8. Zwedru 9. New Yekepa 10. Greenville Music : Gotta Find Out,Silent Partner; YouTube Audio Library Liberia , officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country in West Africa bordered by Sierra Leone to its west, Guinea to its north and Ivory Coast to its east. It covers an area of 111,369 square kilometres (43,000 sq mi) and is home to about 4 million people. English is the official language and over thirty indigenous languages are also spoken within the country. Its coastline is composed mostly of mangroves, while its more sparsely populated inland consists of forests opening onto a plateau of drier grasslands. The climate is hot and equatorial, with significant rainfall during the May–October rainy season and harsh harmattan winds the remainder of the year. The country possesses about forty percent of the remaining Upper Guinean rainforest. Liberia is the only country in Africa founded by United States colonization while occupied by native Africans. Beginning in 1820, the region was colonized by African Americans, most of whom were freed slaves. The colonists established a new country with the help of the American Colonization Society, a private organization whose leaders thought former slaves would have greater opportunity in Africa. African captives freed from slave ships by the British and Americans were sent there instead of being repatriated to their countries of origin. In 1847, this new country became the Republic of Liberia, establishing a government modeled on that of the United States and naming its capital city Monrovia after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States and a prominent supporter of the colonization. The colonists and their descendants, known as Americo-Liberians, led the political, social, cultural and economic sectors of the country and ruled the nation for over 130 years as a dominant minority. The country began to modernize in the 1940s following investment by the United States during World War II and economic liberalization under President William Tubman. Liberia was a founding member of the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity. In 1980 a military coup overthrew the Americo-Liberian leadership, marking the beginning of political and economic instability and two successive civil wars. These resulted in the deaths of between 250,000 and 520,000 people and devastated the country's economy. A peace agreement in 2003 led to democratic elections in 2005. Today, Liberia is recovering from the lingering effects of the civil wars and their consequent economic upheaval, but about 85% of the population continue to live below the international poverty line, and the country's economic and political stability has recently been threatened by a deadly Ebola virus epidemic. The Pepper Coast has been inhabited at least as far back as the 12th century and perhaps earlier. Mende-speaking people expanded westward from the Sudan, forcing many smaller ethnic groups southward towards the Atlantic ocean. The Dei, Bassa, Kru, Gola and Kissi were some of the earliest recorded arrivals. This influx was compounded by the decline of the Western Sudanic Mali Empire in 1375 and later in 1591 with the Songhai Empire. Additionally, inland regions underwent desertification, and inhabitants were pressured to move to the wetter coast. These new inhabitants brought skills such as cotton spinning, cloth weaving, iron smelting, rice and sorghum cultivation, and social and political institutions from the Mali and Songhai Empires. Shortly after the Manes conquered the region, the Vai people of the former Mali Empire immigrated into the Grand Cape Mount region. The ethnic Kru opposed the influx of Vai, forming an alliance with the Manes to stop further influx of Vai. People along the coast built canoes and traded with other West Africans from Cap-Vert to the Gold Coast. Between 1461 and late 17th century, Portuguese, Dutch and British traders had contacts and trading posts in the region. The Portuguese named the area Costa da Pimenta ("Pepper Coast") but it later came to be known as the Grain Coast, due to the abundance of grains of melegueta pepper. European traders would barter various commodities and goods with local people. When the Kru began trading with Europeans, they initially traded in commodities, but later they actively participated in the African slave trade. In 1820, the American Colonization Society (ACS) began sending African American volunteers to the Pepper Coast to establish a colony for freed African Americans. By 1867, the ACS had assisted in the movement of more than 13,000 Americans to Liberia.[citation needed] These free African Americans came to identify themselves as Americo-Liberian, developing a cultural tradition infused with American notions of racial supremacy, and political republicanism. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberia