Liberia celebrates bicentenary of its founding by freed slaves

Many African Americans are fascinated by Liberia, a small West African country founded 200 years ago by freed slaves from the United States. Some visit the country, while others even move there. But Liberia still bears the scars of the brutal civil wars of the 1980s and 1990s. FRANCE 24's Sophie Lamotte and Sadia Mandjo report.

In 1822, the American Colonization Society financed the purchase of land for some 30,000 people who crossed the Atlantic to resettle on the West African Coast. The city they founded, which became the Liberian capital Monrovia, was named after then US president James Monroe.

Liberia did not officially become an independent republic until 1847. But the relative newcomers were by then the masters of the country, relegating the indigenous population to second-class citizens. The latter only gained the right to vote a century later.

Hostility between the two groups continued. In 1980, for the first time, an indigenous man, Samuel Doe, became president through a coup d'état. Over the following two decades, the country was torn apart by two bloody civil wars in which more than 250,000 people were killed.

Peace returned in 2003, but despite the country’s immense natural wealth, Liberia remains among the 20 least developed nations in the world.

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