Liberia

Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea and Ivory Coast, with a population of around 5.5 million, English as its official language among more than 20 indigenous languages, and Monrovia as its capital and largest city. Liberia began in the early nineteenth century as a project of the American Colonization Society, which encouraged free and freed Black Americans to emigrate to Africa; more than 15,000 African Americans and 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans relocated there between 1822 and 1861, and the Americo-Liberian settlers who developed there led Liberia to declare independence on 26 July 1847, becoming Africa's first and oldest continuously independent republic. Rubber production investment by the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company transformed the economy in the early twentieth century, and Liberia was a founding member of the League of Nations, the United Nations and the Organisation of African Unity. In 1980 a military coup led by Samuel Doe ended Americo-Liberian rule; Doe was assassinated in 1990 during the First Liberian Civil War, and a Second Liberian Civil War against Charles Taylor's government followed from 1998 until his 2003 resignation, with the two wars together killing about 250,000 people and shrinking the economy by 90 percent before a 2003 peace agreement led to democratic elections in 2005. Mining, a significant economic driver since the 1960s that largely halted during the civil wars, has since resumed with an emphasis on industrial extraction, though it has raised concerns over deforestation, pollution and labor conditions.