Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, and the Atlantic Ocean. As of 2008, the nation is estimated to be home to 3,489,072 people and cover 111,369 square kilometers . Liberia has a hot equatorial climate with most rainfall arriving in summer with harsh harmattan winds in the dry season. Liberia’s populated Pepper Coast is composed of mostly mangrove forests while the sparsely populated inland is forested, later opening to a plateau of drier grasslands.

Founded as a colony in 1822 by freed slaves from the United States, the area was already inhabited by various indigenous ethnic groups who had occupied the region for centuries. The freed slaves were so thankful to American president, James Monroe, they named their capital city, Monrovia. In 1847, the colony of freed slaves declared independence and founded the Republic of Liberia. In 1980, the government was overturned in a military coup, and from 1989 to 2005 Liberia was in a state of flux, witnessing two civil wars, the First Liberian Civil War and the Second Liberian Civil War that displaced hundreds of thousands of people and devastated the country’s economy.
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