Monrovia, Liberia

Monrovia is the capital of Liberia and that nation’s political, economic, and cultural center. Named in honor of the fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, Monrovia was originally founded—some three decades prior to the outbreak of the American Civil War—by freed enslaved people who wished to establish a new country on their ancestral home continent of Africa. Although the city enjoyed more than 150 years of relative peace and prosperity, it was nearly destroyed during the civil wars that raged in Liberia until the late 1990s. Following a United Nations–brokered peace agreement and internationally monitored elections, residents of Monrovia began the slow and ongoing process of rebuilding the city’s devastated infrastructure, economy, and social fabric.

Landscape

Monrovia is located in northwestern Liberia along the Atlantic coast. Built on a cluster of small islands and peninsulas, the city’s lagoons are fed by the Mesurado River, which begins at the mouth of the Atlantic in Monrovia.

When Monrovia’s founders made their historic 1822 journey to the African coast, they first arrived on Providence Island, a tiny sliver of land located to the north of what is contemporary Monrovia’s city center. The greater Monrovia metropolitan area covers roughly thirteen square kilometers (five square miles) and is laid out according to a grid pattern. The downtown area is home to key government buildings and foreign embassies as well as many of the country’s major cultural and commercial institutions.

Several islands lie east of the city center, including Bushrod Island, which features the capital’s deepwater port and contains the bulk of the capital’s industrial infrastructure. Monrovia’s largest suburb, the area called Sinkor, is located southeast of the center.

Monrovia includes large areas of shantytowns whose impoverished residents live in makeshift housing fashioned out of cardboard and scrap metal. Potable water, electricity, sewage disposal, trash collection, and telecommunications services are largely nonexistent in these areas.

Monrovia features a warm, humid climate throughout the year. Temperatures generally hover between 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) and 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit). The city also experiences a rainy season that lasts from May through October.

People

With 1.678 million residents in 2023, Monrovia is home to about 30 percent of Liberia’s total population. This population consists of people from all of the country’s sixteen major ethnic groups. The largest of these groups is the Kpelle. Monrovia also features significant communities made up of expatriates from African and European nations.

Monrovia’s social structure traces its roots to the city’s founding. The vast majority of Liberia’s people are of indigenous origin. Their historically limited access to formal education was narrowed even further during the country’s long civil war. A large portion of the population is illiterate.

Liberia’s coastal regions and Monrovia in particular, by contrast, have historically been dominated by the so-called Americo-Liberians, or the descendants of the formerly enslaved African Americans who originally founded Liberia. Although a small minority (they are outnumbered by the indigenous residents by a ratio of thirty to one), the educated elite—or “bookmen” as they are locally known—continue to wield much influence over Monrovia’s political and economic landscape.

Economy

In the period after the end of World War II, and before the brutal civil war that devastated Liberia for more than a decade, Monrovia enjoyed one of the more robust economies on the African continent. Monrovia’s economy continues its slow process of recovery in the early twenty-first century from a war that destroyed much of the city’s physical infrastructure and most of its key institutions, forcing many of the capital’s residents to flee abroad. It is also recovering from the 2014–15 Ebola epidemic, which prompted foreign investors and companies to leave the country and diverted government funds from public investment.

The capital’s economy has always revolved around its deepwater harbor, which was built as part of a defense pact signed between Liberia and the United States during World War II. During the 1960s, improvements to Monrovia’s port and to local ship storage and repair facilities made the port home to one of the world’s largest fleet of ocean-going merchant vessels. It continues to serve as Liberia’s main outlet for the nation’s two most important exports, latex and iron ore. In 2017, iron ore exports increased with the opening of new ArcelorMittal mines at Mount Gangra, and a new gold mining project also helped drive economic growth.

Monrovia has struggled to establish a modest manufacturing sector. Factories in and around the capital turn out construction materials such as cement, tiles, and bricks. Furniture, processed food and beverage products are also produced by factories in the city.

Monrovia’s government planners are pinning their hopes for a brighter economic future on the development of the tourism industry. Monrovia shares many of the same assets—a hospitable climate, pristine beaches, and a rich and varied local cultural scene—with other African nations that have succeeded in turning tourism into an economic mainstay. As the capital of the world’s first republic settled by freed slaves, Monrovia also enjoys a unique historic heritage with the potential to attract visitors.

The creation of a significant tourism industry continues to be hampered, however, by the slow pace of efforts to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and restore necessary institutions. Persistently high crime rates and widespread corruption among public officials also remain obstacles.

Landmarks

Monrovia’s once bustling cultural scene was another casualty of the long civil conflict that engulfed Liberia until the late 1990s. The National Museum of Liberia, housed in Monrovia’s Supreme Court building, once held rich collections of ceremonial masks, musical instruments, and other artifacts from indigenous cultures while several private galleries showcased the work of contemporary Monrovia artists.

Many of the National Museum’s treasures fell into the hands of looters during the war years, but some have subsequently been recovered. Renovated in 1992 with international assistance, the National Museum of Liberia today features historical and ethnographical galleries containing items ranging from original maps and flags of Liberia to works of traditional local craftspeople.

Other notable landmarks include a privately owned zoo, which includes birds and wildlife found in Liberia’s interior tropical rainforests; several beaches including Ellen’s Beach, Kendeja Beach, Thinker’s Village, and Silver Beach; a cultural center on Providence Island, which was the point of arrival for Monrovia’s Americo-Liberian founders; and the Waterside Market, where, among many other items, African batik crafts and woodcarvings are sold.

History

The indigenous peoples who had populated the Liberian coastal region since ancient times had their first documented encounter with Europeans in the mid-fifteenth century, when a series of Portuguese navigators explored and gave Portuguese names to the fertile area that came to be dubbed the “Grain Coast.”

The coastline’s abundant resources and hospitable climate also proved attractive to another group of outsiders, who arrived at the site of present-day Monrovia some four centuries later. The goal of the American Colonization Society was to resettle freed American slaves on the continent from which their ancestors had originated. In 1818, representatives of the society traveled to the area and began the process of negotiating settlement rights with the local indigenous leaders, an effort supported by the government of President James Monroe.

In 1822, the first settlers, a group of freed slaves from the United States and the British West Indies, settled on an island in the vicinity of what would eventually become the city of Monrovia. Originally named Christopolis, the city was renamed Monrovia to honor of the American president who had facilitated its founding.

Relations between the new arrivals and the indigenous people were often hostile during Monrovia’s early years. The native inhabitants’ resentment of the newcomers, fueled by some settlers’ ruthless exploitation of the locals, resulted in increased tensions. These tensions led to the civil wars that devastated Monrovia in the late twentieth century.

In 1980, long-running conflicts between the descendants of Monrovia’s founders, who owned the lion’s share of the country’s wealth and power, and the tribal peoples who make up the vast majority of Liberia’s population, set the stage for the overthrow of Liberia’s democratically elected government by military coup.

Military leader Samuel K. Doe ruled Liberia for a decade after the coup d’etat. In 1989, tensions again came to a head, resulting in a civil war between Doe’s forces and the supporters of Charles Taylor. Taylor’s rebel army laid siege to Monrovia in 1992, destroying much of the city. After several failed international peacekeeping ventures, a peace deal was signed in 1996.

It was not long after the conclusion of the first Liberian civil war (1989–96), however, that the second Liberian civil war (1999–2003) broke out, further devastating the already crumbling city. The United Nations (UN) charged Taylor with war crimes. A transitional government was installed. The UN completed its peacekeeping mission in March 2018.

In 2005, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf was elected as Liberia’s (and Africa’s) first female president. Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Bank economist, has led a focused effort to rebuild Monrovia’s economy and infrastructure. In 2011, she was elected to a second six-year term and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Her government was criticized in 2013, however, for mismanaging one of the nation’s most valuable natural resources by allowing timber companies to conduct logging operations in 58 percent of the country’s primary rainforest.

Legal challenges delayed the 2017 presidential runoff election, which was held in December and was won by President George Weah. Weah served until 2023, when he was ousted by Joseph Boakai.

Bibliography

Blair, David. “Liberia and the Vanishing Rainforest.” The Telegraph, 6 June 2013, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/liberia/10104422/Liberia-and-the-vanishing-rainforest.html. Accessed 27 Feb. 2024.

Ciment, James. Another America: The Story of Liberia and the Former Slaves Who Ruled It. New York: Hill and Wang, 2013. Print.

Hanson, John, and Thomas McPherson. History of Liberia. Hamburg: Tredition, 2012. Print.

Kieh, George Klay. “Neo-Colonialism: American Foreign Policy and the First Liberian Civil War.” Journal of Pan African Studies 5.1 (2012): 164–84. Print.

“Liberia.” The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 20 Feb. 2024, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/liberia/. Accessed Accessed 27 Feb. 2024.

Thom, William G. African Wars: A Defense Intelligence Perspective. Calgary: U of Calgary P, 2011. Print.

Waugh, Colin M. Charles Taylor and Liberia: Ambition and Atrocity in Africa’s Lone Star State. London: Zed, 2011. Print.