Essential The Africa the Media Doesn't Tell You About
- Thread starter TommyHilltrigga
- Start date
TMNT4000
Superstar
Please God let this be propaganda.
Disgusting these people are immune to the conditions of their citizens and why not re invest those funds in your own country and create employment in other sectors
Blocs agree to free trade area
The Grand Free Trade Area, as the new bloc is to be known, will have a combined population of 625
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Bujumbura-Half of Africa’s countries have agreed to take a historic leap forward and create the continent’s largest free trade area, a key step in boosting trade and growth.
The decision was taken in Bujumbura, Burundi, at the weekend by ministers from 26 countries that belong to the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The Grand Free Trade Area, as the new bloc is to be known, will have a combined population of 625 million people and about half of all African Union member states.
Its combined Gross Domestic Product of $1.2 trillion is about 58 per cent of Africa’s total GDP and would make the area roughly the 16th largest economy in the world, just below Mexico, and ahead of countries like Indonesia, Turkey and Netherlands.
Heads of states from the countries in the three blocs are expected to launch the expanded trade area when they meet in Egypt in mid-December.
“The Tripartite FTA offers significant opportunities for business and investment within the Tripartite and will act as a magnet for attracting foreign direct investment into the Tripartite region,” Sindiso Ngwenya, the Comesa secretary general and head of the tripartite taskforce said in a statement.
“The business community, in particular, will benefit from an improved and harmonised trade regime which reduces the cost of doing business as a result of elimination of overlapping trade regimes due to multiple memberships.”
The move is seen as crucial to eliminating trade and tariff barriers in participating countries, as well as overlapping membership by countries in different trading blocs.
editorial@ug.nationmedia.com
The Grand Free Trade Area, as the new bloc is to be known, will have a combined population of 625
ADVERTISEMENT
Bujumbura-Half of Africa’s countries have agreed to take a historic leap forward and create the continent’s largest free trade area, a key step in boosting trade and growth.
The decision was taken in Bujumbura, Burundi, at the weekend by ministers from 26 countries that belong to the East African Community, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
The Grand Free Trade Area, as the new bloc is to be known, will have a combined population of 625 million people and about half of all African Union member states.
Its combined Gross Domestic Product of $1.2 trillion is about 58 per cent of Africa’s total GDP and would make the area roughly the 16th largest economy in the world, just below Mexico, and ahead of countries like Indonesia, Turkey and Netherlands.
Heads of states from the countries in the three blocs are expected to launch the expanded trade area when they meet in Egypt in mid-December.
“The Tripartite FTA offers significant opportunities for business and investment within the Tripartite and will act as a magnet for attracting foreign direct investment into the Tripartite region,” Sindiso Ngwenya, the Comesa secretary general and head of the tripartite taskforce said in a statement.
“The business community, in particular, will benefit from an improved and harmonised trade regime which reduces the cost of doing business as a result of elimination of overlapping trade regimes due to multiple memberships.”
The move is seen as crucial to eliminating trade and tariff barriers in participating countries, as well as overlapping membership by countries in different trading blocs.
editorial@ug.nationmedia.com
wish I had the energy to type up a long rant about this but all I'll say is
some of these people will have the nerve to look at lower class africans like dogs, not realizing that its more embarrassing that you're running off to the white mans nation when you have the power to change your own.
politicians who have broken roads on their watch, but have the nerve to fly out to london or paris every weekend to shop. mtchew
wish I had the energy to type up a long rant about this but all I'll say is
some of these people will have the nerve to look at lower class africans like dogs, not realizing that its more embarrassing that you're running off to the white mans nation when you have the power to change your own.
politicians who have broken roads on their watch, but have the nerve to fly out to london or paris every weekend to shop. mtchew
Like how can they consciously do this?
October 28, 2014
Ebola in West Africa: China to build Liberia health system
Via the Daily Observer, a report that may be the biggest story of the week if not of the outbreak: China to Build Liberia Health System. Excerpt and then a comment:
The government of the People’s Republic of China has pledged that as a plan for the post-Ebola period, it will work with other international partners to help build and modernize Liberia’s health sector. The Chinese government through its Ambassador accredited near Monrovia, Zhang Yue, said that there is a need to revamp the country’s health system and China will be wholeheartedly committed to that process as it has always done in the past. He spoke with reporters shortly after meeting with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at her Foreign Affairs office where he had gone to introduce an advance 15-man Chinese medical team that arrived in country during the weekend to join the Ebola fight. Ambassador Zhang disclosed that the advance medical team comprises doctors, epidemiologists, designers, engineers and technicians, who he said will prepare for the construction of the ETU, exchange views with Liberian officials and experts and international partners. Medical equipment and building materials valued at US$82 million have begun arriving on a special flight from China to construct a100-bed ETU at the Samuel K. Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville.
Ebola in West Africa: China to build Liberia health system
Via the Daily Observer, a report that may be the biggest story of the week if not of the outbreak: China to Build Liberia Health System. Excerpt and then a comment:
The government of the People’s Republic of China has pledged that as a plan for the post-Ebola period, it will work with other international partners to help build and modernize Liberia’s health sector. The Chinese government through its Ambassador accredited near Monrovia, Zhang Yue, said that there is a need to revamp the country’s health system and China will be wholeheartedly committed to that process as it has always done in the past. He spoke with reporters shortly after meeting with President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf at her Foreign Affairs office where he had gone to introduce an advance 15-man Chinese medical team that arrived in country during the weekend to join the Ebola fight. Ambassador Zhang disclosed that the advance medical team comprises doctors, epidemiologists, designers, engineers and technicians, who he said will prepare for the construction of the ETU, exchange views with Liberian officials and experts and international partners. Medical equipment and building materials valued at US$82 million have begun arriving on a special flight from China to construct a100-bed ETU at the Samuel K. Doe Sports Complex in Paynesville.
This latest contribution is the fourth round of China’s assistance program for Ebola control in West Africa and comprises both cash and supplies.
The ETU will be staffed and operated by Chinese doctors and nurses assisted by local health workers.
Ambassador Zhang said China is not only committed to helping eradicate the deadly Ebola virus that has claimed hundreds of lives from the country and the region, but intends to help develop the country’s health system during the post-Ebola era.
He assured President Sirleaf and Liberians that China’s presence in the Ebola fight in West Africa signifies his country’s full commitment to helping its partners.
He had earlier disclosed plans by China to initiate the China-Africa Public Health Cooperation Plan that includes organizing 12 terms of training programs on public health, epidemic prevention and control for Africa, carrying out joint research on tropical diseases and helping to establish an information platform for public health and a monitoring network for epidemic prevention and control.
I'm gobsmacked. It's been a truism since last spring that West Africa needs a whole new healthcare system, but I never expected anyone to put their money (and personnel) where their mouth was.
It makes eminent economic and political sense for the Chinese to do this. They have enormous investments in Africa, including land where crops are being grown for consumption in China. Unlike their European predecessors, they work with whoever's in power, regardless of how distasteful they may be.
A move like this, which implies a commitment for many years, will earn China enormous goodwill all over Africa (and likely some lobbying for similar services elsewhere on the continent).
So the Chinese are protecting their investments, winning friends, and even saving a lot of lives in the process.
Whether they realize it or not, the Americans and Europeans are involved in a new 1880s-style scramble for Africa. This time Africa will be won not by horse, foot, and artillery, but by doctor, nurse, and vaccine. The Chinese are not only ahead in this race, they're about to lap us.
I'm gobsmacked. It's been a truism since last spring that West Africa needs a whole new healthcare system, but I never expected anyone to put their money (and personnel) where their mouth was.
It makes eminent economic and political sense for the Chinese to do this. They have enormous investments in Africa, including land where crops are being grown for consumption in China. Unlike their European predecessors, they work with whoever's in power, regardless of how distasteful they may be.
A move like this, which implies a commitment for many years, will earn China enormous goodwill all over Africa (and likely some lobbying for similar services elsewhere on the continent).
So the Chinese are protecting their investments, winning friends, and even saving a lot of lives in the process.
Whether they realize it or not, the Americans and Europeans are involved in a new 1880s-style scramble for Africa. This time Africa will be won not by horse, foot, and artillery, but by doctor, nurse, and vaccine. The Chinese are not only ahead in this race, they're about to lap us.
TMNT4000
Superstar
Nigerian Stock Exchange joins World Federation
Nigerian Stock Exchange joins World Federation of Exchanges, fifth African to become member
By Michelle Faul, Associated Press | Associated Press – Tue, Oct 28, 2014
JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- The Nigerian Stock Exchange became a full member of the World Federation of Exchanges on Tuesday, just as it prepares to woo Asian fund managers.
It's taken three years for the West African exchange to win approval based on proper regulation by bodies including the Securities and Exchange Commission of Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Central Securities Clearing System.
The federation sent an assessment team to Nigeria last month and the Nigerian Stock Exchange announced in a statement that it received a unanimous vote for admission as a full member at the general assembly of the federation Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea.
CEO Oscar Onyema said it is a step forward in the Nigerian exchange's integration with global financial markets.
The exchange's head of strategy, Yvonne Emordi, said "It sets the tone for the upcoming Asia tour the Nigerian Stock Exchange will kick off in early December this year, to introduce our market to Asian fund managers with frontier and emerging market investment strategies."
The federation is a global trade association for operators of regulated securities exchanges that Onyema called "an important reference for international investors."
The main board of the Nigerian Stock Exchange currently lists 190 equities with a market cap of more than $83 billion.
The membership comes the same year Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer and its most populous nation of about 160 million, rebased its economy to overtake South Africa as the largest on the continent.
The Nigerian exchange is only the fifth in Africa to join the federation. The others are based in South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
https://za.news.yahoo.com/nigerian-stock-exchange-joins-world-140412872.html
Nigerian Stock Exchange joins World Federation of Exchanges, fifth African to become member
By Michelle Faul, Associated Press | Associated Press – Tue, Oct 28, 2014JOHANNESBURG (AP) -- The Nigerian Stock Exchange became a full member of the World Federation of Exchanges on Tuesday, just as it prepares to woo Asian fund managers.
It's taken three years for the West African exchange to win approval based on proper regulation by bodies including the Securities and Exchange Commission of Nigeria, the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Central Securities Clearing System.
The federation sent an assessment team to Nigeria last month and the Nigerian Stock Exchange announced in a statement that it received a unanimous vote for admission as a full member at the general assembly of the federation Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea.
CEO Oscar Onyema said it is a step forward in the Nigerian exchange's integration with global financial markets.
The exchange's head of strategy, Yvonne Emordi, said "It sets the tone for the upcoming Asia tour the Nigerian Stock Exchange will kick off in early December this year, to introduce our market to Asian fund managers with frontier and emerging market investment strategies."
The federation is a global trade association for operators of regulated securities exchanges that Onyema called "an important reference for international investors."
The main board of the Nigerian Stock Exchange currently lists 190 equities with a market cap of more than $83 billion.
The membership comes the same year Nigeria, Africa's biggest oil producer and its most populous nation of about 160 million, rebased its economy to overtake South Africa as the largest on the continent.
The Nigerian exchange is only the fifth in Africa to join the federation. The others are based in South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius.
https://za.news.yahoo.com/nigerian-stock-exchange-joins-world-140412872.html
Liberia’s roots planted in America
Posted: 7:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31, 2014
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By Ernie Suggs - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In 1990, when Leo Mulbah and his family arrived in the United States to escape the first of two bloody civil wars in Liberia, he was unlike the typical, wide-eyed immigrant.
He had grown up on Michael Jackson, Rambo and the Cosby Show. He knew American sports and politics just as well as he knew Liberia’s.
+
Liberia’s flag bears a striking resemblance to America’s Stars and Stripes. The biggest difference: The single white star, which represents the ... Read More
“For most Liberians, assimilation has never been a problem,” said Mulbah, 41, who was a teenager when his parents moved to Baton Rouge, La. “The culture is the same. We know more about America than most Americans do.”
Most Americans, on the other hand, likely know little about the tiny West African nation of Liberia apart from it being front-page news as ground zero in the Ebola crisis.
Yet America’s relationship with Liberia is deep and tangled, dating back nearly 200 years to American slavery — or at least an attempt to remedy it.
+
The flag of the United States of America was the model for Liberia’s flag. But Old Glory has 50 stars to ... Read More
“People just think Liberia is a country in Africa that is in the news because of Ebola,” said Alan Huffman, author of “Mississippi in Africa.” “But we are basically responsible for creating it, which is why I have always been bewildered that the U.S. has had little interest in Liberia.”
The first group of free blacks and former slaves from America began arriving in Liberia in 1822 in an effort to be repatriated back to Africa.
When Liberia became Africa’s first independent nation in 1847, it modeled its political structure after the United States. The capital city is Monrovia, named after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. Liberia’s flag is a near replica of Old Glory, as is its constitution and Pledge of Allegiance.
Even today, American culture saturates Liberia in everything from the clothes to the music to the official language, which is English.
And there are as many as 20,000 Liberians living in Georgia, said Mulbah, who is president of the Liberian Association of Metro Atlanta.
Emory University historian Pam Scully, who has visited the country a half-dozen times, said Liberia’s “complicated founding is an intrinsic part of American history.”
“Liberians see America as a kind of home. But most Americans had never even heard of Liberia until Sirleaf (President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) won the Nobel Peace Prize (in 2011), and now with Ebola,” said Scully, who authored a biography about Sirleaf. “The U.S. forgot about Liberia.”
BACK TO AFRICA
In the early 1800s a group called the American Colonization Society began plotting ways to repatriate free blacks to Africa, where they would have a better life than existed for them in America. The ACS was a mixture of abolitionist evangelicals and Quakers, who abhorred slavery, and Southern slave owners who wanted to completely remove free blacks from the society.
“There was … this feeling that emancipation was more likely to come if you could remove what Southern whites saw as a threat, being outnumbered by free blacks,” Huffman said.
Scully called the endeavor “a combination of philanthropy, racism and nostalgia in free blacks who wanted to go back to Africa.”
“This was a period where people were thinking, ‘If we can’t make things work here, what do we do?’” Scully said.
In 1822, with the support of President Monroe, who was a member of the American Colonization Society, the first 86 volunteer emigrants sailed to the West African Pepper Coast to a spot bordering Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire that would become Liberia — meaning liberty.
Scully wrote that the ACS bought a “36 mile long and 3 mile wide” strip of coastal land for trade goods, supplies, weapons, and rum worth approximately $300 from the indigenous people to begin the colony. Thousands of black emigrants followed, setting up colonial settlements along the coast. Between 1822 and 1892, an estimated 16,000 American blacks had relocated to Liberia.
But the Americo-Liberians, as they would be called, had a difficult time settling in a “place they knew nothing about,” Huffman said.
They brought with them American attitudes, speech and ways of dressing, fostering resentment among the indigenous people, who greatly outnumbered them.
“The Americans became the ruling class. They ran the show and the indigenous people were the underclass,” Huffman said. “When the ACS came over, there were negotiations, but the indigenous people didn’t realize what they were giving up. There was tension from the start.”
Some of that tension eventually led to civil wars and laid the foundation for Liberia’s current problems.
After Liberia gained independence in 1847, Virginia-born Joseph J. Roberts was elected its first president. For the next 133 years, although former slaves made up about just 5 percent of the population, they dominated national politics. Every Liberian president — until a 1980 coup — was a descendent of freed American slaves.
NOT A TERRITORY
After the initial influx of settlers to Liberia — about 3,000 between 1822 and 1847 — emigration slowed as America inched toward the Civil War and Emancipation. But the United States was always looming in the background.
In Abraham Lincoln’s “Peoria Speech,” delivered Oct. 16, 1854, he attacked the hypocrisy of slavery, but remained unclear on how to end it, confessing that neither colonization nor the thought of equality were practical.
“My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia — to their own native land,” Lincoln said.
But aside from America’s initial involvement in creating the settlement, the United States has since had little to do with Liberia. Unlike Guam or Puerto Rico, it was never an American territory. Nor was it ever a colony in the vein of, say, the Congo, which was brutally colonized by the Belgians.
“They were trying to get rid of people,” Scully said, adding that the United States was mimicking a model created by Great Britain, which had shipped its free blacks to neighboring Sierra Leone. “They were not interested in ruling them.”
Still, the U.S. has maintained some political and business interests in Liberia, one of the latter being Firestone, which has a major presence in the country.
“The U.S. has always been a reluctant empire,” Huffman said.
WAR-TORN, DISEASE-RAVAGED
Between 1986 and 2003, two civil wars ripped apart Liberia, claiming the lives of 250,000 people and destroying the country’s economy and infrastructure.
The country is still trying to recover as more than 85 percent of the population is living below the international poverty line, making Liberia one of the poorest nations in the world.
The literacy rate is about 61 percent and millions of dollars in aid that came in after the wars have done nothing to improve the country’s infrastructure. Medical facilities are virtually nonexistent, as there is only one doctor for every 100,000 people.
“Sirleaf was trying, but people are asking where are all those millions that were poured in when you have no roads,” Scully said. “Now you have Ebola and a health care system that can’t cope.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ebola has ravished Liberia since March, killing 2,705 of the 4,665 reported cases in the country of 4 million people.
But the United States is paying closer attention now because of the Ebola crisis, and the Obama administration has committed troops and resources to help build medical facilities.
At the Liberian Association of Metro Atlanta headquarters, Mulbah and his relatives, who identify themselves as indigenous Liberians, continue to function as Americans while raising awareness and money to fight Ebola in their homeland.
“We are very resilient, generous and determined people,” said Mulbah, who moved to Atlanta in 1999. “With the attention, we at least have a platform to tell the world who we are. I just wish the attention had not come about because of Ebola.”
AMERICA VS. LIBERIA: SO DIFFERENT, SO ALIKE
Population
United States: 318 million
Liberia: 4 million
Median Age
United States: 37.6
Liberia: 17.9
Birth rate
United States: 13.42 births / 1,000
Liberia: 35.07 births / 1,000
Infant Mortality rate
United States: 6.17 deaths / 1,000
Liberia: 69.19 deaths / 1,000
Life expectancy
United States: 79.56
Liberia: 58.21
Language
United States — English
Liberia — English
Adult obesity
United States: 33 percent
Liberia: 4.8 percent
Government
United States: Constitution-based federal republic; Democratic tradition
Liberia: Republic
Capitol
United States: Washington, D.C., named after George Washington, father of the country
Liberia: Monrovia, named after James Monroe, the fifth American president, who supported Liberian colonization.
Constitution
United States: The supreme law of the United States, it defines the three federal branches of the government — executive, legislative and judicial. The Bill of Rights, assuring basic individual protections, became part of the Constitution in 1791.
Liberia: Its constitution was modeled after the United States in 1847 and remained the law of the land until 1980, after a governmental coup. It also established three branches of government. Article I of the Liberian Constitution sets up a Declaration of Rights, similar to America’s Bill of Rights.
Executive Branch
United States: The president is the head of state, is elected every four years, and appoints his own Cabinet with approval from the Senate.
Liberia: The president is the head of state, is elected every six years, and appoints his or her own Cabinet with Senate approval.
Legislative Branch
United States: Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Liberia: National Assembly consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Judicial Branch
United States: Nine-member Supreme Court consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices. The president nominates justices who must be confirmed by the Senate. They serve for life.
Liberia: Five-member Supreme Court consists of a chief justice and four associate justices. The president nominates the justices who are confirmed by the Senate. They serve until age 70.
Flag:
United States: 13 horizontal stripes representing the 13 original colonies. The stripes are red and white, with the red starting at the top. Red represents courage, zeal and fervency. White represents purity. Fifty stars representing the 50 states sit in a blue rectangle in the upper hoist-side corner of the flag. The blue stands for loyalty, devotion, truth, justice and friendship.
Liberia: Almost identical to the United States’ “Old Glory,” it features 11 horizontal red and white stripes. The 11 stripes represent the 11 signers of the Liberation Declaration of Independence. On a field of blue in the upper hoist-side corner of the flag is a large single white star, representing the freedom granted to the ex-slaves.
The Pledge of Allegiance:
United States: Written in 1892, Congress formally adopted The Pledge of Allegiance in 1942. The words “under God” were added in 1954.
Liberia: The Liberian Pledge of Allegiance is identical to the pledge the United States used prior to 1954 — with the exception of swapping out “United States of America” for “Liberia.” Liberia never inserted the words “under God.”
Economy:
United States: The largest and most powerful economy in the world.
Liberia: One of the poorest countries in the world.
Posted: 7:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 31, 2014
Email0Facebook0Twitter0ShareThisNew
By Ernie Suggs - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In 1990, when Leo Mulbah and his family arrived in the United States to escape the first of two bloody civil wars in Liberia, he was unlike the typical, wide-eyed immigrant.
He had grown up on Michael Jackson, Rambo and the Cosby Show. He knew American sports and politics just as well as he knew Liberia’s.
+
Liberia’s flag bears a striking resemblance to America’s Stars and Stripes. The biggest difference: The single white star, which represents the ... Read More
“For most Liberians, assimilation has never been a problem,” said Mulbah, 41, who was a teenager when his parents moved to Baton Rouge, La. “The culture is the same. We know more about America than most Americans do.”
Most Americans, on the other hand, likely know little about the tiny West African nation of Liberia apart from it being front-page news as ground zero in the Ebola crisis.
Yet America’s relationship with Liberia is deep and tangled, dating back nearly 200 years to American slavery — or at least an attempt to remedy it.
+
The flag of the United States of America was the model for Liberia’s flag. But Old Glory has 50 stars to ... Read More
“People just think Liberia is a country in Africa that is in the news because of Ebola,” said Alan Huffman, author of “Mississippi in Africa.” “But we are basically responsible for creating it, which is why I have always been bewildered that the U.S. has had little interest in Liberia.”
The first group of free blacks and former slaves from America began arriving in Liberia in 1822 in an effort to be repatriated back to Africa.
When Liberia became Africa’s first independent nation in 1847, it modeled its political structure after the United States. The capital city is Monrovia, named after James Monroe, the fifth president of the United States. Liberia’s flag is a near replica of Old Glory, as is its constitution and Pledge of Allegiance.
Even today, American culture saturates Liberia in everything from the clothes to the music to the official language, which is English.
And there are as many as 20,000 Liberians living in Georgia, said Mulbah, who is president of the Liberian Association of Metro Atlanta.
Emory University historian Pam Scully, who has visited the country a half-dozen times, said Liberia’s “complicated founding is an intrinsic part of American history.”
“Liberians see America as a kind of home. But most Americans had never even heard of Liberia until Sirleaf (President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf) won the Nobel Peace Prize (in 2011), and now with Ebola,” said Scully, who authored a biography about Sirleaf. “The U.S. forgot about Liberia.”
BACK TO AFRICA
In the early 1800s a group called the American Colonization Society began plotting ways to repatriate free blacks to Africa, where they would have a better life than existed for them in America. The ACS was a mixture of abolitionist evangelicals and Quakers, who abhorred slavery, and Southern slave owners who wanted to completely remove free blacks from the society.
“There was … this feeling that emancipation was more likely to come if you could remove what Southern whites saw as a threat, being outnumbered by free blacks,” Huffman said.
Scully called the endeavor “a combination of philanthropy, racism and nostalgia in free blacks who wanted to go back to Africa.”
“This was a period where people were thinking, ‘If we can’t make things work here, what do we do?’” Scully said.
In 1822, with the support of President Monroe, who was a member of the American Colonization Society, the first 86 volunteer emigrants sailed to the West African Pepper Coast to a spot bordering Sierra Leone, Guinea and Côte d’Ivoire that would become Liberia — meaning liberty.
Scully wrote that the ACS bought a “36 mile long and 3 mile wide” strip of coastal land for trade goods, supplies, weapons, and rum worth approximately $300 from the indigenous people to begin the colony. Thousands of black emigrants followed, setting up colonial settlements along the coast. Between 1822 and 1892, an estimated 16,000 American blacks had relocated to Liberia.
But the Americo-Liberians, as they would be called, had a difficult time settling in a “place they knew nothing about,” Huffman said.
They brought with them American attitudes, speech and ways of dressing, fostering resentment among the indigenous people, who greatly outnumbered them.
“The Americans became the ruling class. They ran the show and the indigenous people were the underclass,” Huffman said. “When the ACS came over, there were negotiations, but the indigenous people didn’t realize what they were giving up. There was tension from the start.”
Some of that tension eventually led to civil wars and laid the foundation for Liberia’s current problems.
After Liberia gained independence in 1847, Virginia-born Joseph J. Roberts was elected its first president. For the next 133 years, although former slaves made up about just 5 percent of the population, they dominated national politics. Every Liberian president — until a 1980 coup — was a descendent of freed American slaves.
NOT A TERRITORY
After the initial influx of settlers to Liberia — about 3,000 between 1822 and 1847 — emigration slowed as America inched toward the Civil War and Emancipation. But the United States was always looming in the background.
In Abraham Lincoln’s “Peoria Speech,” delivered Oct. 16, 1854, he attacked the hypocrisy of slavery, but remained unclear on how to end it, confessing that neither colonization nor the thought of equality were practical.
“My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia — to their own native land,” Lincoln said.
But aside from America’s initial involvement in creating the settlement, the United States has since had little to do with Liberia. Unlike Guam or Puerto Rico, it was never an American territory. Nor was it ever a colony in the vein of, say, the Congo, which was brutally colonized by the Belgians.
“They were trying to get rid of people,” Scully said, adding that the United States was mimicking a model created by Great Britain, which had shipped its free blacks to neighboring Sierra Leone. “They were not interested in ruling them.”
Still, the U.S. has maintained some political and business interests in Liberia, one of the latter being Firestone, which has a major presence in the country.
“The U.S. has always been a reluctant empire,” Huffman said.
WAR-TORN, DISEASE-RAVAGED
Between 1986 and 2003, two civil wars ripped apart Liberia, claiming the lives of 250,000 people and destroying the country’s economy and infrastructure.
The country is still trying to recover as more than 85 percent of the population is living below the international poverty line, making Liberia one of the poorest nations in the world.
The literacy rate is about 61 percent and millions of dollars in aid that came in after the wars have done nothing to improve the country’s infrastructure. Medical facilities are virtually nonexistent, as there is only one doctor for every 100,000 people.
“Sirleaf was trying, but people are asking where are all those millions that were poured in when you have no roads,” Scully said. “Now you have Ebola and a health care system that can’t cope.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Ebola has ravished Liberia since March, killing 2,705 of the 4,665 reported cases in the country of 4 million people.
But the United States is paying closer attention now because of the Ebola crisis, and the Obama administration has committed troops and resources to help build medical facilities.
At the Liberian Association of Metro Atlanta headquarters, Mulbah and his relatives, who identify themselves as indigenous Liberians, continue to function as Americans while raising awareness and money to fight Ebola in their homeland.
“We are very resilient, generous and determined people,” said Mulbah, who moved to Atlanta in 1999. “With the attention, we at least have a platform to tell the world who we are. I just wish the attention had not come about because of Ebola.”
AMERICA VS. LIBERIA: SO DIFFERENT, SO ALIKE
Population
United States: 318 million
Liberia: 4 million
Median Age
United States: 37.6
Liberia: 17.9
Birth rate
United States: 13.42 births / 1,000
Liberia: 35.07 births / 1,000
Infant Mortality rate
United States: 6.17 deaths / 1,000
Liberia: 69.19 deaths / 1,000
Life expectancy
United States: 79.56
Liberia: 58.21
Language
United States — English
Liberia — English
Adult obesity
United States: 33 percent
Liberia: 4.8 percent
Government
United States: Constitution-based federal republic; Democratic tradition
Liberia: Republic
Capitol
United States: Washington, D.C., named after George Washington, father of the country
Liberia: Monrovia, named after James Monroe, the fifth American president, who supported Liberian colonization.
Constitution
United States: The supreme law of the United States, it defines the three federal branches of the government — executive, legislative and judicial. The Bill of Rights, assuring basic individual protections, became part of the Constitution in 1791.
Liberia: Its constitution was modeled after the United States in 1847 and remained the law of the land until 1980, after a governmental coup. It also established three branches of government. Article I of the Liberian Constitution sets up a Declaration of Rights, similar to America’s Bill of Rights.
Executive Branch
United States: The president is the head of state, is elected every four years, and appoints his own Cabinet with approval from the Senate.
Liberia: The president is the head of state, is elected every six years, and appoints his or her own Cabinet with Senate approval.
Legislative Branch
United States: Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Liberia: National Assembly consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives.
Judicial Branch
United States: Nine-member Supreme Court consists of a chief justice and eight associate justices. The president nominates justices who must be confirmed by the Senate. They serve for life.
Liberia: Five-member Supreme Court consists of a chief justice and four associate justices. The president nominates the justices who are confirmed by the Senate. They serve until age 70.
Flag:
United States: 13 horizontal stripes representing the 13 original colonies. The stripes are red and white, with the red starting at the top. Red represents courage, zeal and fervency. White represents purity. Fifty stars representing the 50 states sit in a blue rectangle in the upper hoist-side corner of the flag. The blue stands for loyalty, devotion, truth, justice and friendship.
Liberia: Almost identical to the United States’ “Old Glory,” it features 11 horizontal red and white stripes. The 11 stripes represent the 11 signers of the Liberation Declaration of Independence. On a field of blue in the upper hoist-side corner of the flag is a large single white star, representing the freedom granted to the ex-slaves.
The Pledge of Allegiance:
United States: Written in 1892, Congress formally adopted The Pledge of Allegiance in 1942. The words “under God” were added in 1954.
Liberia: The Liberian Pledge of Allegiance is identical to the pledge the United States used prior to 1954 — with the exception of swapping out “United States of America” for “Liberia.” Liberia never inserted the words “under God.”
Economy:
United States: The largest and most powerful economy in the world.
Liberia: One of the poorest countries in the world.
Premeditated
MANDE KANG
Lets just be honest, there's no hope for Liberia. Ignorance and just too much people set in the (backward) ways.
you couldn't pay me to go live over there.
you couldn't pay me to go live over there.