Liberia 2014
Yearbook 2014
Liberia. Liberia population in 2020 is estimated at 5,057,692. Liberia was one of the countries in West Africa that was most severely affected by the ebola outbreak that began in February. At the end of the year, more than 17,000 people were reported to have been infected with Ebola fever, and about 000 people had died in the disease whose outbreak was described as the worst ever. At least 3,000 Liberians were reported among the deceased. During the year, the government received massive criticism for its handling of the epidemic. The authorities found it difficult to reach out with information about the disease and many people initially believed that the problem was magnified or that the disease did not exist at all. Misunderstood rumors of the spread of disease and widespread suspicion against the authorities made the relief work more difficult.
In July, many of the country’s schools were forced to strike again, and most of the borders vis-à-vis neighboring countries were also closed. In August, the West Point slum area in the capital, Monrovia, was quarantined after residents attacked a clinic where people suspected of being infected with Ebola fever were forcibly isolated to prevent the spread of infection. At the end of August, the quarantine in West Point was lifted and President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf announced that the country was in extraordinary distress. During the year, the president was criticized partly for failing to cope with the sudden emergence in the country well enough and partly for not working effectively against the widespread corruption – a challenge the president had previously assured that she would address.
According to topb2bwebsites, in addition to far-reaching social consequences, the country’s economy was very negatively affected by the epidemic and food prices shot up. The Liberian economy had advanced significantly in previous years, thanks in large part to increased exports and foreign investment. Before the outbreak of ebola fever, growth for 2014 was projected to be 5.9%, but due to an economic downturn, the growth forecast instead was 2.5%.
In October, Johnson Sirleaf announced that the Senate election that would have been held later that month was postponed due to the outbreak of Ebola fever. In November, information came out that the spread of the disease was slowing down.
In the autumn, the independent newspaper FrontPage Africa was praised by the organization Reporters Without Borders (RUG) for its investigative journalism. As late as last year, the newspaper was forced to close down after its editor-in-chief Rodney Sieh was jailed. RUG was one of the organizations that criticized the court’s decision to ban the publication of the newspaper and argued that it constituted an unacceptable violation of the freedom of expression.
Population
The indigenous Liberians can be divided into almost thirty ethnic groups, attributable, on the basis of linguistic criteria, to two main divisions: the first, that of the Kua-speaking populations, includes the coastal groups of the Grobo, the Gbe, the Bassa, of the Throats, of the Cranes; the second, of Mande language, includes the coastal groups of Vai, Dai and Manon and that of Kpelle, settled on the Nimbas. Such groups were for a long time precluded from managing the political and cultural life of the country until the ‘Free Americans’, who make up about 3% of the total population, held a position of absolute pre-eminence. These include the descendants of African-Americans freed from slavery and transferred (the first nucleus in 1822) to Liberia, chosen as the embryo of an independent African state, and the natives who have assimilated the customs and English language of the immigrants.
The population of Liberia, which according to the first census (1962) amounted to about one million residents and which after about twenty years had doubled, according to a 2009 estimate, is close to 3,500,000 residents. In the early years of the 21st century, after the end of the acute phase of the civil war, the birth rate returned to very high values (46 ‰) and the death rate stood at around 25 ‰. The average life is about 50 years; the infant mortality rate (157 ‰) and the fertility rate (6.2) are very high. The population is mainly located in the coastal strip, where there are peaks of 70-100 residents for 2 km, and along the axis that connects Monrovia with the Nimba region; lives mostly in hut villages; the only real city is the capital while on the coast there are some commercial centers and sea ports, such as Buchanan and Harper.
The prevalent religion (about 68%) is Christian, but there are also many Muslims (14%) and animists (18%).
