The statements in this article are based on reliable sources, and are repeated at the end of the article
There is such a country in Africa, which has almost the same system as the United States, and even the national flag is very similar, and it is called "Little America in Africa".
However, it is one of the poorest countries in the world, there is very little modern building, you may have to buy a pair of slippers in installments, half the country will be paralyzed when it rains, and it is even dubbed the "national beggar", it is Liberia. [Listen to the song]
01 Little America in Africa
Why are Liberia and the United States so similar? In fact, it lies in the origin of this country, which was created by the United States.
It is well known that there are a large number of blacks in American society, most of whom can be traced back to the triangular trade and spent a long period of extremely difficult time as slaves.
After the independence of the United States, this situation began to change, and many regions began to think that slavery should be abolished and these blacks should be given normal rights; But there were also quite a few people who insisted that these people were slaves, so they objected.
This is also the origin of the Civil War in the United States, and before that, a black man of Paul Cuffey made a suggestion, that is, since the discrimination against blacks in American society is deeply rooted, why don't we go back and develop?
In fact, the reason why he thought this way was that Britain was the first to take such an action at that time, because there were too many blacks in London, and most of them did not have corresponding jobs, even slaves, so they were directly "repatriated".
The British brought these blacks back to Africa and set up a country called Sierra Leone, and when Paul heard about this plan, he immediately thought that this was simply a "dream country" for the majority of black compatriots, so he made this suggestion to the above.
When the U.S. government heard this, it said that "one word is a certainty, and two happiness are coming", because whether it is the South or the North, the black problem is very difficult to deal with, and the American society is still brewing a big war.
A body called the American Colonization Society was formed, and in December 1821, at the behest of President James Monroe, it began shipping blacks to the northwest of Africa, and later named it "Liberia", which means "liberty" in Latin.
Since the area was originally a colony of the United States, and many blacks came from the United States, Liberia has a strong American "atmosphere" in all aspects.
In 1847, Liberia officially declared its independence, and adopted a federal system, from the constitution to elections, to civil rights, basically changing the United States of America with U.S. law to Liberia.
It seems that as long as they copy this country that is unusually powerful in their eyes, they can also rise to the top, but this is not the case.
02 National conflicts
At the beginning, Liberia did live quite well, after all, it had the support of the United States behind it, and it was considered by many to be the "showcase of Africa", but there were many contradictions within it.
There is serious racial discrimination in Liberia, and some people may wonder here: where can there be racial discrimination when all black people come for freedom? And that's because of these black people.
In fact, Liberia is not a no-man's land, on the contrary, there are many black tribes there, and for these free black people who have seen the American world, these black Africans are a group of natives who don't know anything.
And this statement is not only in their thinking, but even in the law, Liberia can be said to be the first country to give black people normal citizenship, but this citizen includes black people from the United States, not the local indigenous people.
Even the 10,000 local black Americans, directly to the local 100,000 black Africans, basically copied the serfdom system from the United States, and made them responsible for a lot of high-intensity manual work.
In addition, the local color is also used as a sign of racial discrimination, and the light-skinned black Americans are more noble, while the dark-skinned ones are considered to be indigenous to Africa and suffer from various discrimination.
This intensified the tension between the two ethnic groups, and this type of system continued into the 20th century, until 1980, when a military officer named Samuel Carñón Doe staged a coup d'état.
03 National beggars
The black officer, Samuel, who is from the Klan ethnic group and one of Liberia's indigenous peoples, led 17 soldiers in a coup d'état and directly killed the president at the time, ending 103 years of black American dominance.
Later, he established the so-called Second Republic, but the equality of these indigenous black people did not come, but only intensified the internal contradictions, and many other indigenous ethnic groups began to fight for power.
In addition, the president named Doe is extremely brutal, basically directly tortures and kills those who resist him, and loots the people's fat and ointment on a large scale, and establishes an extremely luxurious living environment for himself, but the life of the people at the bottom is becoming more and more difficult.
In 1989, a full-scale civil war broke out in Liberia, with various factions and warlords formed within the country, and the government was constantly changing.
One of them, Charles Taylor, spent more than a decade on Liberia's bones and renovated Doe's luxury villa, and it was not until 2012 that he was sentenced to 50 years in prison for 11 counts of murder, rape and forced child enlistment.
The 14-year war, which killed 250,000 people and completely shattered the internal order and economy, left millions of people refugees until 2003, when the United Nations intervened.
But when the civil war ended, Liberia was almost in ruins, and what was once a "showcase for Africa" had become the world's poorest country, with the lowest per capita disposable budget in the world.
In addition, the unemployment rate in the country is 85 percent, the per capita annual income is only 754 US dollars, the neonatal mortality rate is as high as 51.2 percent, and the infant mortality rate under the age of five is 67.4 percent.
As a result of the protracted civil war, Liberia's infrastructure has been largely destroyed, with 80 per cent of civilian housing destroyed compared to before the war, and there is hardly a single modern building even in the capital.
There were few modern roads in the country, and all hydropower facilities were destroyed in the civil war, and areas near the river were flooded on a large scale because there were no water facilities available.
And because of the special local environment, sometimes it rains heavily for a month, and countless civilians die because of the floods, but no one cares about this.
There are many people in Liberia who wear worn shoes that they can no longer wear, but no one will change them, because even the price of a shoe is rarely affordable, and some are not even able to wear clothes.
Compared to its name, "Liberty", Liberia can only be summed up by irony.
Sources of information:
[1] Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Liberia 2018-05-31 : Liberia in the second series: History
[2] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China 2023-12: Liberia country profile