Liberia
Kaitlin Payne
Strayer University
Patricia Hennington
Sociology of Developing Countries
October 25, 2014

My developing country I chose to talk about is Liberia. Liberia was Africa’s first republic country and the first country to have a female ruler. There are two civil wars that greatly impacted Liberia, one was 1989-1996 and the other was 1999-2003. The Liberian Civil War forced brothers against brothers who fought with everything they had in them, which used all the resources at their disposal only to destroy each other. The Liberian Civil War became known as the worst war in West African history, not only because of the amount of deaths but the property that was destroyed as well. The wars fought between December 1989 and 2003 accounted for more than 250,000 deaths, which was equivalent to ten percent of the countries population. Due to the destructiveness of the wars, many Liberians fled the country and sought out refuge in Diaspora. The war turned the country into a massive brain drain, which means the medical aid was severely depleted. Liberian went from 2,000 doctors at the beginning of the wars to one hundred at the end. At the end of the war, the government was confronted with the task of hiring trained teachers to schools across the country. Liberia’s neighboring country Nigeria intervened and dispatched teachers and doctors to Liberia. Liberia also suffered a deficit with jobs in mining, teaching, civil and electrical engineering that the government had to offer people special incentives to work in these fields. The damage done to the land by Liberians was horrific. They shot at electrical poles, houses and other public and private properties, which in no way challenged their quest to conquer territory. They burnt down anything including houses, business centers and even banks. Most of the time, they burnt down houses they occupied when