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49 free Liberia trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Liberia is Africa's oldest republic, founded by freed Black Americans and named for liberty, with a capital named after a US president and a flag that looks like the Stars and Stripes. It has been a rubber empire, a Cold War ally, the scene of two devastating civil wars, the home of Africa's first elected woman president and a Ballon d'Or-winning president, and the flag on more than a tenth of the world's ships. This Liberia trivia quiz covers all of it. Forty-four questions run from geography (Monrovia and Cape Mesurado, Mount Wuteve, Nimba, the Mano and Cavalla rivers, Sapo National Park, the pygmy hippo) through history (the Pepper Coast, the American Colonization Society, 1822, Joseph Jenkins Roberts and 1847, the True Whig Party, Firestone's 99-year lease, Tubman, the 1980 coup, Doe, Taylor, the civil wars, Sirleaf and Gbowee, Ebola, Weah and Boakai) to culture and economy (the Lone Star flag, the Kpelle, English, the Liberian dollar, the ship registry, iron ore, football). Roughly a third are easy, a third medium, and the rest are for people who really know West Africa. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia and official pages, so the dates, numbers and names are ones you can rely on.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Liberia?
Monrovia
Monrovia, founded in 1822 on Cape Mesurado by the first American settlers, is Liberia's seat of government and its main Atlantic port.
Q 02Liberia's capital was founded in 1822 under what original name?
Christopolis
Christopolis was the settlement's first name; in 1824 it was renamed in honour of the sitting US president, who backed the colonization effort.
Q 03Which organisation, formed in 1816, began sending free Black Americans to West Africa in 1822?
American Colonization Society
The American Colonization Society, founded in 1816 with backers including Henry Clay, landed its first settlers in 1822; its members ranged from Quakers to slaveholders.
Q 04How many freed and free-born African Americans moved to Liberia between 1822 and 1861?
More than 15,000
More than 15,000 free and freed Black Americans settled in Liberia before the US Civil War, joined by 3,198 Afro-Caribbeans; their descendants became the Americo-Liberians.
Q 05On what date did Liberia declare its independence?
26 July 1847
26 July 1847 is Liberia's Independence Day; the settlers' convention adopted a declaration drafted by Hilary Teage and a constitution modelled on the United States'.
Q 06Who was elected the first president of independent Liberia, serving from 1848 to 1856?
Joseph Jenkins Roberts
Joseph Jenkins Roberts, born free in Norfolk, Virginia, emigrated in 1829, became governor in 1841 and served as president from 1848 to 1856, returning for a second term in 1872.
Q 07Liberia holds what distinction among African republics?
The first to gain independence
The first to gain independence among Africa's modern republics, Liberia declared sovereignty in the 1840s; with Ethiopia it was one of only two African states not colonised during the Scramble for Africa.
Q 08Portuguese traders named the coast of modern Liberia after which local product?
Pepper
Pepper, specifically melegueta pepper or 'grains of paradise', grew abundantly here, so Europeans called it the Pepper Coast or Grain Coast.
Q 09How many stripes does the flag of Liberia have?
Eleven
Eleven stripes, six red and five white, represent the eleven men who signed Liberia's Declaration of Independence.
Q 10The Liberian flag is occasionally called by what nickname?
The Lone Star
The Lone Star refers to the single white star on the flag, which was adopted on 24 August, now celebrated as Flag Day, in the year of independence.
Q 11Which political force dominated Liberian politics from 1877 until the 1980 coup?
True Whig Party
The True Whig Party won every presidential election from 1877 until the 1980 coup, making it one of the longest-ruling parties anywhere.
Q 12Which American company took a 99-year lease on a million acres of Liberia in 1926 to grow rubber?
Firestone
Firestone, seeking a rubber supply outside Britain's Stevenson restriction scheme, signed the 1926 lease at six cents an acre and paired it with a $5 million loan to Liberia.
Q 13Who was Liberia's longest-serving president, in office from 1944 until his death in 1971?
William Tubman
Q 21Which Liberian activist led the women's movement that helped end the war in 2003 and shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize?
Leymah Gbowee
Leymah Gbowee organised Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace, whose sit-ins pressured Charles Taylor into the 2003 talks; her memoir is Mighty Be Our Powers.
Q 22Which former footballer was sworn in as Liberia's president in January 2018?
George Weah
George Weah, the 1995 Ballon d'Or winner, took office on 22 January 2018 after winning a December 2017 runoff, the first democratic transfer of power between elected presidents in more than 70 years.
Q 23Liberia's footballer-president was at which club when he received the 1995 Ballon d'Or?
AC Milan
William Tubman, called the father of modern Liberia, announced an Open Door policy on taking office in 1944 that drew foreign investment during his 27-year rule.
Q 14Which master sergeant seized power in the 1980 coup, becoming Liberia's first indigenous leader?
Samuel Doe
Samuel Doe, a Krahn master sergeant, led the 12 April 1980 coup in which President Tolbert was killed; thirteen officials were then shot on a beach in the capital.
Q 15The 2003 peace agreement that ended Liberia's second civil war was signed in which city?
Accra
Accra, Ghana's capital, hosted the talks; the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed there on 18 August 2003 set up a transitional government and cleared the way for the 2005 election.
Q 16Which rebel leader captured and executed Liberia's president in September 1990?
Prince Johnson
Prince Johnson, whose INPFL had split from Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front, seized the president at the ECOMOG headquarters in the capital on 9 September 1990 and had him tortured and killed.
Q 17Charles Taylor's rebellion began the First Liberian Civil War in December of which year?
1989
1989: on Christmas Eve Charles Taylor's NPFL crossed from Ivory Coast into northern Liberia, starting the war that ended with his election as president in 1997.
Q 18Roughly how many people died in Liberia's two civil wars?
250,000
250,000 deaths across the two civil wars is the commonly cited toll, roughly 8% of Liberia's pre-war population, with hundreds of thousands more displaced or made refugees.
Q 19Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 2012 for crimes committed in which conflict?
The Sierra Leone Civil War
The Sierra Leone Civil War was the basis of the charges: the Special Court found Taylor had armed the RUF rebels in return for blood diamonds; he had resigned in 2003 for exile in Nigeria.
Q 20Who was elected in 2005 as the first female president in Africa?
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Harvard-trained economist and former finance minister, served two terms from 2006 to 2018, becoming Africa's first elected female head of state.
AC Milan signed him from Paris Saint-Germain in 1995, months before he received the Ballon d'Or; he won two Serie A titles there after Arsène Wenger had first brought him to Monaco in 1988.
Q 24Who won Liberia's 2023 presidential runoff and was sworn in in January 2024?
Joseph Boakai
Joseph Boakai, vice-president from 2006 to 2018, won the November 2023 runoff with about 50.6% of the vote and took office on 22 January 2024.
Q 25The 2014 Ebola outbreak reached Liberia from which neighbouring country?
Guinea
Guinea, where the epidemic began in a Guéckédou-area village in December 2013, passed the virus into Lofa County in March 2014; Liberia went on to record more than 4,800 deaths.
Q 26Liberia's flag-of-convenience registry long ranked second in the world behind which country's?
Panama
Panama's registry, the largest for decades, was the only one ahead of Liberia's for most of the 2000s and 2010s; Liberia's open registry dates from 1948.
Q 27What is Liberia's official language?
English
English is the official language, a legacy of the American settlers; more than 20 indigenous languages are spoken by the 16 officially recognised ethnic groups.
Q 28Which is Liberia's largest ethnic group, at over a fifth of the population?
Kpelle
The Kpelle, about a fifth of Liberians, live mainly in Bong County and central Liberia and form the largest single language group.
Q 29Alongside its own currency, which foreign currency is legal tender in Liberia?
US dollar
The country used the US dollar outright from 1943 to 1982, and the economy remains heavily dollarised.
Q 30What is the highest point lying wholly within Liberia?
Mount Wuteve
Mount Wuteve, in the Wologizi Range of Lofa County in the north, rises about 1,440 metres above the surrounding forested highlands.