Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Liberia: Scramble for Liberia's Resources

It is indeed an unarguable fact that Liberia is richly endowed with mineral resources, water, tropical rain forest and climatic conditions favorable to agricultural activities. The country has got beautiful landscapes, marvelous creatures, fabulous natural habitats, abundant timbers, historical melegueta peppers and gigantic dark green forests. Besides, the budding oil and gas sector clearly demonstrates the country's vast assets. As a matter of fact, African Petroleum, one of the several companies drilling for oil off the coast of Liberia revealed that it has identified a potentially large accumulation of light good quality oil at the Turonian level as well as excellent quality oil in the Albain.
From the very inception and up till present, Liberia's natural resources have attracted too many capitalists and tourists and even expansionists. As a result of the Grain Coast, as it was called, not being a sovereign state with enormous assets created avenue for leading colonial nations like Great Britain and France to continually encroach on the territorial land of the country and refused to recognize constituted authority let alone respected rules and regulations. Moreover, even before the Declaration of Independence, the country's affluence enticed scores of European explorers, who were in search of hidden treasures, adventures and perhaps discoveries to improve human existence. The discovery of precious commodities or geographic features resulted to many explorers referring to what is today known as Liberia with all sorts of names that commensurate with one of the goods or features which turnout to be admirable and profitable. For instance, the Portuguese called it the Melegueta Coast while the British termed it as Grain Coast and so forth.

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