A post-war surfing renaissance is underway in Africa's oldest republic

In Robertsport, Liberia, the surf scene is on the rise with a growing number of locals and tourists taking to the waves.

(CNN) — Nestled between Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Liberia is the oldest republic in Africa. But despite its historic legacy, in the minds of many outsiders the West African nation is still more commonly associated with civil war and convicted war criminal Charles Taylor.

But at the end of the second civil war in 2003, as Liberia was on the cusp of democratically electing the continent's first female head of state, a different narrative was emerging in the fishing village of Robertsport; one that would ultimately change the culture of this tiny seaside community on the border of Sierra Leone.

"After the war in 2003, some Americans came to Robertsport, where they started surfing our waves," recalls local surfer Philip Banini. "(They) came across a Black guy, Alfred Lomax, who was the first Liberian surfer, and they taught him the sport. And that was how he too started sharing it with the locals around here."