Sexual offences and violence against women remain pervasive in the West African country, which in the past has had the distinction of being led by Africa’s first elected female head of state.



I have been working on women’s rights for at least seven years. It has never been easy, but at no time have we been busier than in 2020. We are fighting several other epidemics in the shadow of the Covid-19 pandemic: domestic violence, rape, and other sexual offenses and murders. We are confronting these while at the same time fighting to compel our government to act. 



<div class="wp-block-image is-style-default"><figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Abigail-Liberia-headshot1-768x1024.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-49395" width="285" height="380" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Abigail-Liberia-headshot1-768x1024.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Abigail-Liberia-headshot1-225x300.jpeg 225w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Abigail-Liberia-headshot1-300x400.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Abigail-Liberia-headshot1-600x800.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Abigail-Liberia-headshot1.jpeg 960w" sizes="(max-width: 285px) 100vw, 285px" /></figure></div>



My work has focused mostly in Ganta, a sprawling urban town in northern Liberia, where I grew up. Ganta has not totally left its rural trappings even though it is developing fast. Its population is a mixture of modernizers seeking to upend tradition, particularly practices that undermine human rights, and conservatives determined to preserve old traditions.&nbsp;



I represent the former, and as you might expect, I often come into conflict with the values of the ‘older generation’ who believe that as a young person, I should not speak against sexual and gender-based violence, female genital circumcision, child marriage and rape. I have never faced direct threats to my life for speaking against these practices, but I have been ‘warned’, shamed, harassed, and sometimes pressured into temporary silence.



Where I come from, it is almost a taboo for a girl or woman to report sexual abuse. Those who do so only seek justice, but in most cases end up as a double victim. In addition to the abuse, they are stigmatized and blamed. To avoid stigmatization, many victims live with their pain and grieve silently while their abuser lives freely and continues to abuse others.&nbsp;



My organization has been determined to bring abusers to justice and end stigmatization and victim-blaming. To break this culture of silence and give young victims a safe space to speak out, we established human rights clubs in schools and communities. The clubs create awareness about rape and violence against women, and encourage and support victims to seek justice. The results so far have been mixed.&nbsp;



Some victims do initially speak out, but a good number will prefer to resolve the issue in their community rather than going to court. Unfortunately, they are often blamed and shamed when the community gets involved. The prohibitive cost of seeking justice in Liberia discourages victims, and frustrates us all.&nbsp;&nbsp;



So we now focus more on awareness and advocacy, believing that knowledge of the rape law among community members might deter offenders. However,&nbsp;as Covid-19 spreads across&nbsp;Liberia, the government introduced a semi-lockdown and closed schools. While they focused on curtailing the virus, sexual offences surged. The Ministry of Gender reported in July that about 600 cases of rape and sexual offences were reported between January and June 2020 – unreported cases could be five times higher.



We reacted to this news by mobilizing&nbsp;women’s groups across the country and organizing demonstrations to call on the government to take immediate action. I led the campaign in Nimba County, northeastern Liberia. In August, we staged three days of nationwide protests at various government institutions and public places. Our colleagues in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, staged a protest outside the president’s office.



Our nationwide campaign was successful. The government immediately organized a multi-stakeholder conference on sexual offences, the president declared rape a national emergency and funding was increased to fight violence against women.



But that has not been the end. We still have more to do. Sexual offences and violence against women remain pervasive as many communities do not view these as crimes.&nbsp;Our job is to make them see these as punishable offences under the law. The government, too, needs to be reminded to deliver on its promises.&nbsp;



Our struggle will continue.



– By Abigail Freeman, founder of the Alliance for Gender Justice and Human Rights, an organization that champions women’s rights, promotes gender equality and elevates the voices of women and youth in rural Liberia.&nbsp;

Abigail Liberia protest1

Breaking The Culture Of Silence In Liberia

From New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, to German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, Covid-19 has been shining a light on women and paving the way for new thinking in global leadership. But, in Africa, has it been so? A look through the gender lens of the pandemic.



In March, shortly after Liberia confirmed its first case of Covid-19, Cornelia Kruah-Togba got to work. The 30-year-old women’s rights advocate was alarmed by the devastation the Ebola outbreak wreaked in her hometown, Monrovia, back in 2014. This time around, she was determined not to leave anything to chance.



“During Ebola, [public] doubt led to a lot of people dying so we had to make sure that our people were getting involved in this fight early on. We set up a coronavirus ‘taskforce’, identifying major intersections where most people gathered and set up hand-washing stations, in addition to executing a counter-conspiracy campaign. There has been a lot to do to help people realize that this is a genuine threat and that they should act accordingly.”



Kruah-Togba’s fast action and considered strategy have had an impact. New cases in the Liberian capital have been on a downward trend since July. Her initiative, even at community-level, is no different from those celebrated in Taiwan, Germany and South Korea. In each of these countries, women leaders have been credited with containing and even, in the case of Jacinda Ardern’s Premiership in New Zealand, completely eradicating Covid-19.



While we have to be careful not to generalize that these outcomes have purely been a result of having women at the helm, they remain legacies of their leadership.



In stark contrast, similar examples have been slow to emerge in Africa. Many, like Kruah-Togba, are working in localized contexts, far from the glare of mainstream media.



But what about women in public view? Why are they missing in our stories of the pandemic?



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-1024x747.jpeg" alt="" class="wp-image-46971" width="590" height="430" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-1024x747.jpeg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-scaled-300x219.jpeg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-scaled-600x438.jpeg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-768x560.jpeg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-1536x1121.jpeg 1536w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Madjiguene-Sock-2048x1494.jpeg 2048w" sizes="(max-width: 590px) 100vw, 590px" /><figcaption> Madjiguene Sock is a Partner at Dalberg Advisors in Senegal and has been advising African governments and public health institutions during Covid-19 </figcaption></figure>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">We have a lot of work to do [in order] to make leadership and decision-making in the ‘war room’ more gendered.&#8221;</blockquote>



Women are on a number of the continent’s policy-making tables, says Madjiguene Sock, Partner at Dalberg Advisors, a global consultancy firm in Dakar, Senegal. Working in an advisory capacity with a number of public health organizations around the continent, she has observed that, while women may be in positions of power, they are often forced to take a back-seat during crises like Covid-19.



“The face of the emergency response institutions in the countries [that I’ve worked in] have been 100% male. However, women continue to be very present, for example, in the Ministry of Health&#8230; but in terms of the response, where it’s more military-like, men tend to be in [leadership] positions.



“We have a lot of work to do [in order] to make leadership and decision-making in the ‘war room’ more gendered,” she notes.



Indeed, it is quite paradoxical that African women have a concerted role in peacetime yet are sidelined in emergencies. However, the recent Ebola crisis has inspired action.



“We started paying attention to gender because of Ebola. The Minister of Health in Senegal, at the time, was a woman and so were many others in the region. But [back then], gender was not the question. [With Covid-19], we have been thinking about setting up EOCs [Emergency Operation Centers] with gender in mind. Something interesting is that the decisions being made in terms of setting up these EOCs have been made by women. But once we set up these platforms, we revert back to masculine leadership,” says Sock.



Gendered responses to the pandemic, and similar crises, are far greater than representation. They also impact outcomes.



In April, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, António Guterres, urged the world’s governments and policy-makers to prioritize women and girls in Covid-19 policies. This is because they represent a majority of the pandemic’s victims, not in terms of mortality, but economically and socially, simply by virtue of their gender.



A month after Guterres’ injunction, female politicians from seven African countries gathered in an African Union teleconference to discuss ways to enhance their leadership in the Covid-19 response.



The meeting was chaired by Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, and Kenya’s Raychelle Awuor Omamo, Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs, supported by UN Deputy Secretary-General, Amina J Mohammed from Nigeria.



They all agreed that, given the adverse impact on women, the deficits in gendered leadership, and the rise of women on the frontlines of the pandemic, a profound paradigm shift on the continent was needed. The meeting underscored the fact that business cannot, and should not, continue as usual.



However, commitment alone is not enough. The conditions that make inclusion possible are quite complex. Based in Nairobi, public health practitioner, Lolem Ngong, an American with enduring Cameroonian roots, is Chief of Staff at Amref Health Africa, an NGO committed to improving healthcare systems across the continent. In her view, leadership within the sector varies widely, especially through the gender lens.



“I think women in public health crave to see other women around the table, they want to make sure that the voice of frontline workers [who are mostly women] are represented and that they’re working to create a better life for the communities that they serve. This spirit drives leadership [in the sector]. It’s not to say that men [in public health] don’t do this but I think the experience of men is quite different. They have either been in authoritative positions or seen other men in similar positions and this drives a certain style of leadership,” posits Ngong.



However, even within public health, there isn’t a prescriptive feminine, ‘one-size-fits-all’ kind of leadership.



For Ngong, her own role during this pandemic has been particularly varied given the evolving situation.



“Building on the work of dedicated colleagues at Amref, my role has mostly revolved around trying to streamline processes, strategy and advising on issues. During this pandemic we all work unusual hours, it could be 6AM to 11PM… it’s intense, but it’s part of our commitment and it&#8217;s leadership. As a leader in this pandemic, I have found that I’ve really had to draw on a lot of my skills and introspect,&#8221; she says.



Beyond differing approaches, there is also a major blind-spot in gender responses to Covid-19, and similar crises, in Africa.



“We can throw out numbers when talking about [female] representation [in Africa] across the board. But the truth is, within public health, we just don’t have the data. This points to why our policies are so gender-blind. What do you use to inform policy? You need data!”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Covid-19 has undone almost a year’s worth of work. In parts of northern Kenya, families are taking advantage of the prolonged period that kids have been at home to perform FGM in the cover of darkness.&#8221;</blockquote>



The lack of gender-specific data points to why even growing female representation, even at the higher level, is still having lacklustre results for women on the ground, particularly during this pandemic.



Nevertheless, there have been coordinated efforts from women, in other sectors of society, to safeguard those affected by these policies.



Amina Abdulla is Country Director at Concern Worldwide, a global NGO operating in Kenya. Since the start of the pandemic, she’s noticed that progress made on women’s rights issues, such as eradicating child marriage and female genital mutilation (FGM), has been eroding.



“Covid-19 has undone almost a year’s worth of work. In parts of northern Kenya, families are taking advantage of the prolonged period that kids have been at home to perform FGM in the cover of darkness. [With curfew], there is limited activity from 7PM onwards [so] that is when they [choose to] perform this on their girls,” she says.



Culturally, within these communities, once a girl undergoes this form of mutilation, she is considered ready for marriage.



Therefore, increasing incidents of FGM heavily correlates to reciprocal trends in child marriage. Once a girl is married off, she often loses her right to education. Given the economic uncertainty set off by the pandemic, this has been seen as a means to an end for many households.



“Families would be looking for a suitor for these girls because it’s one less mouth to feed and it’s also a way for income or assets to come to the [home]. But this also means there’s one girl less in school, one more child mother, and all the risks that come with it. The cycle of poverty continues with this single act.”



Other gender issues that have been prevalent during the pandemic have to do with domestic violence, job loss, forced sex work as well as declining access to maternal health facilities which has led to more fatalities.



To support women and girls, Abdulla’s organization has partnered with the European Union (EU) to provide vulnerable households, in informal settlements across Kenya, with cash transfers for several months so they can build resilience against Covid-19, along with a host of other interventions.



“We opted for cash because it gives [them] choices. It allows them the agency to make decisions on how to spend that money and provide for themselves within their preferences. We’re [also] working with the Ministry of Health to help build back confidence in the community that it’s safe for mothers and children to seek medical services,” she explains.



Back in Liberia, which has had a recent legacy of strong female leadership, young women like Kruah-Togba, have also stepped in to support those affected by prevailing Covid-19 policy mandates.



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="682" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Suma-Massaley-1024x682.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-46972" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Suma-Massaley-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Suma-Massaley-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Suma-Massaley-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Suma-Massaley-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Suma-Massaley.jpg 1280w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /><figcaption> Suma Massaley directs volunteers as they prepare for a Covid-19 food drive in Monrovia</figcaption></figure>



Suma Massaley and Benita Urey are two of them.



For 24-year-old Massaley, supporting the elderly was critical. With a bulk of Monrovia’s population living below the poverty line and a considerable majority dependent on the informal sector for an income, the elderly became a high-risk group not only in their susceptibility to Covid-19 but also due to the fact that they had no welfare state to rely on. Through social media, she managed to raise $12,885 to support them.



“I was concerned for elderly folks who are dependent on their children, [many of whom] lost their jobs because of the lockdown or whose businesses had to come to a halt. When we raised our first $2,000, I posted on social media asking Liberians to recommend communities that needed the most help. We are giving each household a bag of rice, a gallon of oil [and] a package of toiletries,” she says.



She says that mentorship from Liberian women in public service including Nobel Laureate and peace activist, Leymah Gbowee, who is credited for having a hand in ending the Civil War in 2003, was pivotal in her project.



“If I didn’t have strong women to look up to, I wouldn’t have dared to take on such a challenge. When I first thought of the idea, I called Leymah and told her [about it]. She was really supportive and mentored me through it all.”



Urey also took on an unexpected role in community leadership with her project ‘Package for Hope’, distributing food parcels to the country’s rural communities.



“Many Liberians live on the money they’ve made during the day, so [when] the State of Emergency was put in place, a majority of them found it extremely hard to make the income they were used to,” she explains.



Through online fundraisers, Urey was able to raise $1,000 and 20 bags of rice within an hour. Eventually, she managed to collect over $3,500 in donations. Living in Monrovia, she felt that the funds would be better served in remote communities, far from the capital. Urey, too, has been inspired by the women she has seen in political leadership and is now paying it forward.



“Although we had a female President for 12 years in Liberia, women joining politics is still something many Liberians don’t want to see. However, women continue to make a huge impact&#8230; I always like to take the path that best fits me and [this has led to other] promising young Liberian girls reaching out to me [asking me] to teach them,” she says.



From their example, we can conclude that, at least in Liberia, women have been at the forefront of national Covid-19 response albeit unofficially. However what about the women who are looking to make an impact in future crises?



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“Although we had a female President for 12 years in Liberia, women joining politics is still something many Liberians don’t want to see.&#8221;</blockquote>



Oyindamola Adefisayo, from Nigeria, is a PhD candidate at the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences in New York City.



She’s seen the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic in the American metropolis and has studied the country’s responses to it, but she has also had her eye on movements back home where she hopes to return after her studies.



However, she is realistic about her options.



“Outside of the few women who have been able to break through ranks and serve politically, I honestly do not see a clear career path for leadership roles in policy outside of taking the NGO route. While there are some astounding women working to make changes in science and public health in Africa, there are simply not enough who are visible to [those of] us who want to follow this career path,” she admits.



Taking the broader view, Sock, in Senegal, argues that while African women in leadership may not be visible, they are effective.



“Policy takes time and I find women are more patient. When the Ebola crisis was no longer an emergency, I saw more women stick with it, [even though] it was no longer in front of the cameras. Already with Covid-19, women [leaders] are engaging with scenarios post-crisis on how to continue strengthening emergency response systems, for example. Women have the ability to think more broadly for their communities. We need to see more of this not only in emergency responses but also in public health leadership,” she insists.



However, in Kenya, Ngong is more positive in her assessment.



“I really think the outlook is bright for women in leadership. I’ve had young women between the ages of 19 to 21 [recently] contact me on becoming their mentor. That, to me, is really inspiring. It could be due to Covid-19 that public health is [becoming] really popular. I think we’ll definitely be seeing shifts in the next five years because of this,” she predicts.



Nonetheless, Adefisayo feels more can be done for the young women looking to join and, hopefully, lead the sector.



“I am inspired by the number of women [that] I see making a great effort in changing the narrative around public health and science policy. However, this effort often seems stifled, more by the lack of interest and commitment to making the necessary changes by government.



“Creating visibility for women involved by building networks could be a feasible way of inspiring the next generation and teaching [them] the lessons [already] learned,” she argues.



While Covid-19 has reignited a silent debate on the role of African women in public health policy, its greatest lessons may lie in what is missing, insists Ngong.



“We have to have data systems! As we start talking about vaccine trials and preparedness for access, my biggest worry is what data we’re going to use in African countries. In terms of gender, we’ll need data to understand which groups we’re going to prioritize.”



As the debate blares on, the conclusion to be made is that women are the beating, but unsung, heart of the continent’s public health systems.



Ensuring that they are not only acknowledged but that their voices are heard during this pandemic, and in those to come, is a kindness long overdue.



– By Marie Shabaya

General View of Mukuru Health Center. Photo: Ed Ram / Concern Worldwide

Is Covid-19 Africa’s Gender Pandemic?

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has an iconic status in Africa and the world. As the first elected female head of state in Africa, she served as the leader of Liberia for two elected terms.
Those terms saw Liberia’s slow and steady march from what was considered a pariah state to a country with what the Mo Ibrahim Foundation calls a “trajectory of progress” that has helped transform its economy, survive the shock of Ebola, and restructure public institutions to respond to the needs of the people.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2018/03/02/the-peoples-president/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The People’s President</a>
It is only fitting that FORBES WOMAN AFRICA gets to meet the Nobel Peace Prize winner in Rwanda, a country known for its high representation of women in Parliament, and where Sirleaf is awarded the Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership at a special ceremony.
Q. Please share your thoughts on the African Union (AU) self-funding reform goal, the Kaberuka Proposal. 
The dependency of the AU on external sources has been the subject of debate for many years, and the thinking of our leaders is that it is better to finance our operations by ourselves and alleviate pressure and dictation from these external sources. On the other hand, we know that to have financial autonomy, every country must be able to contribute consistently. So, the crux of the reform is to change the payment formula and make sure everyone knows they have to pay their part.
When it comes to the Kaberuka suggestion, it meets our objective of financing our organization ourselves. However, it does place a burden on the poorer states&#8230; So, our position with the Kaberuka plan is to study it some more so when we commit, we do not fall into arrears. We want to see the reform implemented, and for it to include cost-reduction in structural aspects such as travel and positions etc., thus reducing the burden on poorer countries.
Q: Will Africa really be able to tackle illicit financial flows? And with women being conspicuously absent from financial decision-making, yet being the greatest losers on such issues, how do we tackle these discrepancies? 
We have to become more accountable and pass stringent mandates in institutions, as well as instill practical capacity to understand the complexities of these financial transactions. Also, we must implement a legal system that will enforce against such flow violations.
Access for women is difficult even in the case of legitimate flows. Even with a growing manufacturing sector and agri-industrial activities usually manned by women, access is still limited, for rural women particularly.
There is a big effort being put in by different regional institutions; in Liberia’s case, GIABA, the Intergovernmental Action Group Against Money Laundering in West Africa, has been analyzing the flows and determining what is illicit. 
But it is up to women to stand up and put other women in leadership roles, because the record is clear: women are more credit-worthy when it comes to financial transactions, and this suggests the more women there are heading these institutions, the more we can be assured that regulatory laws will be more effective.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/06/08/womens-leadership-is-under-attack-globally/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: &#8216;Women’s Leadership Is Under Attack Globally’</a>
Q: What are your plans? How would you encourage young women to follow in your footsteps, or even create their own path? 
We are establishing the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development. The activities will center around five themes that will promote women in business; women in leadership; women in fragile states; women in migration; and education for women and girls. We will use the life experiences of women who have excelled in these areas. For the young women, I say to all, be self-confident and pursue your goals&#8230;Let us be bold as women.
&#8211; Interviewed by Laura Rwiliriza

UN-GENERAL ASSEMBLY-LIBERIA

First African Elected Female Head of State Urges Women to Be Bold

It’s been quite an ascent for George Weah – from international football star to president of his country, Liberia. He was sworn in on January 22 to a crowd of adoring supporters who voted for a change, as well as heads of states and football stars, including Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o.
From one of Monrovia’s poorest slums, Weah made a name for himself as a talented footballer at Monaco at the age of 21, and went on to play for some of Europe’s biggest clubs, such as Paris Saint-Germain and AC Milan. He won the prestigious Ballon d’Or and FIFA Player of the Year awards in 1995. During his illustrious career that ended in 2003 he also led Liberia’s national team. Musa Shannon, a Liberian businessman and former teammate with Liberia’s national team says Weah’s temperament on and off the field was unparalleled.
“He was inspirational and expected nothing but excellence from all his teammates. He was able to get the best out of everyone. He never took shortcuts.”
Considered the choice of the masses, Weah’s humble beginnings combined with his international celebrity status earned him tremendous support from the mostly youthful Liberian population, especially the poor. In the December run-off elections, Weah easily earned 61.5% of the votes over then Vice-President Joseph Boakai.
“He is the people’s president, he is the one they have chosen,” says Shannon.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2018/02/20/new-dawn-zimbabwe-rosy/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: A New Dawn For Zimbabwe, But Is It Rosy?</a>
Weah’s win marks the first peaceful transition in decades for the Liberian people. “We have arrived at this transition neither by violence, nor by force of arms. Not a single life was lost in the process… this transition was achieved by the free and democratic will of the Liberian people,” said Weah in his inauguration speech.
Although he moved from sport to politics, the transition hasn’t been sudden, nor without struggle. In 2005, Weah ran unsuccessfully against Noble Laureate President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who made history as the first democratically-elected female African president. Through his party, the Congress for Democratic Change, Weah ran again in 2011 as running-mate to Winston Tubman, losing again to Johnson Sirleaf.
Citing inexperience and a lack of formal education as the main reason for his losses, Weah earned a degree in business and took a seat on the senate in 2014.
“People speak of George Weah as though he doesn’t have a political history, so that if he doesn’t succeed they will say he was new to the game,” says Ezekiel Pajibo, political analyst and human rights activist. “He has been in politics for 12 years and there is no evidence of anything he has done for the Liberian people.”
Expectations are high. Weah promised jobs for the youth and poverty alleviation. Of Liberia’s 4.6 million inhabitants, over 60% are under 25, many of whom voted for him in the hopes of a quick reduction in unemployment.
He inherits a country that has survived two bloody civil wars between 1989 and 2003, a fledgling economy and a young population that is largely unemployed. The Ebola epidemic, which killed over 5,000 people, also showed cracks in the healthcare system. The country still does not have adequate running water or electricity since the civil war, and properly staffed schools remain a problem.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2018/02/15/zumas-time-mean-south-africa/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Zuma&#8217;s time is up &#8211; but does it mean for South Africa?</a>
In his inauguration speech, he made a series of promises.
Firstly, he would stamp out corruption. Secondly, he would assist the private sector. Weah says he wants Liberians to stop being “spectators” in their economy while foreigners control the majority of their resources. Thirdly, he will focus on vocational training for the youth.
Promises must be followed by action. His party has been criticized by the opposition for not clearly outlining how these goals will be achieved.
There are also doubts about Weah garnering the same amount of respect from the international community as his predecessor. “He has to exude leadership capability and have presence in front of the international community. Johnson Sirleaf, as the first female president in Africa, brought international goodwill towards Liberia. She also had a history of working in development structures. President George Weah has none of that,” says Pajibo.
Weah achieved more than was expected of him as a footballer. Liberians will be hoping he can do the same as their country’s president. &#8211; Written by Lamelle Shaw

The People’s President

Not too long ago, West Africa – from regional behemoth Nigeria to smaller states like Liberia and Sierra Leone – was bedeviled by coups and civil wars. Now, there is not a major civil war in the region and it has been a very long time since there was a coup.
A sign of the times was the recent, and peaceful, elections in once war-torn Liberia. There have, however, been agitations in Togo and Guinea, with leaders and families staying in power too long. It used to be the case that longtime leaders provided an air of stability. Entrenched over time, the price of this seeming peace has been the commonwealth, with their countries’ resources concentrated in the hands of ruling family members and their cronies.
Things are beginning to change though. In January last year, Gambians kicked longtime leader, Yahya Jammeh, out of power. A peaceful resolution to what could have been a major crisis was aided by the deft handling of leaders in the region under the aegis of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Now, West African leaders know that if they want to rule, the only route is via the ballot box. The situation in Côte d’Ivoire, where a heated succession battle is ongoing, needs to be closely monitored, but peace is unlikely to be disturbed.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/10/30/west-africa-less-attractive-investors/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Why Is West Africa Less Attractive To Investors?</a>
Months ago, Togolese, perhaps taking a cue from Gambians, took to the streets to stop an attempt by their second generation president from the Gnassingbé family to extend his rule. In 2005, Faure Gnassingbé succeeded his father, Eyadéma Gnassingbé, who had been in power since 1967 until his death. The protests were effective. In September, the Togolese parliament adopted proposals that would limit the number of terms any individual can serve as president to two five-year terms; albeit a boycott by opposition MPs meant a referendum would be needed to change the constitution, since the parliamentary vote fell short of the four-fifths majority needed.
The opposition’s gripe is that President Gnassingbé would still be able to contest and stay in power for an additional 10 years, after already serving three terms. Should that be the case, his family would have ruled Togo for at least 60 years.
Further west, Guineans also took to the streets over fears that President Alpha Condé might change the constitution to allow him to contest for a third term in 2020, after already serving consecutive five-year terms. They were also venting over economic difficulties amid vast mineral wealth – a third of the world’s aluminium ore bauxite reserves are in Guinea.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2017/07/20/tough-times-cocoa-bean-counters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Tough Times For Cocoa Bean Counters</a>
Ordinarily, these are populations that tend to be reserved; in part due to their culture, but also because of a history of crackdowns by security agencies. That they are now finding their voice is a positive. It speaks to a desire for a better life, rule of law and a greater say in how their countries are run. There is clearly a democratic wave moving across the region.
Incidentally, Togo was recently feted by the Americans, who held the 16th forum of their African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade policy in Lome. Togo was granted a so-called textile passport that would allow it enjoy preferential treatment under AGOA for the export of textile and apparel products to the United States.
Foreign investors would do well to pay heed to the smaller West African countries. Their relative stability and eager governments could prove to be profitable for investors looking to set up bases in low cost environments with the ability to serve the entire region. &#8211; Written by Rafiq Raji

First Peace, Then Progress

It’s a dark and strange way to earn a living – in which you can die. If you survive, it is often prostrate on a pile of pills or swimming in an ocean of alcohol.
It is a painful story for one of Africa’s most accomplished journalists, Angus Shaw, to tell. It is also painful to listen to his excruciating experiences.
“A warzone produces two types of journalistic victims – one is shot at and injured or dies and the other type ends up screwed up in their brains,” says Shaw.
“I realized that you can’t drown your sorrows because your sorrows in most cases have learned how to swim. I try not to worry about things I cannot change and always remember that as a journalist my role is to shed light and not to bring change.”
Shaw had his own fight with alcohol. In covering wars in three decades, he says it was not all gloomy.
<div id="attachment_4869" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4869" class="wp-image-4869 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/006-300x175.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="175" />United Nations media accreditation card, Somalia. Sgt. Rocko who typed it out clearly wasn’t familiar with the first name Angus</div>
“People should know that the African story is not all about wars, poverty and savagery. Journalism for me has been enriching, rewarding, except financially,” he chuckles.
Shaw has been on the frontline in a string of Africa’s nastiest wars: Liberia, Rwanda’s genocide, Ethiopia, Somalia, two wars in Mozambique. In Zimbabwe, the country of his birth, he saw war as both a journalist and a conscript.
The story of the Shaw family is intertwined with a century of tumult in Africa. His grandfather came north from South Africa with the pioneer column in 1890. Settlers were looking for gold and diamonds but ended up farming. Shaw’s grandfather and father prospered in tobacco and lived the life of Riley.
“My father was part of the Salisbury Club and, like many of his peers, he drank hard and worked hard. Due to his drinking lifestyle one day he forgot to come and pick me up from school and only showed up late and drunk.”
Shaw senior also smashed his car into the Salisbury Club, a gentlemen’s club in Harare, after a few drinks with one wheel of his car landing in the hotel lobby. The authorities took his driver’s licence. So, he had to be driven later by his chauffer over 1,500 miles from his Miegunyah farm, 30 kilometers from Harare to Durban, for the Durban July horse race.
Along the way, Shaw’s father put money away for his son to choose between business or school. Shaw chose the latter and went to a minor public school in England.
“After a short stint in the United Kingdom, I returned to Southern Rhodesia, where I would start my journalism career at the Rhodesian Herald in 1970. Those days there were no journalism schools so one had to go for attachment,” he says.
Shaw was soon thrust into reporting the violent bush war leading up to Mozambican independence in 1975. When Samora Machel took over Mozambique, a civil war broke out that would last nearly three decades.
“In Mozambique we were traveling in the company of the Zimbabwean forces and UN peacekeepers. The Zimbabwean forces were mainly protecting their pipeline, while Samora Machel was fighting to keep control from the Renamo rebels.”
After Mozambique, the Rhodesian army drafted him to fight the guerrillas back home.
After he served his time in the rank, he left to interview nationalist exiles in Lusaka and Dar es Salaam. It was not easy.
“Every able bodied white man going through an airport needed to have a clearance,” he says.
“All of the nationalist leaders whose names are inscribed on roads in the capital, Harare, related to me on first name basis.”
They included Robert Mugabe, Josiah Tongogara and Simon Mazorodze.
“I first met Robert Mugabe when I had gone to the townships. I asked if I could interview him and he said he could only talk to me if I arranged a press conference for him in the city center, which I did.”
His experiences in his country’s war would lead to his first book- Kandaya, Another Time, Another Place.
When he moved on it was to the hell of Idi Amin’s Uganda.
“Kampala was on fire, the city was in ruins as there were bodies all over. What I saw made World War Two look elementary,” he says.
The 1978-79 Ugandan war pitted the Tanzanian liberation forces against Amin’s army.
“There were mass graves and as we accompanied the liberation forces to Luzira prison where opponents of Amin were caged, one could not fight back emotions. Prisoners were starved and in one of those prison cells, I threw up. It’s all about wealth, power and corruption,” says Shaw, whom many journalist friends believe is too ideological.
His memories of the Ugandan war would lead to his second book, written in a hotel room in London, Last To Kill, The Rise And Fall Of Idi Amin.
“I wrote the last chapter of this book in the plane to London. A limousine waited for me at Heathrow Airport and with Concorde the book was on its way the following day to New York. Four days later, the book was on sale.”
There was no stopping after Uganda.
<div id="attachment_4868" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-4868" class="wp-image-4868 size-medium" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0005-300x191.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="191" />Media evacuation from Rwanda aboard a U.N. C130 cargo plane</div>
“In 1979, I also went to cover the Somalia-Ethiopia war. This was a conventional desert war and because of a 16-hour drive on a tractor when one was injured, many died before they could reach medical services. The hum of trucks, tractors and aircrafts drowned the heat of the desert. Journalists were isolated as fighting forces didn’t want anyone outside to know what was happening,” he says.
Shaw returned to Somalia after a clan war broke out. This war almost took his life.
“This was during the famine relief efforts that turned nasty. There were Americans, Germans, Canadians and UN representatives. Americans took a lot of causalities and it’s the same war that Mujahedeen shot down an American Black Hawk,” he says.
Hollywood made a movie out of this, called Black Hawk Down. The reality was worse.
“Americans were sending bodies back home in body bags. One African American said to me ‘we came to help our brothers but they are shooting us’.”
Shaw says war reporting can be seductive as well as disruptive.
“I remember being in Nairobi and felt it strange not to hear any gunshots.”
“I was lucky not to be killed; it was dangerous that we had to always move with bodyguards. Out of seven foreign correspondents that were covering the clan war in Somalia, four died in the country.”
Then came Rwanda in 1994.
“I spent several months there, I saw nice people killing nice people. I cannot describe the experience,” he says.
Nearly a million people are believed to have died in this ethnic war in 100 days.
“The United Nations had burned their fingers in Somalia and when they sent peacekeepers in Rwanda, they didn’t send enough. We went to various massacre sights, in some places we saw people running through the bushes with machetes. In Rwanda we saw piles and piles of bodies.”
What Shaw saw in Rwanda would never leave him.
“I have never been a church person, when you see such horror; you look to the skies and ask God what’s going on. That is where I saw that human nature is imperfect,” he says.
After traveling and covering wars it was time to write about events in his country.
“Between 1988 and 1998 we experienced a lot of multicultural and multiracial relations. The country was prospering but as Mugabe started losing power, all that changed,” says Shaw.
Shaw survived war, but in peacetime Zimbabwe, he was arrested three times. Mugabe saw journalists as agents of the West and supporters of his rival, Morgan Tsvangirai. From his journalism experiences sprang a third book, Mutoko Madness, A Memoir Of Angus Shaw.
“Seven years ago, I went into rehabilitation after a friend convinced me to. I was taught to count my blessings.”
He also believes the changing nature of news gathering led to him being rendered redundant.
“The media has changed so much; I am an old newspaper guy. News agencies are having a hard time. You can’t write a story with 700 words. I like ink on my fingers.”
Shaw has proved this in the dangerous business of shedding light in Africa.

Shedding Light  On Renewable Energy

‘You Can’t Drown Your Sorrows; They Have Learned How To Swim’

It’s only been a month since Liberia declared itself Ebola-free. Just when you think there is rest and respite, a woman walks into the small transit unit set up in the country’s capital Monrovia. She’s weak and is soon diagnosed positive with Ebola. She breaks down with the volunteer doctors from Medecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF), or Doctors Without Borders. The disease has squirmed its way back – again.
It’s heart-wrenching, but for fieldworker Claire Waterhouse, every day is filled with disease and death, and the sorrow of families torn apart.
“It was so hard not to be able to go in there and comfort her or hug or do something to help. She died a few days later and I will never forget her face,” says Waterhouse.
Working in the Central African Republic (CAR), Waterhouse was called to action when Ebola hit Liberia. After working there for a couple of months, she moved to Guinea.
“Both countries were hard hit by poverty even before Ebola and had just been starting to progress, so to see the disappointment and heartbreak of normal citizens about yet another big setback in their development is really sad. It’s clearly a very personal struggle for people and of course a very scary time for them,” she says.
It’s harrowing. New cases feel like a personal failure; survivors struggle with post-traumatic stress, medical symptoms and have difficulties reintegrating; and doctors are unable to comfort patients without protective gear.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30671 alignleft" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Claire-5.jpg 682w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />
“After having Ebola, you become immune, so we often employed survivors to help comfort new patients and look after children who were sick. They were some of the bravest people I’ve ever met. They faced their worst nightmares by returning to the place where they had been so sick and seen so much death but they still came and helped us every day.
“One of the favorite parts of my job is I get to interact with lots of staff – ambulance drivers who tell you how terrified they are transporting sick people but who do it anyway because they want to help their country, nurses who tell you about their brothers and sisters who died from the disease but who kept working through their grief to try to save others,” she says.
The epidemic has taken a toll as the virus continues to spread.
“I see the full picture and get really worried if we’ll ever manage to beat Ebola. But I believe from the bottom of my heart that in the end, we will get there&#8230; we have to.”

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Fighting  Fear, 24/7

Sadly, after being declared Ebola-free on May 9, following days with no new infections, Liberia is again recording cases of Ebola, according to Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).
“Though disappointing, the re-emergence of Ebola in Liberia is not altogether unexpected,” says Carissa Guild, medical manager of MSF programs in Liberia.
“The risk of new cases still exists as long as the virus is present in the region.”
The virus was detected in the swab of a deceased 17-year-old boy on the outskirts of the capital Monrovia.
For now, MSF is running a 69-bed paediatric hospital in Monrovia to help restore the secondary health system. In the grounds of the hospital, MSF also runs a clinic specifically for Ebola survivors who suffer from a number of health complications following their recovery.
“Going from hundreds of cases to 30 per week took considerable time and massive resources, yet getting from 30 to zero requires the most meticulous, difficult work of all,” says Dr Joanne Liu, International President of MSF.
“No one was prepared for the scale of this epidemic, the largest in human history, nor that it would last so long. But we cannot lose focus now and must push on until the entire region is declared Ebola free.”
Liberian president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf calls the role of communities in the fight against Ebola “a big lesson for all of us in leadership”.
“Our communities rose to the challenge. They took ownership. Together, with the right resources and the right education of how to handle the sick, and the deaths, we overcame. Our leadership, not only from you, from the church too, put together with our communities, made for a formidable force,” says Sirleaf.

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Ebola’s Comeback

We meet Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf on the sidelines of the 25th African Union summit in June in Johannesburg, South Africa. With the theme this year focused on women’s empowerment and the role women can play in advancing Africa’s development, the summit was well-represented by African presidents including Johnson-Sirleaf, the continent’s first female president.
We meet the pint-sized powerhouse at the Johannesburg Chamber of Commerce – where the Liberian delegation was wooing South African investors to Liberia – flanked by her leading men in investment promotion, the Minister of Finance and the Head of the National Investment Commission.
Despite a heavy diary weighed down by a slew of presidential engagements, Johnson-Sirleaf is keen to not let the opportunity to sell the Liberian investment case to potential investors slip by.
“We’re very well-endowed with natural resources. We have an abundance of iron ore, gold, forest resources that represent almost half of all the biodiversity in West Africa, an unbroken coastline that gives a marine economy, and of course agriculture…we are well on our way in rebuilding this economy,” says the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize winner.
It’s a hard sell. Liberia continues to feature amongst the world’s poorest countries. The civil war that engulfed the country for 14 years, following a coup d’ etat in 1980, not only claimed thousands of lives but also stole the country’s economic potential. Economic infrastructure was destroyed, foreign direct investment ground to a halt, capital made a beeline for other markets, and government coffers dried up. Liberia’s economy came to a standstill.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-30590" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/465692222-300x123.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="123" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/465692222-300x123.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/465692222-600x247.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/465692222-768x316.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/465692222-1024x421.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/465692222.jpg 1023w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
But Johnson-Sirleaf is adamant this is not an economy to be overlooked.
“The Minister of Finance has been working with the World Bank and they tell me that we have moved from negative growth of 0.4% to 1.4%. I’ve told them quite clearly that I don’t agree with those projections. In the next two years we will be growing at least 6 to 7%. There is no reason why we can’t hit double digits in the next 10 years.”
Johnson-Sirleaf claimed the presidential seat in 2005 on a campaign card that promised to rebuild the war-torn country. She held onto her seat in 2011 following her re-election into her second and final term. But in the home run of her presidential race, the Ebola outbreak hit the country and her leadership was tested more than ever before.
“This was a strange disease. We ran away. Our people ran away. Nobody knew what it was. We were all frightened. So we must expect other people were frightened including those from the African Union. But as soon we, Liberians, took it upon ourselves to step up and fight this, others saw our courage and when they joined us, they joined us with force.”
Johnson-Sirleaf insists assistance of the African Union was key in helping Liberia wrestle Ebola to the ground. But Liberia does not enjoy the luxury of resting on its laurels, with news of fresh Ebola cases, and given that it shares borders with Guinea and Ivory Coast, where new infections are still being reported as recently as June.
Johnson-Sirleaf has held onto the Presidential seat for almost a decade. Her run comes to an end this year. Asked whether her political legacy has lived up to the title that always precedes her of being the first female president in Africa, she says: “Only history and you can judge me. I have done my best.”

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The Blood, Sweat And  Fear That Shook  A Nation

I like to talk to the common people, I don’t like politics.”
Mae Azango sits on the edge of her bed in her old home that is wedged in a rocky enclave between the gray United States embassy and the modern apartments occupied by expatriate workers in Mamba Point, the poshest part of Monrovia, Liberia. Azango’s larger-than-life personality fills every inch of the dim, cramped, lemon-colored room where she lives with her 11-year-old daughter, Madasi. Within five minutes Azango has hijacked the interview and is yelling out the story of how she came to be one of the best-known female journalists in Liberia. Without a hint of irony, Azango refers to herself in the third person, claims to be a household name and universally feared by Liberia’s political establishment; then announces to President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that she will never compromise herself by taking a job from her.
Some might say Azango likes to bluff or show off, but the 41-year-old single mother is one of a new generation of headstrong female journalists, who are not afraid to compete with their male counterparts or reel off lists of their achievements.
“This breed is more aggressive than what we had before,” says Elizabeth Hoff, who was the first female managing editor of a Liberian newspaper and the first woman to be elected president of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL).
Hoff, who now serves as deputy information minister, remained an editor throughout the heat of Liberia’s 14-year civil war that ended in 2003. She says a lot has changed since she worked in journalism, when many women left the profession out of fear for their safety. Those who stayed on fought sexism and struggled to win respect from their male colleagues.
Azango is one of a handful of female journalists in Liberia who have not only earned respect from their male colleagues, but also international recognition. She is part of New Narratives, an organization that supports independent media in Liberia. Founded and headed by Prue Clarke, an Australian foreign correspondent who reported in Africa for a number of years, the organization was set up in 2010, with funding from a Goldman Sachs partner. New Narratives teamed up the muckraking daily newspaper FrontPage Africa, for which Azango and the other fellows work.
These reporters have driven much of the hard-hitting reporting on violence against women and girls in Liberia, ranging from stories on child rape, teen prostitution, maternal health, corruption and education, for which they have won domestic and international accolades.
Azango received the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) International Press Freedom award in 2012 for her controversial reporting on female circumcision, a practice that takes place in the traditional Sande societies that exist within 10 of Liberia’s 16 tribes. She says she received death threats and was forced into hiding, moving from house to house and avoiding the newspaper office for a month. Mohamed Keita, the advocacy coordinator for CPJ’s Africa Program, described Azango as “outspoken”, “fearless”, and “persistent.”
But this was not the first time Azango had experienced threats of violence. Like her other female colleagues who are part of New Narratives, Azango’s experiences of coming of age during the war compelled her to become a journalist and report on the struggles of women and girls.
Azango recounts, in vivid detail, a memory from the early days of the war, when she was 18-years-old and pregnant with her first child, Victor, who is now 22. She says the pregnancy saved her from being forcibly taken as a girlfriend by a rebel.
Charles Taylor’s forces had closed in on Monrovia and Azango was picking potatoes around her home. She kept crossing a checkpoint that was controlled by a fierce commander.
“‘Why am I keep seeing a pregnant woman?’ he yelled. ‘I am looking for a young girl and she is spoiled, why is she in front of me? At the count of five if you don’t disappear I will spray you.’ I was running like a cut, dead dog,” says Azango.
With a father who was an associate Supreme Court justice and a mother who was a teacher, Azango initially aspired to be a hotel manager. But after 10 years of war in her homeland, Azango’s memories of a privileged childhood were replaced with raw experiences of being a poor refugee in neighboring Côte d’Ivoire.
When she returned from exile in 2000, Azango studied journalism at the University of Liberia and has never looked back. Unlike most journalists who focus on the sensational stories surrounding the political establishment, Azango writes about the masses, the ordinary Liberians who live on less than a dollar a day.
“I like to talk to the common people, I don’t like politics,” Azango tells FORBES WOMAN AFRICA. “Why? Because I feel politics come and go.”
But she is committed to journalism that delivers political change. Her reporting attracted so much international attention that the government called for an end to female genital mutilation, although Azango says it continues. Azango’s report on the alleged rape of a 13-year-old girl by a police officer who walked free for over three months, led to the his arrest.
While the horrific violence perpetrated against women during Liberia’s civil war has come to an end, many Liberian women and girls continue to struggle with sexism and abuse and it doesn’t stop in the workplace. One renowned journalist and editor, who died recently, even had a policy of not hiring female reporters.
Wade Williams, 31, is one of two female newsroom chiefs in Liberia, also a New Narratives fellow and Azango&#8217;s colleague and friend. Her past three years at FrontPage Africa have proved challenging, with some of her male colleagues hesitant to accept her leading role. But after three years in the job, the reporters have grown to respect her and women have taken a leading role in the newspaper headed by journalist and editor Rodney Sieh.
Last year Williams became the second Liberian woman to win Journalist of the Year at the PUL awards, since the press union was established in 1964.
For Clarke, these achievements have led to a major shift in how female journalists are perceived in Liberia.
“The sheer fact that women, who were once considered worthy of being nothing more than anchors and doing entertainment, are now breaking the most important stories in Liberia and are among the most credible journalists in Liberia has revolutionized everything,” Clarke tells FORBES WOMAN AFRICA.
Back in Azango’s room we discuss the future of her career. She is uncertain as to whether she wants to continue being a journalist or become an activist working with abused women. The line between activism and journalism has always been a thin one for Azango.
As we leave her house she stands on the stoop and yells, “thank you for taking up my whole day,” in a sarcastic tone, pretending not to have enjoyed telling her story. Dressed in leggings, a bright red t-shirt and floral hair tie, Azango is surrounded by children and women with white knuckles rubbing wet clothes against washing racks. She flashes her broad smile and flips out a nonchalant wave. Perhaps she has reason to bluff.

Words Mightier Than The Sword

Divine Key Anderson, a young Liberian filmmaker, stands under a faded grey palaver hut at the University of Liberia in Monrovia. With wide eyes and animated expression, he speaks passionately about the revolutionary potential of film and the film school he set up with a small grant. The audience, made up of a group of students and civil society advocates, listen attentively before posing questions to the filmmaker about his project. Anderson is followed by a young man who has a proposal for holding Monrovia’s magisterial courts accountable, through allowing the citizens who use them to assess them through a scorecard system—a radical idea in a country where there is little justice.
Welcome to the Accountability Collective, a monthly meeting of Liberians working to develop innovative ideas to hold those in power accountable and create change in a nation where corruption remains public enemy number one.
<div id="attachment_2435" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2435" class="size-medium wp-image-2435" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/131022-wingard-liberia-0255-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" />Accountapreneurship</div>
The Accountability Collectives are organized by the Accountability Lab, the brainchild of Blair Glencorse, a 34-year-old international relations graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) with a decade of experience in international development. The organization incubates small-scale, low-cost entrepreneurial ideas that encourage accountability, an idea Glencorse terms accountrapreneurship.
While the Lab is still in its infancy and operating in two developing nations, Liberia and Nepal, Glencorse hopes that it will evolve into a movement that challenges the aid industry, an industry that he argues more often breeds corruption and dependence, rather than democracy and development.
In fact, the project emerged out of Glencorse’s experiences working in an aid industry that he argues is more preoccupied with big budgets rather than tangible results. He saw money being wasted, the same schools being built twice because of corruption and mismanagement.
“Despite rhetoric about ownership and alignment, I think many of these larger organizations still are sadly caught up in measuring results through numbers rather than through impact; and managers are promoted on how much they spend rather than how well that money is spent,” Glencorse tells FORBES AFRICA.
<div id="attachment_2436" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2436" class="size-medium wp-image-2436" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/131022-wingard-liberia-0426-300x189.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="189" />Accountability Collective</div>
“The overall effect is that you have often very large projects, which these organizations cannot afford to admit don’t work; and they are also accountable and answerable to taxpayers in the West more than they are to the citizens in the countries where they are actually working.”
With the offer of a small amount of funding from private donors and a crowd-funding campaign online, Glencorse set off on a new path. Unlike his developmental counterparts who ride around in white four-wheel drives, Glencorse zips through the streets of Monrovia dressed in collared shirts and slacks on the back of motorcycle taxis on a different mission.
International non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and dollars are ubiquitous in Liberia, the small West African nation that was wracked by a 14-year civil war that left its infrastructure and institutions in tatters and its communities divided and population traumatized. The crossroads of Monrovia’s main thoroughfare, Tubman Boulevard, are punctuated with the dusty signs and slogans of these organizations. It is a route that ascends into a crescendo of blue and white buildings that belong to various UN agencies. Despite this assistance from international donors, Liberia is perceived by its citizens as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International, and graft and predatory behavior was found to be widespread among the police force according to a recent Human Rights Watch report.
Yet despite its ongoing challenges with corruption, Liberia received $765 million in development assistance in 2011 according to figures from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a remarkable amount for a nation with a population just short of four million. The United Nations Mission in Liberia, one of the longest serving and largest missions in sub-Saharan Africa, has a current troop presence of around 7,500 and costs $500 million annually to sustain. One former senior diplomat referred to Monrovia as the workshop capital of the world, underscoring how overrun the city had become with NGOs.
For Glencorse, the heavy presence of NGOs in post-conflict countries like Liberia often undermines accountability both at a local and governmental level, something he found from working on fragile and conflict-affected states at the World Bank.
<div id="attachment_2438" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2438" class="size-medium wp-image-2438" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/131022-wingard-liberia-0186-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />Accountapreneurship</div>
“The amount of money that has flowed into this country [Liberia] since the end of the war 10 years ago has changed incentives so that aid has become a business rather than a process to help people improve their lives. What this means from a Liberian perspective is you can make a lot of money in the non-profit world by telling foreigners what they would like to hear rather than doing work that would actually improve the lives of Liberians,” Glencorse says.
“The government has become a lot more accountable to external actors rather than its own citizens.”
While Liberians remain deeply suspicious of the political establishment and those in power, Glencorse argues that due to Liberia’s long-standing patronage networks, corruption is rife at all levels of society. Thus, his approach starts from the bottom up instead.
“In somewhere like Liberia it needs to begin with this sense of personal responsibility. Accountability, which is synonymous with corruption for many people, is seen as something that happens among big decision makers in government and possibly the private sector and not actually something that individuals see as applicable to themselves. So there is a sense of othering that takes place,” he says.
So what is the solution?
Innovative and creative ideas that encourage accountability and engage the community at a local level, argues Glencorse.
“It’s about collective solutions to shared problems; it’s not about pointing fingers at individuals and saying you are corrupt,” Glencorse says.
The Lab provides small grants of up to $2,000 on the basis that the ideas they support are feasible, scalable and sustainable.
In its early stages, the Lab received proposals for workshops with complementary lunches, awareness raising campaigns that involved printing banners and t-shirts, a reflection of the lack of imagination amongst many NGOs operating in Liberia.
After a while Glencorse and his team took a more targeted approach, and focused on engaging civil society groups, musicians, artists, university students, journalists and young people who have proposed ideas for projects. Among the projects the Lab supports is Anderson’s Accountability Film School that helps ordinary Liberians to create small films that explore issues of corruption and accountability using narrative and role-play.
“Since 1847 we have been writing papers and not much has changed in this country and that is because 70 percent of our population are illiterate (…) But with film even a blind man can see,” says Anderson who believes that film can be instrumental to change in Liberia. Liberia’s adult literacy rate is 61%.
The Lab held its first accountability film festival this year and will hold several more in the coming year.
The Lab also supports an SMS information system called the Tell-it-True project at schools and universities in Monrovia, where students can make inquiries and lodge complaints about everything from sexual harassment by teachers to lack of attendance.
Among other projects are a community mediation project that looks at ways to solve problems between neighbors outside of the justice system; a project where the well-known citizen journalist Alfred Sirleaf informs the public about laws and access to services on a newspaper made out of a chalkboard sitting on the edge of Tubman Boulevard; as well as a radio program called Oil Talk, that is broadcast in counties whose shorelines border areas of ocean that multinational companies are currently exploring for oil.
But the long-term sustainability of these projects poses a major challenge for Glencorse and the Lab.
“Accountability is more difficult than business in that regard,” he says.
“There is no user-fee model that we might be able to use for some of the ideas. Sustainability is a bit more difficult but it is something we are thinking hard about.”
The Lab is planning to raise funds through accountability bus tours and postcards that showcase its work in Liberia and Nepal to tourists and delegations that pass through.
On the future of the organization, Glencorse says he would like to see the Lab and its ideas exported to neighboring countries like Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. But he wants the organization to remain a grassroots one. Glencorse and his team are currently devising a toolkit so that small groups in different countries can create their own Labs.
“We would like to scale the vision. We don’t want to become a big bureaucratic organization because that would begin to take away from what makes what we are trying to do unique,” says Glencorse.

First Shots In A War  On Corruption

George Weah, the Liberian soccer legend-turned- politician, barrels out onto the sports field dressed in an electric-blue jersey. Flanked by his entourage, tussling photographers and journalists, the towering 48 year old rolls forth with the Ballon d’Or, the trophy he claimed in 1995 while playing for AC Milan, hoisted on his broad shoulders. The crowd roars and his long-time political rival, Liberia’s formidable commander-in-chief President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, follows behind dressed in a black and white lapa suit.
Weah and Johnson Sirleaf deliver muffled messages about reconciliation and the president’s column-like security guard, wearing aviator sunglasses, raises the glinting solid-gold ball into the overcast sky. Weah, the only African to win the prize, did so during the heat of Liberia’s civil war that raged for 14 years and left 250,000 dead, the nation’s infrastructure in ruins and its people deeply traumatized. The soccer star hauled the prize back from his home in Florida in the United States, where he spends at least half of his time, as a symbol of peace.
Retired and current soccer celebrities from across the continent and government officials take to the field for a friendly match organized by Weah, who last December accepted his appointment by Johnson Sirleaf as peace ambassador. Weah is now the face of the government’s latest attempt to reconcile a nation that remains deeply divided a decade after the gunfire ceased and former president Charles Taylor went into exile. But among the spectators it is clear, reconciliation or not, their main purpose is to see Weah, or King George as he is known to Liberians.
<div id="attachment_31208" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31208" class="size-medium wp-image-31208" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0623-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0623-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0623-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0623-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0623.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Monrovia, Liberia &#8211; June 22, 2013: Football game organized by George Weah at SKD. (Photograph by Morgana Wingard).</div>
After a failed attempt at the presidency in 2005 and the vice presidency in 2011, Weah is now tasked with helping drive forward the stalled process to reunite the nation. Many Liberians remain cynical about the reconciliation process after a controversial Truth and Reconciliation Commission, whose findings and recommendations were sidelined because of legal issues and the indictment of those among the political establishment. This is a major challenge that Weah has to confront.
A new 18-year reconciliation roadmap has been launched placing an emphasis on restorative, rather than retributive, justice.
The reconciliation process suffered a blow last year when peace activist Leymah Gbowee, who was also the head of a previous initiative, resigned after criticizing Johnson Sirleaf of nepotism and her failure to address present-day issues such as corruption. In a statement, Gbowee referred to “differences in opinion on the pathway for national healing and reconciliation” as her reason for stepping down.
When asked whether he is concerned about the reasons for Gbowee’s resignation, Weah says: “She took a long time to notice that.”
Weah’s critics say that he is not capable of the role and that he was appointed to appease young Liberians who are angry with Johnson Sirleaf’s government.
Critics such as Dan Saryee, a Liberian democracy and rights activist, says that Weah lacks a vision for national reconciliation. “Reconciliation is not just about having a sports jamboree. Sports do not address the reconciliation concerns of a farmer in Grand Kru, Gbarpolu or a fisherman in River Cess or Bassa.”
But Weah is confident that his previous work as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador during the civil conflict, his role in helping encourage former fighters and child soldiers to disarm and his rapport with ordinary Liberians was the reason he was chosen by the president and why he is the best man for the job.
“I was the right person, because of the love that people have for me, and the way I can persuade people. I accepted it because this is the country I love. I want to see the country peaceful and stable,” Weah tells FORBES AFRICA in an exclusive interview at his residence in Rehab, a suburb on the outskirts of Monrovia.
In the coming months, Weah will embark on a ‘Listening Tour’ across 16 counties to talk to Liberians about their grievances and also facilitate dialogue between tribes that have been in conflict in the past, before forwarding his findings to the government. A similar exercise was undertaken by Gbowee during her time as head of the reconciliation initiative.
Weah is seen by many of his supporters as a man of the masses, the less-than-a-dollar-a-day Liberians who eke out an existence in a society that still remains deeply polarized economically.
Born and raised by his grandmother in a slum in Bushrod Island, and discovered and nurtured by President Samuel Doe, who was brutally executed at the beginning of the war, Weah represents an impossible dream, but nevertheless a dream for Liberians, who until the end of the conflict in 2003, had little to hope for.
“His is the only face we see to redeem us,” says Samuel Kun, a 28-year-old sociology student at the University of Liberia.
“Weah is from the ghetto so he knows what we are going through and he can [empathize] with us.
If he’s our president I’m sure things can change, it might not be constant but I’m sure he will do his best.”
Weah’s home in Monrovia is nothing like the one in which he grew up. Concertina wire crowns the high maroon wall that surrounds his compound and is manned by guards wearing blue polo shirts and sports caps that read ‘security’.
I interview Weah in a lounge room overlooking a tiled pool, and fitted with the trappings of masculine affluence—a wooden bar, a pool table, a flat-screen TV, modern black couches backed by a window that looks out onto three luxury cars. Weah wears a crème shirt with jeans and a fitted charcoal suit jacket and holds his pair of reading glasses in his hand. I ask whether his loafers are Gucci.
“That’s hard work, not government money,” he responds sharply.
Regardless of Weah’s flamboyant lifestyle, he is seen as one of the few Liberians to have earned his riches the honest way—through hard work, success, talent and a bit of good luck—in a country where the political class and those in power are still largely viewed as a league of rogues. In 2012, Transparency International named Liberia and Mongolia as the most corrupt countries in the world in its Global Corruption Barometer.
Many of Weah’s supporters are deeply suspicious of the government and its commitment to reconciliation and are concerned this could be a trap for the political leader, who is tipped to be among the leading presidential candidates in 2017. Even within Weah’s party, the decision was met with many dissenting opinions.
Some opposition leaders and analysts have argued that Johnson Sirleaf is setting Weah up for failure to destroy his political future.
But Weah dismisses claims that he is being used as a political pawn and says that he will step down if he thinks the government lacks commitment to reconciliation and is attempting to silence him.
“We have to monitor their actions […] I’m not going to sit aside because I am the peace ambassador if the government does things that aren’t right. I think by now you should know I have character.”
<div id="attachment_31207" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-31207" class="size-medium wp-image-31207" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0138-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0138-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0138-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0138-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/20130622-wingard-0138.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Monrovia, Liberia &#8211; June 22, 2013: Football game organized by George Weah at SKD. (Photograph by Morgana Wingard).</div>
He also says the debate over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission should be reopened.
Weah says he is aware of the challenges ahead and the level of resentment and dissatisfaction among Liberians, many of whom who do not have an affordable life. These are challenges that are beyond the ethnic divisions and human rights abuses that characterized the brutal civil war. Less than two 2% of Liberians have access to pipe borne water, a mere 0.58% of people have access to public electricity, and 76% of the population live on less than a dollar a day.
“Peace for me is equitable distribution of the national wealth; peace for me means true justice,” says Weah.
Weah is optimistic about the future of the reconciliation process but some argue his entry into the 2014 senatorial race could get in the way.
“If he does run as a senator it means that his role within the reconciliation roadmap may be diminished. Weah could use this platform to mobilize more votes,” says Edward Mulbah, the senior technical advisor at the Liberia Peacebuilding Office, the body charged with organizing reconciliation activities.
But for now, Weah says there is no conflict between his political ambitions and role as peace ambassador.
The 2011 elections that Weah participated in underlined the urgent need for reconciliation. The Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) boycotted the run-off claiming they had won the first round, a claim that was reinforced by a letter by the National Elections Commission declaring them winners. That body later claimed the letter was a mistake. The day before the elections, they staged a demonstration during which police fired live rounds and killed at least one demonstrator and injured others. Johnson Sirleaf won by 90.6 % of the vote due to a low voter turnout, that the International Crisis Group (ICG) argues was due to fears of escalating violence. The Carter Center election monitoring team deemed the elections free and fair with some irregularities. This was the second time Weah had cried foul during an election.
“I still maintain that there was no transparency, there was no true democracy,” claims Weah.
Analysts predict that Weah will have a landslide victory in the Montserrado senatorial race, the most populous county in Liberia and one that is his party’s political stronghold.
If he succeeds in next year’s race, Weah will become senator of a county that is home to over 1.5 million people, 70% of who are estimated to live in slums like the one he grew up in. Weah’s childhood community of Geblah Town underlines the challenges that lie ahead. I travel to the cramped community, along rain-slicked, potholed roads, passing people drawing filthy water from square concrete wells and drainage overflowing with waste. There I meet Philip Sayon Jr, a 20-year-old CDC supporter and university student. Sayon is optimistic that things will change if Weah becomes president.
“He loves his Liberian people; he knows the soil from which he came from; he passed a lot of difficulties. He will give the people a chance,” he says.
While Weah is yet to make his real debut in the political arena, the expectations of his performance are huge.   FL

20130625-wingard-0124

Chasing A THROUGH BALL TO POWER

Mary Broh stands at a dusty intersection on Tubman Boulevard, squints and surveys the scene with two sets of spectacles balanced on her head, one pair perched on her nose. Broh’s solid black Chevrolet Tahoe, with a number plate reading Mayor 1, waits by the curb as the acting city mayor paces back and forth.
“This is a special project, I need you here!” she snaps into a walkie-talkie.
“Don’t touch the paint!” she tells someone moving near the small green concrete fruit and vegetable kiosk that she is here to launch.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1657" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mary-Broh_20130125_2013-02-200009-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
Liberians jammed in vans and beaten-up yellow cabs, or cruising past in SUVs, turn their heads to see what the city’s most controversial public official is up to. Dressed in a gold lapa jacket, with her fine dreadlocks pinned with champagne diamante clips, and a clunky watch strapped to her right wrist, Broh does not look like your typical city mayor; nor does she act like one.
Broh points to a small concrete zinc-roofed building with an X marking its wall.
“Someone find out who this place is for! I’ll demolish it!”
Workers in blue uniforms wielding rakes and cutlasses arrive in the back of a pickup and sweep the area at breakneck speed. Petty traders on a nearby street pack up their goods and flee; a young boy runs holding a plastic chair above his head.
“Liberian people are too dirty!” she exclaims.
After the formalities the mayor jumps into her Tahoe and hares off.
Weeks later Broh was engulfed in a scandal that seemed the stuff of a Hollywood action movie. She had rescued her friend, the Superintendent of Montserrado County Grace Kpahn from the moldy walls of Monrovia’s South Beach prison, after Kpahn was ordered behind bars by the national legislature for failing to implement a legislative mandate concerning misappropriation of the county development fund.
The legislature branded the pair “fugitives” and voted for their arrest and dismissal. Liberian president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, suspended both officials indefinitely, but citizens and the legislature were skeptical that Sirleaf would take any serious action against Broh, her longtime friend. After all, Sirleaf pushed through Broh’s appointment in 2009 despite the fact that the Senate twice rejected her nomination for mayor, though Broh could only hold the title of “acting mayor” due to the Senate’s disapproval.
The Ministry of Justice charged Broh with “obstructing government operation and disorderly conduct”; and the legislature ordered the pair to be incarcerated for 30 days, in a separate case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Days later, Broh was met by hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the Temple of Justice, who attempted to make a citizen’s arrest. Broh was slapped and kicked by some protestors. The police dispersed the crowd.
When contacted by FORBES AFRICA for comment, Mayor Broh said she had been advised not to give interviews.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-1660" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Mary-Broh_20130125_2013-02-200001-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
This is not the first time Broh has come to blows with the legislature or the public. Broh drew ire when she slapped a prominent senator’s assistant across the face, which led the legislature to pass a vote of no confidence and order her arrest for failing to appear to offer an explanation for her actions. Broh claimed the woman had publicly insulted her. The legislature called her a rebel.
Broh’s critics in the political establishment say she is rude, arrogant and untouchable because of her close relationship with the president, who gave her the nickname ‘the General.’ The two met in New York in the 1990s. Broh has been the president’s special projects coordinator, the director of the passport division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and deputy managing director for administration at the National Port Authority.
Broh, now in her sixties, lived in the United States for 33 years. She worked for a children’s wear manufacturer for 12 years, then for the toy division at Marvel Comics, managing shipping, logistics and distribution, where she kept long hours and shuffled on the subway between Middle Village, Queens and Manhattan in New York.
“If you made one mistake there would be a chain effect… everything had to be synchronized. That’s New York and you know everything is fast and I enjoy it and that’s what I bring here.”
Broh moves through Monrovia as though she is commander-in-chief of a dysfunctional assembly line.
Broh’s supporters view her as an eccentric rebel with a cause. Secretary general of the Liberia Chamber of Commerce Massa R. Lansanah says that Broh’s work has had an enormous impact on the city and made it more attractive to international investors.
“No male or female would be able to do her work. She gets into the gutters, she acts crazy but her impact is positive,” says Lansanah.
But, civil society claims Broh is creating further divisions between the rich and poor.
“She disrupts places and destroys things by instinct and that is very dangerous,” says Abdullai Kamara head of the Center for Media Studies and Peace Building.
Bestman Toe, president of The Slum Dwellers Association of Liberia says that while the city must be developed, the Monrovia City Corporation and the Ministry of Public Works, headed by Minister Samuel Kofi Woods, has failed the urban poor. Toe claims that 70% of the 1.5 million people living in Monrovia, many of who migrated during the war, live in slums.
Back at headquarters, the acting mayor sits behind an iPad at the end of an oval table in her dark, wood-paneled office. She is meeting with World Bank consultants who have been hired to help rebuild the capital city.
“We have urban growth we cannot contain and we don’t want more slums; we want to create a productive, resilient and inclusive city,” she says.
The consultants leave and Broh frantically prepares for a radio show. Three young women flit around the room searching for documents. Broh complains about her office assistants being sluggish and tells me to report on it.
She walks with swift steps down the marble corridors of city hall, her leopard print slingbacks clacking. She pulls open office doors and tells a few departments that their work has to be up to scratch because there is a journalist in the house.
“I want a clean, green city, but the people are against me!” she says as we shuffle down the back staircase.
Outside, men and women from the General Services Department sit with half-annoyed half-puzzled looks on their faces.
“I shut them down because they are inefficient,” she says.
We drive through the streets of Monrovia, past the executive mansion that is under repair, and down Camp Johnson Road. Broh’s eyes dart as she points to imperfections in the urban landscape that rolls past: rubbish on the street, buildings with faded paint and moldy exteriors, petty traders and people cooking fried plantain and kala on the footpath.
“When I don’t come on the street there is a lot of nonsense going on,” says Broh.
As the Mayor walks up to the studio of Radio Monrovia, she points to clothes drying on the ground of a construction site and market stands that she says must go. People stand outside the front of the store and begin to shuffle things off the street. Broh calls for a team to come in and clean up the area and walks up to the studio.
On air, she addresses criticism of the demolitions undertaken before the UN High Level Panel on the post-2015 development agenda that was held in Monrovia in February, she says: “They were selling their coal, they were bringing their children to bathe there, they had their slop buckets all lined up, they were brushing their teeth, bathing upfront… on the main street. Can you imagine that? Where did you ever see this?”
As Broh leaves the radio station she orders her staff to open a grubby garage, where marketers have hidden their tables and stools. A heavy man piles them together and kicks them in. She orders them to smash down a rusty roof that juts from a wall. A stout elderly woman splashes water on the ground and haggard old man runs back and forth with a small broom.
“All of these people here are illegal aliens,” she says.
A crowd gatherers around her.
“If you clean your community, I’ll respect you. Certain people can’t live in the city. You have the right to be in a city, but you can’t turn this place into a ghetto,” she says
A few days later, I asked Broh about a particular book among those lined up on her immaculate desk, From Third World to First: The Singapore Story written by Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. She opens the book to a photograph of Yew sweeping the streets of Singapore in his early days as a politician. Broh says she doesn’t have political aspirations, but the picture illustrates how public officials ought to behave: they should get their hands dirty.
“I find myself playing the role of janitor-in-chief,” she says.
While Broh was once lauded for her efforts to clean the city, public opinion has turned against her.
Kaifala Losene Sayon, a 34-year-old university student who has worked in Waterside market for the past 10 years acknowledges the impact of Broh’s work.
“[T]here was dirty water, no garbage collection, and no one painted their shops, Mary Broh has made 80 percent of central Monrovia clean,” he says.
But even Sayon says Broh must go.
“She don’t respect nobody’s rights. People close their shops when they see her. I will be happy if she is dismissed,” he says.
At the conclusion of writing this article a press release from the executive mansion stated Broh had turned in her resignation. Sirleaf, in a carefully-worded nationwide address, acknowledged Broh’s contribution to Monrovia and announced that Broh would be leading a project to create a market complex for women with a playground and school in the neighboring city of Paynesville.
“Mary’s methods may not have pleased everyone but there can be very little argument that she got the job done,” says Sirleaf.
I thought about how quickly Broh’s fortunes had turned.
“Nobody will dislodge me. They will not make it, I am here to stay,” she had said defiantly on the radio.
While Broh’s legacy will be contested on the city streets for months, perhaps even years to come, she is an acting city mayor the citizens of Monrovia will never forget.

A Brush With A Prickly Rebel  Who Wanted To Turn Liberia Into Singapore

On a small street off Tubman Boulevard, the main thoroughfare in Monrovia, five red and white umbrellas shade stalls tended by five young men, all of them university students. In between classes, they sell mobile phone scratch cards and exchange grubby Liberian and US dollars. One of the students, 27-year-old Lorenzo Garmonyou, wakes up at 6am every morning and retires at around 1am in a cramped room he shares with his five brothers who also toil on the same corner.
Garmonyou is an economics student at the African Methodist Episcopal University. Like many young Liberians whose education was delayed during Liberia’s long and brutal civil war that ended eight years ago, he is struggling to put himself through school. From his small earnings he puts aside $2 a day to pay for his tuition and keeps a dollar to live on. Garmonyou is uncertain about the future in a nation whose economy is yet to create jobs for the few Liberians who are trained and educated.
Many unemployed graduates like Emmett Chea, a 24-year-old with an economics degree, complain that a culture of “nepotism” makes it difficult for qualified graduates to attain experience and jobs. He says they are yet to really feel the benefits of the billions of dollars of investment that came into Liberia during President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s first term. Analysts and government officials say that while there is a lot of work ahead to make Liberia’s economy one that benefits ordinary Liberians, the future still looks positive for Africa’s first republic.
Since Sirleaf’s election victory in 2006, Liberia has been relieved of its $4.6 billion debt by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) under the debt waiver of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPCI). The country has drawn close to $19 billion in investment mainly in the form of mining, agricultural and oil concession agreements, from major companies such as ArcelorMittal, BHP Billiton, Union Sime Darby and oil majors like Total and Chevron.
With single digit inflation, a projected economic growth rate of 9.4% for 2012, up from last year’s 6.9%, there is an upward trend. All the more remarkable, so soon after a war that saw Liberia suffer one of the severest economic collapses recorded by any nation.
Despite this significant economic growth, Liberia remains among the poorest countries in the world, according to the United Nations Human Development Index. This is underscored by the extremely low rate of employment: only 15% of workers are employed formally and 79% of those employed are without a steady income, according to the Ministry of Labor. With 70% of the population below the age of 30, youth unemployment is regarded as one of the biggest threats to Liberia’s future.
In the wake of last year’s tense election, Sirleaf, now into her second term, acknowledged the need to create jobs and development.
In her annual address to the 53rd Legislature, she asked:
“How, then, do we transform our old economy from a plantation or concessionaire economy perceived to run for the benefit of a few, to a modern, inclusive economy?”
This big question is one that alludes to the difficulties of the past. Liberia’s 14-year civil war killed 250,000 and left the nation’s infrastructure in ruins. It drew into sharp focus the role economic disparities play in fomenting conflict.
Critics of Sirleaf’s government emphasize that income distribution has remained virtually the same since Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy was introduced in 2008, with recent World Bank figures showing three out of four Liberians are still living below the poverty line. While there have been reports of a growing middle class in Africa—a recent report by the African Development Bank estimated that 4.8% of Liberia’s population can be considered middle class—this is the lowest percentage on the continent. The government is currently undertaking a project called Liberia Rising 2030, to replace the Poverty Reduction Strategy, with the goal of making Liberia a middle-income country over the next 18 years.
Liberia’s economy has been plagued by inequality since the nation was founded by freed American slaves in 1822, known as Americo-Liberians, who returned to Africa to create a new land of Liberty. Instead they ended up subjugating the native population and subjecting them to forced labor on plantations. Under the leadership of President Winston V.S. Tubman during the 1950s, Liberia had the highest economic growth rate in the world through its exports of iron ore, rubber, coffee and cocoa; yet it also had an extremely high poverty rate.
Liberia’s rapid economic growth and lack of national development led Robert Clower to publish an economic study on Liberia titled Growth Without Development that is now a seminal text in the study of post-colonial third world economies. During this time, growth merely benefited the few Americo-Liberians living in major cities such as Monrovia and excluded the rest. Yet even today, Liberia’s recent infrastructural restoration and development—electricity, paved roads, hospitals and running water—can be seen mostly in the seaside capital, Monrovia.
“Liberia traditionally has been a concession-based economy,” says Chairman of the Liberian National Investment Commission (NIC) Natty B. Davis.
“It’s an economy that produces what it doesn’t consume and consumes what it doesn’t produce to a certain extent.”
Davis says that granting major concessions to multinationals is to fuel economic growth to help reconstruct the country’s shattered infrastructure.
The civil war destroyed an estimated 75% of Liberia’s infrastructure, and left behind a generation of lost youths with little education. The war saw the end of the Mount Coffee Hydroelectric Dam, Liberia’s only source of electricity, which looters later stripped. The Liberian Electricity Commission started running again in 2010, but uses costly giant diesel-powered generators and charges 54 cents per kWh: the highest rate in Africa and among the highest in the world. Next month, with the backing of European partners the government will begin a four-year project to restore the dam to pre-war status that will cost an estimated $180 million.
Matt Jones is the director of a USAID-sponsored project called the Sustainable Marketplace Initiative. It works alongside the NIC and focuses on creating entrepreneurs in post-conflict countries. Jones says that energy is key to diversifying Liberia’s economy and creating opportunities for local businesses.
<div id="attachment_873" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-873" class="size-large wp-image-873" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/9-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Ebeneezer T. Williams, 34, a university graduate and young entrepreneur who owns a profitable small printing business in downtown Monrovia, faces problems because of lack of electricity</div>
“It would be so much easier and cheaper to start a business here if you had access to electricity. People often rarely break even because their fuel bills are so extraordinary,” he says.
Jones argues that the major concessionaries will not necessarily create the jobs needed to cure Liberia’s unemployment problem, but will yield opportunity.
“Right now is a golden opportunity for Liberia. All of these big multinational companies are coming in and these local businesses have the biggest opportunity they have probably ever had to get contracts. These international organizations are actually very willing to talk to these businesses, work with them, try and get contracts with them, but they are still not going to bend on their standards,” says Jones.
Vaanii Baker, Program Officer for Investment Climate with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), says it is essential that Liberian businesses find a way to link up.
“If the country cannot figure out how to plug those small and medium enterprises (SMEs) into the growth that’s happening with the large concessions, they’re not going to realize the job growth that’s desperately needed in Liberia. The job growth is more than an economic issue in this country. With our recent history, I think it is more of a security issue as well,” says Baker.
Jones and those in government hope that increased levels of foreign investment will help fuel the rise of an entrepreneurial culture in Liberia, and in turn, economic growth. He sees signs of a more stable business climate emerging.
“The post-conflict situation has also played a role in this [lack of an entrepreneurial culture],” says Jones. “I think that people didn’t really have the opportunity to be an entrepreneur even if they wanted to and I think that people here are starting off on a basic level. But I believe that every single month and year after the conflict is just that much more positive for entrepreneurs and the commercial sector.”
<div id="attachment_875" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-875" class="size-large wp-image-875" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/3-1024x698.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="323" />Students gather on the University of Liberia campus. University graduates are faced with a high rate of unemployment in Liberia</div>
Chid Liberty is a successful Liberian entrepreneur who co-founded a garment business called Liberty and Justice that exports its products to the States. He argues that entrepreneurship has a fundamentally important role to play in addressing poverty and rebuilding Liberia’s economy. Liberty’s father was the former ambassador to Germany under Samuel Doe, remembered by many as a brutal dictator. During the 1980s, Liberty and his family went into exile, but he returned to set up a business. The business employs 250 women in Liberia and Ghana, and is looking to expand. He says in order to meet his current demand, he would need to employ 2,500 workers.
“One of the core reasons we started our company is because we thought that what every developed economy has done so well is started really large industries that employ masses of people with low skills and education. There is no way that we are going to send all of these people back to university to get degrees to become journalists—give that up; the farm and the factory are the two places I think we need to place this lost generation of people,” he says.
Liberty says that Liberia needs to create an entrepreneurial class to generate jobs and bridge the deep economic divide in Liberia.
“Income inequality and people not having jobs are the biggest threats to Liberia’s security and all of our livelihoods.”
Building this class has become a focus for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. Last year, the ministry officially launched its first micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) policy called “Poverty Alleviation and Wealth Creation through Small Enterprise and Development” and is working with the NIC and its NGO partners to help entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground.
Yuri Sobolev, the resident representative of the IMF, says that creating value-adding industries is the way forward for Liberia.
“Only the formal sector can create gainful employment opportunities, and value addition is the only way employment is going to be generated. For that you need better infrastructure,” says Sobolev.
“The government needs to create and enable environment [for the growth of businesses], physical infrastructure such as roads and electricity, to strengthen the rule of law with regard to business, contract enforcement and property rights.”
The government has made efforts to improve the business climate. With the help of the IFC it has set up a Business Reform Committee, with five committees focused on areas of the business environment that need to be reformed: electricity, finance, tax rates and procedures, customs and corruption. Liberia is also expected to connect to the Africa Coast to Europe (ACE) undersea cable system in October, which will bring its slow internet speeds up.
“While Liberia has many challenges ahead of it,” Baker says, “there is no reason it cannot become a middle-income country by 2030 and rival the booming economies of its West African neighbors.
“There is awesome potential for Liberia—it’s limitless. We’ve seen the development Ghana has had over the last few years… Within the next 10 years, if the government does the right things and puts in the right infrastructure, both soft and hard, in place, there is no reason why this country cannot surpass Ghana in terms of economic development and growth.”
Clair MacDougall is a journalist currently based in Monrovia, Liberia.
<div id="attachment_874" style="width: 484px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-874" class="size-large wp-image-874" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Monrovia_1-1024x683.jpg" alt="" width="474" height="316" />Monrovia, Liberia</div>
<h3>Liberia’s Gold Rush</h3>
In Sinoe County, in south-eastern Liberia, a handful of companies are
exploring land which is known to have large gold deposits; but which, due to the 14-year civil war, has remained untouched except by artisanal miners. The exploration area falls within the Biriman Craton, which holds gold and diamond deposits and extends through Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Mali and Burkina Faso. While exploration is in its early stages, companies believe they could strike upon larger deposits in coming years. 
“We believe the gold potential here is enormous—just look at other countries that fall in the Biriman Craton. Our target is to be mining by the end of 2015,” says Tim Illingworth, manager of Hummingbird Resources, a company operating in the region. 
Hummingbird Resources was founded in November 2005 and was listed on AIM in December 2010, raising $40 million. Hummingbird has a land package of 7,000km2 in Liberia and has currently only explored around 1% of that. The company reported finding 1.765m oz gold in September 2011, which they say dramatically increased on February 1 after a find of 2.052m oz, bringing the current total up to 3.817m oz. The company, founded by Dan Betts, claims it has made the largest gold discovery in Western Africa in the last year. Hummingbird currently holds a three-year exploration license and is in the process of negotiating a 25-year mineral development agreement with the government.

Tag: Liberia

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