Liberia is doing well – on the outside

Liberians go to the polls late 2011. The incumbent, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is running for a second term and she will very likely be re-elected. So where was Liberia when she took office five years ago - and how far has it come?

‘All is in place for the presidential elections,’ asserts National Election Commission chairman James Fromayan. ‘If we have them in October, we’ll be ready – if they are in November, it will be a plus. But we’re ready.’

Later this year, reigning president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, is expected to beat her numerous challengers outright. Among the achievements of her government – and she never tires of highlighting them - is economic recovery.

Five years ago, she inherited a nation in ruins: bullet-riddled houses, broken bridges, no electricity, no safe drinking water. Her government was going to restart the economy, create jobs, put an end to corruption and heal the nation.

Recovery

Economic recovery has gone rather well. Growth has been steady, between 5 and 10 per cent for the past five years. Admittedly, it came from virtually zero: since 1980, Liberia has only seen gross mismanagement and civil war. But the country is visibly better off now than it was when the president made her first public speech on January 16, 2006.

Take the main road through the capital city Monrovia. It is called Tubman Boulevard, named after the man who ran Liberia between 1944 and 1971 and used to be a pot-holed, unlit obstacle course for cars and pedestrians. Today, it is a long stretch of smooth asphalt, lined with shiny new banks and offices – including that of the National Electoral Commission. Another place where recovery will soon be visible is the Freeport of Monrovia. Its quay is collapsing from years of neglect and port manager Brian Fuggle wants to rebuild it urgently. ‘Parts of the quay are inaccessible for lorries because it is too dangerous. We will start demolishing it in October and hopefully the project will be complete in April 2013.’

Resources

The recovery is built around the export of natural resources: rubber, iron ore and timber. Rubber still is – by far – Liberia’s largest foreign currency earner but iron ore could reclaim that spot if and when exportation resumes, using the rehabilitated railway from the mines in the north to the port of Buchanan.

Minds and souls

The hardest work, though, is found outside the capital Monrovia, especially in the Southeast of the country. This is the region that voted against Johnson-Sirleaf the first time around and will do exactly the same this year. The counties of Grand Gedeh, River Cess and Maryland feel left out in the reconstruction boom. Political resentment against Monrovia is palpable. True, construction work has begun on roads and bridges, banks have opened branches, there is even a brand new university in Maryland’s capital Harper.

Former Truth and Reconciliation Chairman Jerome Verdier has this to say: ‘We’re concentrating too much energy on the physical reconstruction; we don’t pay enough attention to the minds and the souls.’ If one goes back to the Tubman Boulevard in Monrovia it becomes clear what he means. Those shiny new office blocks have replaced the old popular residential areas. The people have been moved far away, to outlying suburbs.

They have gone, quietly, so far. But this can change very quickly. Verdier says he is worried about the swiftness with which people resort to violence when there are situations of conflict. A quick survey of recent news appears to bear him out: violent riots at a rubber plantation kill one person, workers threaten to violently disrupt the first iron ore transport out of the country, numerous smaller disputes that end in fighting. While economically successful, the Johnson-Sirleaf administration has many challenges ahead. Perhaps these will become priorities if re-elected.

Sustainable timber exploitation

Probably the most contentious export product has been timber. Liberia is home to almost half of all of West Africa’s rainforest but during the calamitous reign of former president Charles Taylor, timber exploitation was rapacious. Now, Liberia has entered into a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) with the European Union. This is aimed at exporting only sustainably harvested timber. A very upbeat Forestry Development Authority managing director Moses Wogbeh was at the ceremony marking the signing of the VPA, in May. ‘The VPA will put and end to illegal logging and bring transparency and accountability into the system,’ he said, adding that the new way of forest exploitation would also benefit the people actually living there. As a matter of fact, the people living there have other ideas. They bring down the trees to start farms and rubber plantations...

Bram Posthumus