Global Development: Views from the Center
April 01, 2008
Liberia is Moving Forward and Here's Your Chance to Participate
Posted by Steve Radelet at 01:03 PM
Exciting things happening in Liberia right now, especially at the Ministry of Finance. I am pleased to announce the Liberian Minister of Finance, Dr. Antoinette Sayeh, will be speaking at a CGD event later this month. Minister Sayeh will offer an overview of recent developments in Liberia covering debt relief, Liberia's Poverty Reduction Strategy, and overall economic progress; a moderated discussion will follow. Liberia recently reached its HIPC decision point, a huge milestone in the long process towards comprehensive debt relief. In April, Liberia will release its Poverty Reduction Strategy, laying out priorities and goals for the next three years (for earlier analyses of Liberia's development progress, see the CGD essay co-authored by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and myself and my prior working paper on prospects for economic growth in Liberia. Minister Sayeh will be speaking on Friday morning April 11 from 9:00-10:30 at a Dupont Circle location to be announced. Save the date and watch for details on the CGD events page or sign up for CGD event invitations here.
I am also happy to announce that the Government of Liberia is looking for more Liberia Fellows! Do you want to do your part to help Liberia in this crucial stage of development? Here's your chance! Liberia needs a small number of the most committed and talented people to spend a year in Monrovia assisting senior government officials. The newest Liberia Fellows will be graciously funded by CGD's Chairman of the Board, Mr. Edward W. Scott, Jr. and the Nike Foundation. Our current Liberia Fellows are doing great work and we are thrilled that the program has doubled in size since its inception last summer! The job posting lays out the fellowship requirements and how to apply. Diaspora Liberians are particularly encouraged to apply. Good luck!
Editor's notes:
1) Liberia's Minister of Finance, Dr. Antoinette Sayeh, will be speaking at Jury's Washington Hotel on Friday, April 11 at 9 am. A panel discussion will follow. Click here for more information and to register. Also of interest: CGD and the Mortara Center for International Studies will host a public event on Africa's Economic Growth: Past Lessons and Future Prospects on April 14, 2008.
2) The most recent round of applications for the Liberia Fellows closed on Monday, April 7. A new call for applicants will be issued towards the end of 2008. Interested individuals are encouraged to learn more about the program from current participants by tracking the Scott Family Fellows: Views from Liberia blog.
November 13, 2007
IMF Announces Financing For Liberia's Debt Relief: A Good Start
Posted by Steve Radelet at 12:03 PM
Good news! The IMF has finally moved forward on Liberian debt relief. Yesterday's IMF announcement that it has agreed on the necessary financing was a strong endorsement by the international community of Liberia's progress under its new government. It took more than a year of pushing and prodding, but Liberia now can formally begin the debt relief process.
But this is just the beginning. The IMF has not forgiven Liberia's debts, but rather committed the financing necessary so that Liberia can begin the HIPC debt relief process. With any luck, Liberia can move to a HIPC Decision Point (under which it would receive "interim" relief) sometime in the next couple of months, and then to Completion Point (the final step of the debt relief process) perhaps in 2009.
This complicated process is aimed simply at recognizing the obvious -- that today's Liberians should not be expected to repay loans that the IMF and others made to the government of the dictator Samuel Doe 25 years ago, and which have been accumulating interest ever since.
Liberia has had a tougher road than other HIPC countries. It is the only HIPC country so far that has had to wait for the IMF to secure financing, because it was explicitly excluded from the 1999 HIPC financing arrangements that covered other countries. The extra step delayed the start of the HIPC process for the better part of a year.
Public action through press reports and letters to the IMF help push the process forward. (Kudos to all of you that lent a hand to the process!) The IMF staff worked hard throughout the process, but the public push gave the impetus to member countries, the Board, and senior management to get the deal done. There is still a long way to go, but this is a big step forward in the process.
The World Bank also issued a press release yesterday in which president Bob Zoellick welcomed the IMF's decision.
April 30, 2007
Is Liberia Africa's New Diamond Success Story?
Posted by Kaysie Brown at 01:46 PM
The UN Security Council has lifted its ban on diamond exports in Liberia, on the grounds that the post-conflict country has made significant progress in establishing necessary internal controls to comply with the Kimberley Process--a mechanism intended to keep blood diamonds off world markets and to ensure that all diamonds exported are certified. This is the second vote of confidence for President Johnson Sirleaf, following an ease on a timber ban last year. It shows that the international community has faith that the country can turn its back on the brutal past, where diamonds were used to finance weapons and fund fighting in a horrific 14 year civil war.
This is potentially great news for Liberia. In particular, diamond revenues could be used to fund much-needed post-conflict reconstruction programs and create jobs in a country with an unemployment rate hovering around 85%. However, as my colleague Todd Moss and I have noted, the Kimberley Process can only do so much. And the transition from blood diamonds to “development diamonds” is much harder in a place like Liberia which has a high concentration of alluvial diamonds. Unlike Kimberlite diamonds (which require intensive, centralized operations), alluvial diamonds lend themselves to artisanal, decentralized mining, which leaves the Liberian diamond industry relatively open to smuggling and grey market transactions. This could threaten to rob Liberia of much needed revenues and undermine fragile state institutions.
While the Security Council's stamp of approval is a sign of how far Liberia has come in a few short years, Liberia's transition is ongoing, and it is too soon to pronounce it a success. The international community must remain constructively engaged in the war-ravaged country, and continue to keep a close eye on Liberian diamonds, in order to ensure that Liberia's recent sunshine doesn't turn out to be a false dawn.
March 26, 2007
Wanted: A Few Good Women and Men for the Scott Family Liberia Fellows
Posted by Steve Radelet at 05:19 PM
Want a challenge? Here is your chance -- or a chance for someone you know -- to get directly involved in helping a key African country get back on its feet after years of civil war and incompetent management.
Liberia’s civil war killed over 270,000 people, destroyed basic infrastructure, and left the country in ruins. But in January 2006 Liberians inaugurated Ellen Johnson Sirleaf as president -- the first woman elected head of state anywhere in Africa. Under her leadership the government has increased revenues by 40 percent, turned on electricity and water to parts of Monrovia for the first time in 15 years, cracked down on corruption, begun to rebuild roads, and quadrupled primary school enrollments.
Yet the government faces huge challenges, including severe capacity shortages at the sub-ministerial level, since many skilled civil servants were either killed during the war or fled the country.
The Scott Family Liberia Fellows Program will make a small but vital contribution to partially filling the capacity gap. Under the program, approximately five to six fellows will work for one year over the next three years as special assistants to key government ministers and other senior officials in the government of Liberia. The program is funded by a generous $1 million contribution from the family of CGD founder Ed Scott.
Typical fellows will be young professionals with Masters degree-level training (e.g., an MBA, MPP, MPH, or a law degree) and one year of related experience, or a Bachelor's degree with at least three years of related experience.
Fellows need to be willing to work hard; be flexible and energetic; do whatever is asked of them to get the job done; be idealistic enough to think that maybe, just maybe, the world can be a better place; and be willing to roll up their sleeves and jump in with two feet.
Is that you? Is it someone you know?
If you think it is time to live an adventure and help change the world (or at least one small part of it), then take the plunge.
February 20, 2007
Madame President
Posted by Tony Kopetchny at 05:30 PM
While most of us were taking a holiday yesterday, Molly Kinder, who previously worked as a program coordinator at CGD on Millions Saved, and is now a graduate student at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, sent the following reflections on Presidents' Day.
Yesterday the United States celebrated Presidents' Day, a holiday which rarely gives reason to pause, beyond perhaps the gratitude for a long weekend. This year, however, I did a double take. The image that Presidents' Day has long evoked in my head -- George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan -- has recently undergone a makeover and now has a striking new feature: her gender.
The evidence is everywhere. Harvard's campus is currently abuzz over the recent appointment of the university's first ever female president, Drew Gilpin Faust. Just last week CGD welcomed Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa's first female president, at an event hosted by the Center's own impressive female president, Nancy Birdsall. The darling of the international community, President Sirleaf is one of the few shining stars of good governance amidst a sea of corruption in the African continent, and has given her war ravaged country the single greatest reason for hope in more than thirty years. Last month I traveled to Chile and Bolivia, two countries that have recently celebrated the election of their first female and indigenous presidents, respectively. And closer to home, Democrats are weighing allegiances to either the aspiring first female president of the U.S. or the aspiring first African American president of the U.S. Not bad for a title long synonymous with graying Caucasian males.
On one hand, the ascent of so many talented women to presidential posts reflects an emerging openness to women (and minorities) that should rightly be heralded as a watershed shift in societal attitudes. But perhaps more importantly, that Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Drew Gilpin Faust were chosen to lead war ravaged Liberia and unwieldy Harvard University reveals a far more salient reality: that women make damn good leaders and, importantly, different leaders. The fundamental contrast between Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor, and the contrast in style between Drew Gilpin Faust and Larry Summers -- these are both evidence enough of this fact. Consensus building, accomplished, competent, pioneering and principled. (And, notably, all are mothers). Now that's a style of leadership that the developing world -- and my own country -- would do well from.
February 08, 2007
Report from the Field - the Challenges of Rebuilding Liberia
Posted by Nancy Birdsall at 10:24 AM
I'm here in Liberia observing a post-conflict situation through a development lens. I'm struck by several aspects of the complex task of rebuilding after 14 years of civil war.
First, the trauma brought a more complete collapse than the notion of a "war" between two parties suggests. Unlike in the sectarian conflict of the kind suffered in former Yugoslavia and feared in Iraq - where the lines seem clearly drawn across a few ethnic groups -- Liberian civilians -- all of them but especially women and children -- were vulnerable for years to rounds of marauding, looting, pillage and rape. See CGD non-resident fellow Jeremy Weinstein's recent book, Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence, to understand how different initial conditions generate different levels of destruction in what we call civil wars.
No doubt there are good published studies by serious students of pre-war Liberia that illuminate the roots of the trauma here. But an initial reading of dozens of official donor documents reveals surprisingly little attention to these deep-seated issues. There are vague allusions to inter-generational land conflicts, to the risk of renewed ethnic tensions, and to the troubles in neighboring Guinea re-igniting a regional war with shifting eruptions in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Guinea. Even the International Crisis Group, the most detailed source, says little about the sources of inter-ethnic conflict and the relative social positions of various ethnic groups.
At least on paper, the donors are concentrating all their attention on what has to be done in the future. That is not surprising. But isn't it risky?
Second, two big public organizations here are performing. As the Millions Saved report concluded, international and other big public bureaucracies do work when the objective is clear and leadership is strong. The government, under the leadership of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, has made extraordinary progress on multiple fronts since her election. One striking example: better financial management yielded a 50% increase in revenues in her first year in office. And the performance here of UNMIL, the UN-managed process of demobilization and rebuilding of professional security services, is impressive. As Mark Malloch-Brown, then UN Deputy Secretary-General said, the American public is not hearing enough from the Bush Administration about the good management the UN brings to "peace-building" in post-conflict states.
Third, the aid community has yet to rise to the challenge in Liberia. An outstanding President and an impressive Cabinet create an unusual opportunity to jump-start the development process. But the transition from major humanitarian relief programs to development work risks leaving some Liberians without health services, and the a small but capable government is coping with a mounting burden of multiple donors with multiple ideas and projects. Beyond UNMIL, there are 13 UN agencies, 18 multilateral and bilateral donors, two African regional organizations, and 320 international NGOs operating here. As they make the transition from post-conflict humanitarian programs to "development," will they work with and for government and strengthen nascent institutions - or inadvertently undermine their development? It's a legitimate worry - and one that this month's donor meeting (pdf) in Washington needs to begin to address.
July 26, 2006
Liberia turns on water and electricity
Posted by Steve Radelet at 06:59 PM
Today is a great day for the new government and the people of Liberia. For the first time in 15 years, parts of Monrovia have running water and functioning electricity. This may not seem like a lot, but it is HUGE for people that have seen nothing but war, destruction, and theft for so many years. I have recently returned from Liberia, my fifth trip since the election of President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, and while the new government is facing huge odds, they are making steady, significant progress. Budget revenues are up, misappropriation of funds is down, roads are being repaired, stores are reopening, and people are repairing and repainting their houses. The challenges are huge and the odds are long, but this government is making some initial small steps forward, and you know what they say about a lot of small steps…