Located on the Western Coast of Africa, the rather small country of Liberia extends across three hundred sixty miles along the Atlantic Ocean. Nestled on the ocean by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cote d’Ivoire, and just above the equator Liberia covers only 43,000 miles , which is only equates to about a third of a percent of Africa’s total size. Divided into fifteen different counties all with their own capitals and sub districts, from some that have dated back one hundred fifty years to a county that dates back only nine years, Liberia is a country with many different people.
With a diverse climate, Liberia’s coastal plains, tropical rainforests, plateaus, as well as low mountains provide many areas where habitation for humans is suitable. Unlike most of the countries in Northern Africa, Liberia is hardly affected by the exceptionally dry and ever expanding Sahara desert and has vast amount of rainfall coming in the season of rain which begins in May and ends in October, while the dry season, which is also constitutes as Liberia’s winter extends from November to March, with a transition period in April where it moves back to the wet season. During the dry season violent dry winds sweeps across much of the country. These Harmattan winds are carried over from the Sahara Desert pick up fine sand particles and spread them all over Western Africa limiting visibility and causing troubles for many that inhabit the country.
Even with the adequate land which is much more than habitable then many other African climates, Liberia is still one of the poorest countries not only in Africa, but the entire world. Although Liberia used to actually have a pretty lucrative economy, which actually rivaled that of a small power, it has been reduced to a feeble nation where the unemployment rate is sitting at about eighty-five percent as of 2003, but has been expected to rise due to a promising new leader, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf who became the President of Liberia in 2006. The decline of Liberia began in the late 1960’s and 1970’s when the world prices of Liberia’s main exports, iron ore and natural rubber took a severe turn for the worst. Currently the currency of the Liberian dollar is at 65:1 when compared to the United States dollar. Today, rice is a very important part of Liberian life. A lot of the population is made up of substance farmers who only grow enough food to feed themselves, and rice is able to grow very well during the rainy months and is able to feed a family.
According to the 2008 United States Census 3,476,608 people call Liberia their home. About one third of the population lives in Montserrado County, where which lies the capital city, Monrovia. As of 2006 Liberia has the highest birthrate in the world where almost forty-five percent of the population is fourteen or under . Although most African countries with a low birthrate are notoriously part of the southern countries of Africa, in Liberia the average life expectancy is fifty-one years old. The national language is English, because there were so many different ethnic groups in Liberia, and because the United States set up a colony for freed slaves that came from the U.S. There is not one very dominant religion in Africa, there are two. About forty percent of the population worships traditional and indigenous religions, while at the same time forty percent of the population also worshiped Christianity. The final twenty percent of the population followed the Muslim religion, and now more than ever education is playing a vital role of improving the life of people in Liberia. Although Africa has been known to be very susceptible to the term, “brain drain”, where African students who attend one of the six colleges including the University of Liberia leave the country for better opportunities, bringing down the amount of well educated citizens within Liberia . From the fourteenth to the sixteenth century Liberia was just south west of the two very powerful empires in Western Africa, the Mali Empire and the Songhai Empire. As people moved out of the Mali Empire they moved south to countries including Liberia, and as the Mali Empire was taken over by the Songhai Empire they also moved to Liberia. This immigration into Liberia brought about new skills, products, and ideas which helped the development of Liberia. Through the American Colonization Society the United States was able set up a colony in Liberia to bring freed African slaves back to Africa. Many famous names including Henry Clay thought that it would be better for African slaves to go back to Africa due to the assumption an African would not fit with the American people. Americo-Liberians as they were called were shipped to Liberia in hopes of a new society that they were looking forward to living in. Although the separation from the new “Americans” and the natives of Liberia forced them both to live apart, but the smaller minority of Americo-Liberians set out to conquer and rule over the natives. The name chosen to live under, Liberia was determined by the Americo-Liberians, which means “Land of the free”. In 1877 the True Whig Party took over as Liberia’s major political party, who took over control in Liberia’s government until the late 1970’s. Even during the “Scramble for Africa” the True Whig Party and Liberia both were able to remain as one of the only countries to preserve their independence .
On top of the decline in export prices, Liberia was also consumed by not one, but two civil wars, one from 1989-1996 and another which lasted from 1999 to 2006. In the early 1990’s many foreign and domestic investors fled Liberia and took their money with them due to the conflict between the current president, Samuel Doe, and the ethnic group he belongs to called the Krahns and another ethnic group populated in Nimba County. Liberia is home to about 16 different indigenous ethnic groups and many other smaller minority groups, so there was no surprise that war broke out between some of the groups, and with a controversial leader at the helm it was just a matter of time. With rebel organizations formed by Charles Taylor, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia, and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), was able to take down Doe’s regime and to end the war, rebel leader; Charles Taylor was elected as the President of Liberia as a result.
The second civil war that consumed most of Liberia occurred in 1999 due to recently elected President Charles Taylor’s autocratic government he created and the brutal and unethical actions that were practiced caused another revolt to occur. In 2003 the capital city of Monrovia became host to the civil war and numerous US troops as well as troops from ECOWAS, came for the purpose of removing the autocratic government and to protect each groups own interests. The end of the second civil war came in the form of the Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace group. The organization pressured President Taylor to conduct in peace negotiations with the opposition. In the close to fifteen years that conflict consumed Liberia, it is estimated that well over 200,000 people died from causes related from the civil wars that ravaged the nation.
After Charles Taylor was exiled from Liberia Gyude Bryant took over as leader of the newly formed government, which due to the intense corruption throughout the entire government his career was brought to an end less than 2 years after it began. Elections were then held in 2005 for a new president to help curb the amount of corruption, and the country joined with GEMAP, an anti-corruption group. In a definite win Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, took over as the President of Liberia.
Corruption inside the government of Liberia is one of its largest problems it faces today. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, main focus on how to make the country of Liberia a safer and better off nation is to choke out the many corrupt individuals that are riddled throughout the governmental system. For the year 2006 Liberia was rated as the one hundred fifty-ninth most corrupt countries in the world out of one hundred eighty, which is in the bottom twelve percent of the countries in the world.
Liberia has always been considered a nation of governmental corruption ever since freed African slaves from the United States, Americo-Liberians, were transported to Liberia. The colonized Liberia was, “initially acquired from the indigenous Africans living there was purchased for six firearms, one keg of gun powder, three pairs of shoes, a barrel or rum, a box of beads, and various other consumer items.” One could most likely infer from these items that the indigenous people of Liberia were getting much less than face value for the territory of the initial establishments in Liberia, making the connection that poor deals can be made and forced upon the lesser groups of Africa. The group that forced themselves apart from the rest of Liberia, and became a power and recognized as the country of Liberia were known as the Americo-Liberians. Although the Americo-Liberian population of the country was very apparently the minority, due to the education they had received and politics it adopted (modeling after the United States of America), they were able to take control of Liberia’s, ”urban sectors”, and create a small group of governmental elites, whom victimized the indigenous people, as well as making a profit.
In creating the True Whig Party in 1877 Americo-Liberians were able to solidify the sole governmental seats for over one hundred years, until Samuel Doe’s military coup overthrew it in 1980. Doe’s leadership of Liberia has been described as a military dictatorship which was ethnically based. Since Doe was worried about an overthrow of his regime he began to give most, if not all positions to people with the same ethnic background, the Krahans. Through fraudulent elections, and the elimination of his competitors which were mainly the Americo-Liberians, Samuel Doe was able to retain power for the next ten years.
The emergence of the National Patriot Front of Liberia leader Charles Taylor in 1997 as the new president of Liberia brought little stability to the nation before a second civil war immersed the country. In an effort to bring about reform with a new leader, Taylor quickly became known as Liberia’s foremost warlord. Taylor quickly fired a couple thousand governmental employees that were Krahan’s, worried that they may plot to overthrow him .
As Charles Taylor came to power he quickly exploited Liberia’s diamond and timber resources, so much so that the United Nations placed an embargo on those two exports. All the money that was being received from those said resources had absolutely no part in helping the economy of Liberia as a whole, and was used to make Taylor and the government elite wealthy. With this wealth Taylor began to help fund RUF (Revolutionary United Front) in Sierra Leone, which solidified his status as a corrupt leader of Liberia.
With a new transitional government in place and the civil war ended it was time for Gyude Bryant to step up as the new leader of Liberia and put an end to corruption for the nation. Bryant was ready to try and lead the country, but Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the 2005 elections and took power in 2006 giving Bryant only a few months in office. Although barely in office for a significant amount of time Bryant was accused in 2007 of embezzling millions of U.S. dollars from the country. Bryant was acquitted of one charge regarding one million U.S. dollars, but is still awaiting trial for the embezzlement of one million three thousand U.S. dollars.
A breath of fresh air swept over Liberia as new elect president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf became the first black woman to be elected leader of a country of the world. Along with tackling the high unemployment rate and the massive amounts of debt owed to various countries and organizations, a main concern and goal for Sirleaf has been to help recognize and put an end to the extensive amounts of corruption throughout the government. Starting even before she was elected president, Sirleaf lead the Governance Reform Commission in 2003, and organization that works to end corruption. Sirleaf left that position in order to run for presidency, and while running for president she openly criticized the new government put in place after Charles Taylor, and their ability to fight corruption. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf vowed to bring governmental reform in the way to fight the corruption within the government. Sirleaf gave us an even more in depth idea of how rampant corruption is with a statement during a press conference Sirleaf told reporters that, “Corruption is a big problem, it is a societal problem. It is more than a government problem or an executive problem. It is a societal problem which we all have to fight” , .
Since the beginning of the 2010 year Sirleaf has already suspended two ministers, one being her own brother. According to Yahoo News reports, “Sirleaf's former information minister Laurence Bropleh was dismissed earlier this year and has been charged with pocketing the salaries of fictional employees.” As of April 20th 2010 another major minister, the minister of finance, Augustine Ngafuan is now under investigation for over five million dollars in public funds that have gone missing. Investigations that help root out corrupt individuals are very detrimental to helping bring righteousness to the nation of Liberia. These major dismissals also help to deter individuals who might want to try to get away with taking a little money off the top, thinking nobody will know.
I feel the main problem to begin with is with the trust between every ethnic group. The first real sign of true governmental corruption was with Samuel Doe’s military, ethnic-based dictatorship. He was one of the major governmental officials who did everything he could in order to preserve that everything would go in his favor. From having believed threats that could possibly harm his presidency murdered, to trying to eliminate the main opposing ethnic group in Liberia. Picking and choosing officials and government employees based on personal preferences instead of employing the person who is the best for the job just starts the base for the whole corrupt superstructure.
Looking back on the way governments were set up in order to prevent corruption only led to more corruption. The way officials were chosen used to be sort of a paradox. Former presidents corruptly chose the personnel for the sole purpose of trust towards their own specific ethnic group, believing that they would not be corrupt. If the presidents instead were not as worried about their own agendas and individual supremacy, and chose officials not based on their ethnicity and threat level, but chose officials based on the knowledge that this individual has the ability to help the country of Liberia flourish I feel that we would be looking at Liberia that has not only helped curb the vast amounts of corrupt officials, but a Liberia that has flourished.
Currently, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has a large number of elect officials that are not considered to be allies, and were once large supporters of former President Charles Taylor. One of the most controversial members on Sirleaf’s staff includes Prince Johnson, who appeared in a video that showed Samuel Doe being tortured. Although, Sirleaf knows of the lack of support she has from some of her officials, she does not allow that to get in the way of seeing what is best for the country. If she sees that Prince Johnson is fit to be an elected official, then he must be doing well in the areas that he is working with. As of 2009 Liberia jumped up forty-two spots on the list of most corrupt nations to number ninety-seven, a tremendous increase, and a sign of hope of the people of Liberia.
Another way the corruption problem in Liberia needs to be addressed is through both internal and external anti-corruption groups. Anti-corruption groups that not only work with the current political system to find officials that are corrupt, but also working on the prevention of corruption within Liberian society. As Sirleaf mentioned that it is not only a governmental problem (although the majority of it is in the government) it is a problem that affects just everyone.
One action that has helped immensely with not only the current corruption in the government, but the possibility of future corruption comes from the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia which was created by president-elect Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. According to www.trcofliberia.org, “The report contains major findings on: the root causes of the conflict, the impact of the conflict on women, children and the generality of the Liberian society; responsibility for the massive commission of Gross Human Rights Violations (GHRV), and violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Human Rights Law (IHRL) as well as Egregious Domestic Law Violations (EDLV).” Many of these, “violations”, refers to the violations that have occurred due to the extensive corruption of the Liberian government. Many of these ministers, officials, and employees take money that could potentially be used for public use, therefore harming the individuals who need it most .
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia’s report that was released in June 2009 gave a list of fifty names of people who should be not allowed to become an official of any sort for a period of thirty years. Although some of the names are questionable, since President Sirleaf is considered one of the fifty due solely to her support of Charles Taylor for a short period of time. Sirleaf has since then apologized for her former support stating that once Taylor’s true intentions were revealed she became a harsh critic of then President Taylor. Organizations and groups such of these help weed out a large number of corrupt individuals, so that the impact of corruption grows lighter.
The most important way I feel to help restrain the amount of corruption in Liberia is through harsh penalties, as well as greater investigations in order to perturb individuals from committing these crimes. Just about every corrupt official whether or not in Liberia has the same thinking that there is no possible way of getting caught. Corrupt officials all over the world have the same notion of elusiveness, whether it be Liberia’s Minister of Finance or Enron Corporation. Officials in Liberia need to be aware that if that if they try to rip off the government in order to increase the size of their own wallets they will be caught and punished. Reform has come about in Liberia so that people in the government aren’t protected by their leaders because of ethnicity anymore. Hypothetically, back in the day people who served under President Taylor could easily get away with taking money that should have been used to improve the life of some counties because President Taylor did not care about that ethnicity whatsoever.
Today Liberia has become a country of action when it comes to its corruption at every level. There is finally a promising new President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who has vowed to crack down on the corruption that has plagued Liberia for the past one hundred fifty years. Through diversity within the government, anti-corruption organization, and major crackdowns on corrupt individuals and groups I believe that Liberia will be able to make a tremendous rebound. With Liberia’s fresh new start the true nation of Liberia will emerge and it will flourish once again.