Liberia: How should poverty be alleviated to propel growth? 

 Friday, October 13, 2006   

             By Francis W. Nyepon

           
Poverty is the single most obnoxious impediment to growth in Liberia, with a momentous drag on national development. Without its alleviation, Liberia risks continual failure in expanding its economy or transforming its urban and rural sectors. 

This author intends to argue throughout this paper that poverty in Liberia hinders economic growth by limiting our domestic resources that are available for private investment and public goods. One would agree that many approaches have been proposed on how the country should achieve prosperity, despite its lack of the ingredients usually associated with growth. 

Notwithstanding, this author recommends adopting specific approaches that would lead to the liberalization of trade and market regulation, privatization of state-owned enterprises, accessing global capital markets, and provide capital for small business formation in order to alleviate poverty.

Over the past decades, the poverty rate in Liberia dramatically increased predominantly due to corruption, mismanagement, war, disease, and leaders who clung to power as the country crumbled. Except for the 1970s, numerous development strategies failed to yield the expected results. Terrified by a change in government and the unforeseen, many Liberians left the country in disgust, believing that the country was doomed to perpetual failure because human well-being had not improved due to the lack of sincerity by self-centered bureaucrats and policymakers.

The potential for poverty alleviation in Liberia; one would argue, relies solely on education, employment and income generation. By creating a knowledge-based economy, the Sirleaf administration could be producing wealth, prosperity and growth all at once, since productivity will be the single most effective engine that will drive the country's economic growth, in order to alleviating poverty in both urban and rural sectors.   

This paper argues that it is this kind of discussion that needs to take place in Liberia in order to spur new ideas for change; hence poverty alleviation, rather than allegations that members of the opposition are behind the wave of crimes allegedly committed by the notorious Isakaba criminal gang in Monrovia, or those who would be so reckless and over zealous as to readily apprehend individuals for simply speculating or publicly discussing ill-conceived policy implementation by the Sirleaf administration.

Liberians must recognize however, that our society will have to change from within rather then the other way around, which this author calls breeding ideas to ignite social value for competitive advantage. By the same token, policymakers will have to recognize the fact that change will only come through knowledge, after all, Liberia is not so much the country of our birth or place of origin; but, it is a way of life, a state of mind, which can never be cast aside out of fear or intimidation. 

To this end then, the country can only seek to advance its utility as a collective, and not through pockets of individuals or groups based on ethnicity or social status. Moreover, in order for the country to become successful, the Sirleaf administration must adopt a comprehensive strategy center on education. 

Finally and most critical, the administration must find a way to finance its efforts while maintaining sufficient control over its affairs. Such a strategy is the only one which this author finds to be the alternative to improving our country's low per capita (GDP), unskilled labor-force, low standard of living, limited life expectancy, poor health, and low productivity.

Our country's human development index (HDI) is amongst the lowest in the world and can only be improved or eradicated through education (formal and vocational). Therefore, the question which every Liberia needs to answer  if the premise of this thesis is true, what approach should the country take as a collective in order to alleviate poverty?

There are a host of reasons why our country is mired in misery to such an extent that it compels our people to become so deficient in every facet of livelihood that justified sufficient reasons why it stood at the threshold of collapse a few short years ago. These reasons have been adequately established and documented, so there is no basis to rehash them here, which would only drag out more pain than those expressed.

The Sirleaf administration possesses the best opportunity to alleviate poverty and transform the social order in Liberia. But, every Liberian have a moral obligation to demand (peacefully of course) fundamental change in good governance in order to uplift all of our people. The Sirleaf administration can begin by promoting a new beginning, a sort of rebirth, which will lead to a new start of our civilization in order to regenerate, revive and resurrect ideas for a fresh start. This is what it would take for Liberia to recover, economically, socially, and politically from decades of deteriorating value system and leadership problems, which promoted mismanagement, inefficiencies, greed, corruption, selfishness and the so-called big-shot or privileged mentality.

Liberia, for the first time in its history has the leadership structure in place that seems to have identified the issues and problems that needs to be addressed in order to transform our society. Our country finally has leaders with high morale value, clear vision or creative and innovative thinking, which successful leaders must have in order to move the country forward. 

However, what these leaders must now do is allow civil society to play a more critical and independent role in supporting poverty reduction and promoting sustainable development; thereby, enabling average citizens to empower themselves and actively seek effective performance and accountability from both the state and the private sector.  

The central strategy for poverty alleviation proposed herein, if Liberia is to emerge from the endemic challenges, is education and participatory governance. And the Sirleaf administration has an obligation to create an enabling environment where this can take place, and a level playing field where all Liberians can do their best.

Francis Nyepon is a policy analyst and Vice-Chair of The Center for Security & Development Studies. He is a political economist and serves on several boards of humanitarian, environmental and human rights organizations in the United States and Liberia. He can be contacted at francis.nyepon@Gmail.com.