Watch President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf's speech*
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Download full text transcript (PDF)
Speaking at a CGD event, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Africa’s first woman elected president, thanked the U.S. and other donors for supporting Liberia’s efforts to recover from 25 years of misrule and civil war—and asked that promised U.S. help be delivered more quickly.
“I would ask that they lessen the time between commitment and cash,” Sirleaf told a standing-room-only crowd of nearly 300 development policy experts and exiled Liberians, in response to a question about how the U.S. could do more to help. The response drew laughter, but there was a serious undercurrent to the request. With just two months in office, the new government has made remarkable progress but faces seemingly insurmountable challenges—and has almost zero local revenue.
Sirleaf, who has addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress and the UN General Assembly during her week-long stay in the U.S., spoke of her government’s efforts to combat corruption and restore such basic services as electricity and running water. “Our overwhelming theme is growth—growth for development,” she said.
She then responded to questions in a discussion moderated by CGD Senior Fellow Steve Radelet, who is advising the new government on its relations with the donor community. Joining in the discussion was Liberia’s new minister of finance, Antoinette Sayeh, and Richard Tolbert, chairman of the national investment commission.
Tolbert, a former exile who was an investment banker before returning to Liberia to head the investment corporation, urged investors to look on the country’s shortages as opportunities and pledged a quick turn-around for proposed investment projects.
Sirleaf said she hoped for U.S. support in resolving Liberia’s debt and for retaining 15,000 U.N. peacekeeping troops until Liberia could assume responsibility for its own security. She said that the county hoped to receive access to U.S. markets under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) and to eventually qualify for grants from the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA), President Bush’s flagship foreign aid program.