July 26, 2026
Dedicated to Varney Alieu Jarsey, former President of LINSU/AASU, whose struggle was geared toward the upliftment of teachers, nurses, peasants, illiterate farmers, miners, hawkers, drivers, market women, area boys, bikers, bartenders, and all such poverty-stricken horde whose backbreaking exertion fuels the Liberian economy, though they benefit little.
It has been 22 years since the Second Liberian Civil War ended with the signing of the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement on 18 August 2003 (as later documented by Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 2009), ushering in a new dawn, bringing comfortable relief to many, and starting an era of democratic governance. Billions of United States dollars, through the national budget and foreign assistance, have gone into post-war recovery efforts with little or nothing to show for it. We still find ourselves in dire straits and slipping deeper into the abyss of poverty and want, taking a staggering toll on the livelihood of many Liberians.
State management over these years has been carried out by the two main political parties in the country, the Unity Party and the Congress for Democratic Change. Directly or indirectly, most of our politicians who set out to change the country and the material conditions of its people have changed materially, but the country they set out to change remains the same, with piecemeal development positioning it at the bottom of every human development and governance index.
Though we are endowed with natural resources, diamond, gold, iron ore, rubber, and more, our economy is by design meant to widen the gap between the poor and the rich, a situation that begs the question: where has the commonwealth gone? Why hasn’t more of it been invested for a better life for all? What about the material conditions of the people? How can it be that after 179 years of political independence, wealth creation, and self-governance, Liberia remains one of the poorest countries in the world? How can it be that after 20 years, spanning 2006 to 2026, of democratic governance, our national budget remains a legalized document that re-victimizes the victims? How can we reverse these 20 years of poor governance and turn the country around? These are questions for our 179th Independence Day reflection.
Statistics on the Dire Condition of the Liberian People
Liberia’s total economic output, an annual flow of output within its borders, equaled about US$4.33 billion at the close of 2023, grew marginally to US$5.21 billion by the end of 2025, and stood at US$5.64 billion in 2026 (IMF projections, Central Bank of Liberia Annual Reports and Monthly Economic Reviews). This makes us one of the smallest economies in the West African sub-region, notwithstanding our enormous potential to build a big and buoyant economy.
Contributing largely to these GDP figures are the commanding weights of the Liberian economy in diamond, gold, iron ore, rubber, and timber. As in many African countries, these commanding weights are run, to a significant extent, by foreign monopoly capital.
Poverty rate: According to the World Bank’s 2023 Poverty Assessment, growth driven by natural resources has not generated employment. While poverty in Monrovia declined, it rose to 81.2% in rural areas, but nearly all working Liberians are what economists call “the working poor,” workers whose incomes still put them below the poverty line.
The wealth gap: Liberia’s wealth gap is substantial, with many struggling to access basic necessities like healthcare, education, and sanitation. The aftershock of this gap cannot be overstated. It generates a surge in petty crime, incarceration rates, and school dropout rates, putting future generations’ chances of a decent life squarely in the negative.
We are, by these statistics, in a dire condition. The government is fully aware, yet it has not solved these problems, may not solve them, and appears indecisive about doing so. And our problems only appear to be getting worse.
Postwar development plans, catchy in name only, the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Poverty Reduction Strategy, the Agenda for Transformation, the Pro-Poor Agenda for Prosperity, and the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development, have all been, to borrow the words of the Egyptian economist Samir Amin, “a miracle that led nowhere.” The budget, a reflection of these plans, focuses on procurement-related matters rather than structural change, with most funds going to recurrent expenditure.
Times of great crisis and economic downturn call for a sound economic plan aimed at structural change, breaking harmful spending habits in budgetary allotments, redirecting wealth toward self-sufficiency, and inspiring the people to become their own agents of transformation.
Politics in Profile: A Snapshot
The Nigerian political scientist Claude Ake once observed that we usually think of Africa’s underdevelopment as an economic problem, when it is primarily a political one, and that the development project has not failed because it has not even started. It has not started because the political environment is infested with corruption, vote-buying, and other practices that keep power in the hands of the elite instead of serving national development.
Liberia’s postwar story fits Ake’s description: a country with an incompetent state that cannot enforce its own laws because of the poor choices it makes.
For instance, while other countries are putting constitutional measures in place to ensure the true independence of the three branches of government, including requiring that the Speaker of the National Assembly be a non-partisan, we were found removing, through a hurried and forceful process, former Speaker J. Fonati Koffa to replace him with what amounted to a regime-aligned Speaker.
While other countries are putting measures in place to ensure the true independence of state-owned enterprises through economic development board process where appointment power does not rest with the President alone, we were found doing the reverse, violating already fragile tenure positions at the Liberia Telecommunications Authority and the Central Bank of Liberia to make room for party loyalists who did not win seats in Parliament or ministerial appointments.
While others are ensuring institutional safeguards against vote-buying and the over-monetization of politics, our metropolitan elites go along with money-driven politics, making it difficult for genuine voices to participate.
While being in opposition in countries like the United Kingdom or South Africa means holding a coherent set of ideals and values distinct from the ruling establishment, in Liberia it too often means smear campaigns, undermining, violence-peddling, and giving the country bad press.
While countries like South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya have strong civil society organizations that sharpen public understanding of government policy, most Liberian civil society organizations are chasing projects, currying favor with the government of the day, or aligning with the opposition for political advantage.
While people elsewhere stand up and fight for transformation against systems of backwardness, Liberians fear, and poverty deepens as a result. Our political environment rarely produces thinking beyond the six-year election cycle. The structural problems remain untouched. Development eludes us.
How we organize ourselves politically has retarded our development, making poverty repetitive. All our people suffer as a result.
The Economy, People-Based Development, and a Cross-Sectoral Approach
The Nigerian author Chinua Achebe once observed that rigid orthodoxies of any kind bury creativity. The antidote is systems thinking, a way of seeing beyond silos, foreign frameworks, and temporary patches.
Sadly, in postwar Liberia, our national development efforts have been led by vintage neoliberals, people not particularly interested in structural change or Pan-African approaches, who follow Western prescriptions on faith rather than evidence.
We are grappling with the results: marginal GDP growth and endemic misery, both feeding rising anti-social behavior. Liberia’s social fabric is under strain for a reason. The isolated, shocking cases reported across the country in recent years, alongside the steady rise of petty crime nationwide, are symptoms of how we have organized ourselves economically, politically, socially, and environmentally.
We have to be clear: 5.8 million people producing a GDP per capita, annual of just US$972.41 will remain submerged in poverty and social strain. The Chinese, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, understood this well, and their policy choices reflected it, focused on liberating the productive forces and improving the standard of living of the people.
Since everything else plays on the economy, we should address the economic plight of the Liberian people through what the economist Samir Amin described as “a differentiated polycentric approach” — one planet, many systems. That means pursuing development wherever it leads, not only through the neoliberal path of deregulation, privatization, and reduced government intervention. That is what China, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan did, and what Rwanda and other progressive African countries are doing now: taking economic decisions for the long-term health of society regardless of ideological labels.
We do not have all the financial resources needed to make the country great and prosperous, but even the little we have, we do not use wisely. The waste of public resources is mind-boggling. Foreign travel, entertainment budgets, vehicle purchases, salaries, allowances, and credit cards that make government jobs resemble a billionaires’ club need to be reviewed, and in some cases, canceled altogether.
Scholarly work has long pointed to approaches Liberia could draw on:
Collective Economic Saving for Collective Development and Investment: raise awareness for Liberians to save and invest in their own development.
De-dollarization: use a single currency, the Liberian dollar, to control market volatility, for all transactions, including the salaries of Government of Liberia officials.
Value Addition: prioritize domestic processing and value addition of raw materials before export.
Local Purchasing: restrict the import of goods that can be competitively produced within Liberia.
A nonpartisan national economic dialogue, so the country can reason together and take measures for the long-term health of the economy.
Poverty and failure are not fate if we choose to arrive at the future together. We made the choice for neoliberalism, and that choice carries the weight of what followed.
Long-Term Thinking and the Needs of the Country: The Education Approach
Serious thinking builds a nation. The role of thinking needs to be defined and taken seriously, reflected in our curriculum choices, because no nation builds without properly defining the role of thinking.
We need a mindset revolution, a transformation that starts at the individual level but must scale into culture. In China, after twenty years of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had left the country in ruins, and at a time when knowledge was given a backseat, Deng Xiaoping launched a mindset revolution by declaring knowledge the primary productive force in society.
Before his National Science Conference on March 18, 1978, Deng Xiaoping convened thirty-three of China’s top intellectuals, mainly professors in August 1977, and listened to them for five full days before acting. This came after a period when knowledge and intellectuals, treated as socialist deviants under Mao Zedong’s leadership, were sidelined and sometimes persecuted. Deng Xiaoping defined the role of thinking to save China, and to this day the role of science and knowledge holds a special place in Chinese society.
Education in China is geared to the needs of society, the world, and the future. What Liberia needs today is to assess its economic, political, social, and environmental needs and direct education accordingly. Given that Liberia is resource-rich with little industry, the Government of Liberia could focus on STEM education backed by a national scholarship program.
Frantz Fanon’s central argument in The Wretched of the Earth was that the political education of the masses cannot mean simply making speeches to them. It means teaching people, relentlessly and honestly, that the country’s progress depends on them, not on any single leader who will carry the burden alone. That argument matters today: if Liberia puts knowledge and long-term planning at the center of national policy, education can become the engine that moves us from survival to takeoff.
The Media Environment
The problem with Liberian media is not entirely of the media’s own making. Many practicing journalists lack even a first degree, and professional standards remain undefined. Too many believe that the ability to speak and access to a microphone are sufficient to practice the profession. This is why investigative journalism remains rare in the country: it demands a strong educational and research foundation that our media environment does not yet build or reward.
The proliferation of media institutions in the country is a good thing, but their operations need a specific focus that helps the country achieve its domestic agenda, not merely politics, or arguments over who is right or wrong. We need media that serves citizen understanding, agriculture, and education just as much as it serves politics.
Elevating the national conversation to a more grounded, data-driven standard would reduce invective and promote responsible citizenship, national development, and democracy.
Civil Education, the Role of Chiefs, and the Ministry of Local Government
In many Western societies, effective leadership creates a system of civic education that allows ordinary people, even those without formal schooling, to understand and take part in community life. Liberia and many African countries are still missing that foundation.
First, we must rethink the role of chiefs. Chieftainship cannot be reduced to wearing traditional cloth and performing rituals. Culture is not handed down from heaven, it is built in how we organize ourselves economically, politically, socially, and environmentally. If culture is only cloth and ceremony, we leave out the culture of science, technology, and the internet that our young people live in every day.
Second, government must lead as a catalyst. The Ministry of Local Government should champion citizen science, practical, community-based learning, so people are structurally educated, not just informed. When citizens understand their environment and their responsibilities, we gain collective ownership, better leadership, and real solutions to the problems holding our country back.
Only when our chiefs, government, and citizens embrace learning, science, and shared responsibility can Liberia move from ritual to real development.
Closing Remarks
The state by itself has little value unless it enforces its laws fairly, unless it makes full use of the human and material resources of its people, and unless it liberates the productive forces and improves people’s lives.
The message is clear: the voice and needs of the people must be the ultimate goal of government. A government earns its legitimacy not by slogans, but by raising living standards.
Liberating our productive forces (education, health, agriculture, energy,etc) so that every Liberian shares in dignity and prosperity must be the objective of our Republic. Like nations that have made the leap, Liberia must put Liberia first. We will do what is right for Liberia, not pander to the expectations of others or subscribe to policies based on blind faith.
And we must reject the false choice between market economics and socialist economics. The future demands a delicate balance: markets that democratically generate wealth, and a state that ensures that wealth serves all. If we end the waste, govern with competence, and place the people at the center, Liberia’s takeoff from developing country to developed country will not be a dream. It will be our Independence Day reality.
Happy 179th Independence Day!
Author: Sallia S. Komala is a son of Sarkonedu, Quardu-Gboni District, Lofa Country, Liberia, and can be reached at ksalia96@gmail.com
