My Beauty Best Teacher

In the NYTimes Daniel Bergner writes about the rule of Africa's first female president.
On corruption:

“We can’t stamp it out, not yet,” Sirleaf said to me, clenching her fists in frustration over the country’s bone-deep corruption. She spoke of being torn between firing every transgressing official and keeping enough ministers and staff members at their desks so the government can go on operating, no matter how badly it is compromised. And meanwhile, unemployment in the country, whose population shifted heavily to Monrovia during the war, stands as high as 85 percent by some estimates. Instilling faith that Liberia’s economic wasteland can be redeemed, however gradually, may be the only way to ensure long-lasting peace, especially with the U.N. troops expected to start pulling out after next year’s elections. Over the radio, Sirleaf put the emphasis on gradually. “I beg you I no magician,” she said, letting a plea seep into her lecture. “I can’t just wave a magic wand.”

Regarding the country's options from a value-add perspective:

Liberia’s natural resources just aren’t in high-enough demand around the world to spur the economy and generate much public revenue. Firestone is providing the government with $4.7 million this year, Sirleaf estimated. To truly take advantage of its iron, rubber and timber, Liberia would have to manufacture things with them; it would have to export finished products rather than raw materials. And it can’t; the country is all but pre­industrial...[continue reading]

We would disagree on this last point of being "preindustrial". Liberia does have innovation assets that lie in plain view. Like every other African country its makers and innovators are largely overlooked while emphasis is placed on largely unsustainable initiatives. From building up is nascent market gardeners, training a techie workforce to building its tourist assets we dispute the uninformed claim that that salvation lies in oil based resource extraction.

In contrast to the mealy mouthed Thabo Mbeki, the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf clearly states what is at stake in Zimbabwe,News 24 reports:

"This is why today ... we send a strong message to all the African leaders to look at the Liberia example - to know that when the will of the people is suppressed, you create the underground tensions and torrents that eventually can lead to unmaking a society," she said.Sirleaf warned that the effects of that suppression spill over into the region - as happened with Liberia's wars."

via African Path

Image via Wikipedia From the Economist:

IN HER inaugural speech in January 2006, Africa’s first female head of state set out the daunting tasks facing Liberia, citing her determination to heal the awful wounds inflicted during the civil wars of 1989 to 2003 by her various appalling predecessors, including Charles Taylor, now on trial for war crimes at The Hague. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, a former World Banker, also promised to reduce Liberia’s dire poverty and to consolidate democracy. On the whole, she has made progress—albeit with a lot of help from friends abroad...[continue reading]

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• Liberia to launch truth hearings

Image via WikipediaThe FT reports:

The island of Mauritius is the best-run country in Africa, Somalia the worst, and Liberia the fastest-improving, according to a comprehensive index of governance standards in the region...Liberia, which was rated as recording the fastest gains, is emerging from the legacy of a 14-year civil war that ended in 2003. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who became Africa’s first female elected head of state in 2005, has won the support of donors for her plans to boost economic growth and fight corruption...[continue reading]

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• Sirleaf Report Card

Chris Blattman writes:
Checks and balances in democratic systems are sources of stability. No one man or woman can rule the state as a fiefdom, and no succession battle can so destroy a nation country.
Africa's strong man syndrome has, some argue, been the key to whatever meager development it has achieved. Witness Yoweri Museveni's Uganda, Paul Kagame's Rwanda, or Ellen Sirleaf's Liberia--both men (and the one woman) pulled their countries back from the brink and on the path to health and wealth.Yet today's Kagame or Sirleaf may be tomorrow's Kibaki or Mugabe--entrenched leaders who refuse to go when their time comes, destroying all they have wrought in the process...[continue reading]

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• Ugandan president plans for fourth term

Hash reports:

Alfred Sirleaf is an analog blogger. He take runs the “Daily News”, a news hut by the side of a major road in the middle of Monrovia. He started it a number of years ago, stating that he wanted to get news into the hands of those who couldn’t afford newspapers, in the language that they could understand...[continue reading]

The CS monitor comments on the rise of Africa's women."...In fact, Africa has long been "extremely progressive when it comes to women in politics," says Gisela Geisler, author of a book on the subject. And now there's a further "jelling" of women in power, she says, partly because 10 years after a major wave of democracy swept across Africa, voters see that "not much has changed in terms of corruption." These days, Dr. Geisler says, "people have greater hope in women..." The BBC reports "..."It's a historical phenomenon, which is going to be an example to other African countries... I could scream my heart out," Nigerian politician Sarah Jubril told the BBC's World Today programme. So is Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf's apparent victory the start of a trend?..."

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stated in her speech delivered at the Sixth Annual Nelson Mandela Lecture that:

There are today over 20 democracies in sub-Saharan Africa. Consider the transformation – in the space of a generation, democracy in Africa has spread from a very few countries to more than one third of the continent. Some of these are nascent democracies that are still fragile. But for others, the change more clearly prevails. It is hard to predict the future and the change will not be easy or smooth in every country, but never before in world history have so many low income countries become democracies in so short a period of time. Never before has the resolve of African leaders, backed by needed and judiciously used military intervention, ended a rebellion against an elected government in power, as was recently done in the Comoros.
This enormous change engendered by an empowered citizenry has huge implications for Africa and for those few countries that continue to frustrate the will of the people. This New Africa is being built, every day, by the African people – people who reach out across boundaries – real and imagined. They are not waiting for the Renaissance to be determined by states and by governments alone for they know that they are a part of an interconnected world...[continue reading]

via African Loft

Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and Nicky Oppenheimer write in the IHT:

Effective use of aid can support African reforms, but it must not be the organizing principle for African development. The key to success will be the extent to which African governments can provide the private sector with the right incentives to add value to the economy, so both business and government can concentrate on what each does best...[continue reading]

see CIPE Blog for related coverage

Gumisai Mutume writes about the progress being made in reforming institutions throughout the continent:

While repressive governments are yet to be eliminated across the continent, significant change is taking place in a growing number of countries. Civil society is growing and applying pressure for better performance, the media are demanding transparency across all sectors of society and governments are realizing that the days of coercive politics are numbered...In a growing number of countries, citizens are calling for independent judges, effective parliaments, measures that address corruption and the devolution of power from central to local governments. "It is expected that proposed laws will be subject to public dialogue and debate before enactment and that those representing the people will regularly consult and seek the people's views,",Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. In a nutshell, Africans are demanding what is known among development practitioners as "good governance."...Narrowly defined, governance means the exercise of political power to manage the affairs of state. In a broader sense, it can refer to the various processes relating to leadership, such as policymaking, transparency, accountability, the protection of human rights and the relationship among the public, private and civil sectors in determining how power is exercised.