Building of the Month: The proposed Henry Hoff Commercial Plaza, Carey Street

Given the aviation kick I've been on this week I had been hoping to get a chance to photograph a new building out at the airport for July's Building of the Month, but that will have to wait for another time.

This set of photos has been the draft box since earlier this year, when I was walking around central Monrovia on an early Sunday morning. The city has a great number of proposed-building signboards at the moment, perhaps more than at any other time that I can recall. I post some others here as well, but this is probably the most ambitious of them all, not least given its height. It's not entirely clear what the scale is here, other than the presence of the cars at the bottom of the illustration, which looks to be a straight screen print off an aged, low-capacity version of AutoCAD.

The tower looks to be maybe three stories of parking, with maybe ten stories of offices that appear to rest on a level of thick, flaring columns which would cantilever  That would make the building within range of the tallest building in Liberia, which would be a remarkable development in and of itself, but the first time since the rise of the Ducor in 1959 that a commercial structure reached such a height.

It will be interesting to see first whether this project gets built, and then who occupies the offices: whether a UN Agency or NGO takes a chunk of space, whether a bank relocates its headquarters, or whether smaller private firms are able to absorb the square footage. Not sure what is going on at the crown of this building, but my guess would be either (a) another fancy rooftop restaurant or (b) an executive apartment.

If this building does rise, it will dramatically transform this tired, crumbling block of Carey Street, which thus far has remained a low-slung but dense block of concrete structures, and has yet to see the construction which has changed so many other parts of the city. As the signboard says, "Coming soon to the Carey !!!"

Ten Years since A Continent for the Taking

Lacking refugee camps or any other appropriate shelter, Monrovia's huge internally displaced population took up residence in the gutted and bombed-out shells of what had been a once-proud city's most prestigious addresses. Somehow, the entire fron façade of the massive, boxy structure of the Libyan-built Foreign Ministry, for example, had been neatly sheared off in the artillery duels between the Nigerians and Taylor's fighters during one of the rebel leader's attempts to capture Monrovia. And squatters now used the ministry's offices as overcrowded apartments, seeming to pay no mind to the fact that their whole lives were on display to the passersby on one of Monrovia's busiest avenues.  

 

This same gritty resourcefulness was at work at the Intercontinental Hotel, once a majestic skyscraper that stood on the city's highest ground like an exclamation point, announcing the cosmopolitan pretensions of the old Americo-Liberian elite... Like nearly every other monument to the Americo-Liberians, the Intercontinental Hotel had been shattered and left to rot in the moldy damp of Liberia's persistent tropical rains.

Howard French's description of mid-1990s Monrovia, from his landmark chronicle of his journalistic journeys across Africa: A Continent for the Taking was published ten years ago this spring. The book contained several photographs of Monrovia from that time, including the rare shot of the Foreign Ministry, a skeletal shell on a treeless forecourt, astonishingly contrasting with the building of today. Although the historical events accounted in the book are now fading further into the past, the book is still highly recommended reading for that very same reason.

Not only does this past June mark ten years since this release of the book, but French, who since his years as an African correspondent has now spent much of his time in, and become equally expert on, China, has a new work out about Africa, China's Second Continent, which was reviewed favorably by no less of an authority than Stephen Ellis. On the summer reading list.

High Atop the Ducor

Speaking of the Ducor, I had long ago posted some renderings from the ill-fated, aborted attempt at resurrecting the Grand Dame of Monrovia Hotels, back when the Libyan Investment Authority was expected to take over the property and redevelop the complex. That the Ducor is still vacant is surely one of the more tangential footnotes of the Libyan Revolution.

I was recently at a government office in Monrovia which still, either through neglect or persevering optimism, still had some printed-out elevations and renderings of the revamped Ducor taped to the wall. Slightly faded, they nonetheless revealed the name of the Italian architecture firm responsible for the proposal.

I hadn't seen these images of the reborn rooftop restaurant before; they weren't included in the press pack that accompanied the media blitz of the original announcement, I suppose. Not only do I particularly like the drama of the exterior fly-over, but also the Ducor's rooftop terrace is, in a certain sense, already a destination for evening revelry: there are near-weekly sunset gatherings on the two-level rooftop of the Ducor; they've occurred more times than I can remember during my time in Monrovia.

Not sure when the old hotel will finally be refurbished, or what its fate will be. There was a very prominent rumor over the last few months that “Hilton was taking the Ducor” but I'm not convinced as there's not even the slightest official hint of that, I am not even certain that a major hotel brand like Hilton would even really be in the business of taking over a decrepit property, especially in a peripheral frontier market, more common nowadays would be for a hotel chain to agree to manage a hotel as one of the later steps in a project. I should note that there is already a Hilton in Liberia: The Hilton Garden Inn, at the airport in Liberia, Costa Rica.

Building of the Month: NASSCORP Multi-Purpose Complex

 ©Matthew Jones

Although the NASSCORP Building has been featured on the M2M Architectural Tour for many years, as it has been under construction since April 2009 (and thus almost as long as I have been going to Monrovia), it made the front pages this month as the technicolor behemoth was officially opened by President Sirleaf just two weeks ago, over five years after groundbreaking. Although construction does take a much slower pace in the developing world, it is still astonishing just how slow the progress can be.

 ©Matthew Jones

Not to repeat too heavily on what I've already written on the Architectural Tour about the landmark building, I just want to emphasize that this tremendous and unusual building has a warm spot in my heart for several reasons. Firstly, the architect, Sylvanus O'Connor, is someone I consider to be a personal friend, having worked with him professionally during my first stint in Liberia in 2008-2009, when the NASSCORP building had only just taken shape on the drawing boards of O'Connor's firm, AEP Consultants, which is located on Front Street in Monrovia.

An early computer rendering. 

Most of the major elements remained intact throughout construction.

Sylvanus is a talented and increasingly prolific designer. NASSCORP embodies much of what is prominent in O'Connor's singular style: the ebullience of its arrangements, and the flamboyance of its post-modern costuming. Like O'Connor's earlier landmark, the LBDI headquarters at 9th Street and Tubman Boulevard, the NASSCORP employs semi-classical elements but articulates a thoroughly contemporary form and finish.

Reposted from the excellent Liberian journalist blog Sengbeh.Wordpress.com from

his article about the dedication.

These gestures are only more pronounced in the NASSCORP, which is a larger building, much more prominently situated on one of Liberia's most important road crossings, ELWA Junction. It could only be unmissable if it was another standard commercial building seen thrown up in this city: hulking, heavy, and hardly windowed.  Instead, it literally glistens in a bold employment of multi-colored Alubond panels, which sparkle in a rainbow of fluorescence not unlike the oil-slicked puddles arrayed on the road out front. The effect is luminous, and a still-rare but increasingly-common option to present a shimmering, glass-covered façade more like a curtain-wall of an office tower than another darkened edifice of crude cement.

From the Nasscorp website

The candyland effect of all this color greatly softens the substantial dimensions of the structure, which is further assisted by three major formal gestures: a pair of bulbous round turrets, bridged by a soaring lobby space, which together form the tower section of the complex, and a concave curtain which connects to a thin, missile-like clock tower, all planted on a colonnaded base meeting the street, providing a transformationally urban front to what is, after all, one the country's primary traffic crossings.

Nasscorp Building in early construction, March 2010 ©Matthew Jones

This setting is a chief reason to celebrate the complex. Monrovia, stretched out over a ten-mile-long peninsula, suffers desperately from traffic congestion, as thousands of workers drive from the expansive eastern suburbs into the Central business district daily, at the western end of the Mesurado landmass. The ELWA section of Paynesville, already the gateway to Tubman Boulevard, would be a natural second commercial center for the metropolitan area. This building is the most significant step toward formally establishing that as a planning goal to date.

©Matthew Jones

Remarkable as the architecture is, its significance is not limited to the design. That a government agency raised the $11 million in project funds from its own reserves, and used almost exclusively Liberian firms, for a commercial project that aims to safeguard public pension funds, is itself remarkable.  Quoting from the remarks of NASSCORP director van Ballmoos during the dedication ceremony:

This edifice is symbolic not only because of the potential to generate revenue; not because of its attractiveness and picturesque appearance from any section of Paynesville; not only because it transforms the landscape of the city; not because of its magnificence or its towering façade over other businesses in the area, but because it signals another achievement in the reconstruction and development of the nation.

Regardless of the appeal of its appearance, few buildings have the visual, commercial, spatial, social, political, and patriotic impact of the NASSCORP building, and for those reasons, it deserves note, respect, and even acclaim.

Liberia to Have a Sovereign Wealth Fund?

A surprising phenomenon has been growing across the African continent over the last few years: plans by more than a dozen African governments to develop Sovereign Wealth Funds. These large pools of government revenues, which are diverted from the current budget and instead invested offshore in financial markets for future savings, rather than spent currently or in-country.

These investment vehicles are much associated with affluent economies such as Singapore, China, or the UAE, and not the desperate circumstances of the world's least developed countries. But they have spread across Africa this decade, and Liberia could be considering establishing its own fund. Below is the better part of a February 13th Reuters article:

Resource-rich African countries are busy setting up sovereign wealth funds, but critics say the funds may not serve the long-term interests of poor countries that still need to invest in basics such as schools and roads. 

Three oil producers, Angola, Ghana and Nigeria, started funds in the last two years. Before them, only Botswana, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea had such schemes. Other countries are following. Zambia and Liberia announced plans for funds last month. Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mauritius, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have similar intentions. 

The funds can serve useful purposes, analysts say. Commodity earnings can be split into one fund for infrastructure and another for savings that can be used as collateral for even bigger amounts. 

"Africa needs higher savings," said Razia Khan, the head of Africa research at Standard Chartered Bank. "If it is done properly, the sovereign wealth fund and the accumulation of long-term savings essentially means that countries are improving their creditworthiness and opening up access to bigger sources of financing on more favourable terms. It does not preclude investment in infrastructure." 

But critics say Africa could reap more from its resources by investing in education, energy, and transport to feed other industries, rather than parking the money in liquid but low-yield assets in safe havens, as sovereign funds tend to do. Many successful wealth funds belong to countries with surpluses and rich citizens, which can afford them. That is not the case with many sub-Saharan African governments struggling to feed or educate their people, said Kwame Owino, the chief executive at the Nairobi-based Institute of Economic Affairs. 

"It would be a luxury to have. The political will may exist, but the economics of it suggest that a sovereign wealth fund is not a good idea for many sub-Saharan countries," he said. 

"In many of these countries as well, transparency is a big problem and the amount of leakage that takes place in public funds is a reason to be concerned." 

Liberia is looking at various models of wealth funds, including Norway's, the world's most transparent sovereign wealth fund, Finance Minister Amara Konneh said. The west African country also wants to avoid the so-called "Dutch disease", where a dependence on resource extraction causes other industries to wither. 

Botswana's $6.9 billion Pula Fund was the continent's most transparent on the Linaburg-Maduell index, with a rating of 6 out of 10. Nigeria's $1 billion kitty had a rating of 4 in the third quarter of 2013. The country added $550 million to the fund in February. 

"We have a real governance deficit," said Aly-Khan Satchu, a Nairobi-based independent analyst. "My concerns are that in a majority of these countries where there is a commodity-related windfall, it is proven already that in those countries the governance is the poorest of all the African countries." He cited Nigeria and Angola as example. 

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has been in power for more than three decades, appointed his eldest son to run the country's $5 billion fund in 2013. That undermined confidence in how it will be managed, given the country's reputation for squandering or siphoning off petrol dollars...Angola's money bags have been stuffed with cash since the end of the country's civil war in 2002. It is now investing in developed-market equities and bonds issued by sovereign agencies, investment-grade companies, high-yield emerging market assets and Africa's hotel sector. Nigeria's reserve was created in 2011 for three main purposes. One is infrastructure, another is a collective savings account and another is a so-called stabilization fund, to cushion against commodity price shocks. A remaining 15 percent is unallocated.

The brief mention of Liberia is attributed to this January interview with Finance Minister Konneh, in which he states that Liberia is ‘looking’ at a Sovereign Wealth Fund. Liberia is a long way off from having one, and is obviously a much smaller, much poorer, and much less developed economy than even Nigeria, with all that giant country’s poverty, inequality, underdevelopment and other major problems. Yet Nigeria has staggering poverty, but instead of injecting its oil revenues in its own development, it has in the last few years opted to set up a separate, off-shore fund.

While some of the funds may be invested in capital projects, like public infrastructure or stakes in private ventures, a good portion of it stays outside of Africa, invested in bonds and stocks. Instead of investing in children’s health or education, the money purchases US Treasuries. Instead of teachers’ and nurses' salaries, the profits from the crude are going into the pockets of fund managers in fees paid in Geneva, London, and New York. From a Bloomberg report from February on Nigeria’s new fund set-up:

Goldman Sachs, UBS AG and Credit Suisse Group AG were among four managers named in August to help run a $200 million fixed-income fund. Eight more managers will be appointed before the end of June, with two expected to be announced next month, Orji said.

So, not only is the money not injected into the domestic economy, it is sucked up into the global banking industry and first-world finance markets.

This is not necessarily inherently evil: prudent savings for future generations, and global expertise in managing and allocating the proceeds from extractive industry could do a lot of good. The Center for Global Development has covered this topic in some detail over the last few years. In October 2011, it published a brief paper, “What Role for Sovereign Wealth Funds in Africa's Development?” that surveyed the proliferation of Sovereign Wealth Funds across Africa, looking at established funds like those in Botswana, and more recent developments such as those in Angola and Nigeria.

The paper raises a lot of the structural problems latent in a undeveloped, resource-rich economy, such as an inability to accept large injects of capital and the high likelihood and risk that such big accumulations of government cash and authoritarian attempts to disperse that cash within the country’s administrative budget would end badly. The heart of the paper sets out the ideal best practices for a successful SWF.

Which all sounds good, but starting point in so much of the discussion of African SWFs (and much else in the world today) remains the unchallenged notion that global financialization is good.  While acknowledging how incongruous it is for the world’s poorest countries to be launching investment funds, there is little exploration in all this discussion of whether or not more current spending, on infrastructure, on education, on health care, would be a better “investment” in the future than offshore investments in U.S. Treasuries or even just in foreign currencies—piles of cash.

The paper was also published before the launch of Nigeria’s fund, which has hardly been immune from Nigeria’s notorious politics, but more positively may direct some of its investment into Nigeria’s decrepit power sector. In the case of Angola’s Sovereign Wealth Fund, most of what has happened thus far is that the President’s son was appointed manager last June, a controversial Swiss firm as given a huge contract to manage the fund, and a massive expensive London office building was purchased as the fund’s office. The result on the streets of Luanda? The city’s street vendors were harassed by the police and banned from trading.

I know little about economics, but even after reading these papers, the drive to funnel resource revenues into offshore funds still seems a bit shocking, especially in our current age when the over-financialization of even the U.S. economy is widely questioned.

Most startling, and difficult to accept, is the idea that rather than better-paid teachers or more paved roads or clinics, megabanks like Goldman Sachs or politically-connected Swiss-registered outfits will be receiving their fee for managing the assets of the world’s poorest people, who are excluded from enjoying the benefits of their country’s natural resources, and that rather augment public and private spending, by buying low-risk assets such as government bonds or foreign currencies, the world's poorest are essentially lending the world's richest money. 

Tuk-Tuks and Tricycles

The woes and wherewithals of Monrovia's commuters shift along with the changing the means of transportation available to them, in a city that is seems increasingly clogged with traffic week by week. 

In the wake of the government's controversial pehn-pehn ban, which is still in force if not very strictly enforced—the law is holding but is dependent on traffic cops' enthusiasm for pulling over every motorbike with a passenger—the streets of Monrovia have in the last few months featured a vehicle new to the country:  a growing fleet of banana yellow auto rickshaws, which by all appearances seem to have been imported from south Asia. While these tuk-tuks offer more space, more shade and perhaps slightly more safety than the dodge-and-weave pehn-pehns, they take up more space in the choked traffic of the city, and can't slip between bumpers in heavy traffic like a two-wheeled vehicle. But at least they can be on the main streets, whereas passenger motorbikes remain banned.

This is entirely new for Liberia, although the substantial Wikipedia article on tuk-tuks notes that cities in East Africa, Nigeria, and Madagascar all feature auto rickshaws.

Not to be outdone, a more inventive faction of the pehn-pehns army has fought back for market share, by surreptitiously transforming their 2-wheeled motorbikes into three-wheeled, bonneted taxis. The Heritage reports from this week [emphasis added]:

A painstaking investigation conducted by the Independent Authoritative Heritage has established how some motorcyclists are locally transforming their motorcycles into tricycles to enable them ply the main streets in Monrovia and its environs. Motorcycles are widely refereed to here as ‘Pehn-Pehn’, while on the other hand; motorcyclists are called ‘Pehn-Pehn’ riders.    
This latest development comes in the wake of the mass importation of tricycles into the country. The tricycles have since taken the place of motorcycles, which were banned by the Government of Liberia (GOL) late last year  from plying the main streets of Monrovia and its environs. 
The government said it took the action in order to reduce the high rate of accident cases caused by ‘pehn-pehn’ riders. The government’s action also followed an incident which involved a motorcyclist and a bus drive in which the motorcyclist lost his life and the busallegedly set ablaze by some motorcyclists in revenge of the death of their colleagues. 
In the same vein, the motorcyclists were reported to have wounded several police officers, including Col. Darlington George, Deputy Police Commissioner for Operation.
Accordingly, on Tuesday, February 25, 2014, our reporter ran into one of the transformed motorcyclists on Benson Street, Monrovia. The rider, believed to have gone for lunch,  parked the self-made tricycle at the intersection of Gurley and Bensons Streets.
It is not clear whether authorities of the Liberia National Police(LNP) are aware of this made in Liberia tricycles.
But some onlookers, who spoke to our reporter, said they had seen similar made in Liberia tricycles commuting passengers in central  Monrovia without any attempt by traffic police to question the riders.
“These locally made tricycles are different from the imported ones- we do not know why the police are not detecting them. The police are not just serious people in this country. All they do is to run behind cabman for $5 dollars business leaving behind potential threat to citizens,” remarked one of the bystanders.
Beautifully colored with yellow, the cage contained an old safari motorcycle as if it is an imported one.
According to our reporter, the bystanders were seen arguing among themselves that the tricycle was not a locally made one, but rather imported from India, one of the countries where tricycles are common in the transport industry.
The well self-designed tricycle has a distance beauty that convinces anyone that it is being imported from a foreign country. The local manufacturer is reported to have used wheelbarrow tyers at the back of the tricycle, while the front tyer is believed to be the original tyer of the Safari (Honda) motorcycle.
Already plying the streets of central Monrovia, observers say the new technique by motorcyclists is believed to be working well, as there has been no report of police detecting such technique even though their presence is felt at major street intersections downtown Monrovia.
Meanwhile, the government last week announced that there were plans to stop tricycles from plying the main streets in Monrovia and its environs. 
Against this backdrop, the government is cautiously calling on business owners and the general public to stop the importation of the tricycles into the country. 
As in the case of motorcycles, the government pointed out, this is part of its ongoing measures aimed  at protecting lives and properties, as well as reducing accidents cases, mainly in Monrovia and its environs.    

Note how the locally jury-rigged motorbikes are described in such deceptive fashion in both the reporting and by the passengers and by-standers, in contrast to the admiring manner in which the imported 'tricycles' are referred.

This photo ©Heritage Newspaper Liberia

But apparently, the government has noted the new developments, with rumors that even these three-wheeled vehicles, imported or makeshift alike, may be added to the forbidden forms of transportation in Monrovia.

Monrovia Central Park Opens

I've already posted the building of the month for February, but I have something of another architectural review to post—more like something of a landscape architecture review.

Monrovia Central Park officially opened last week. The formal name is Chevron Monrovia Central Park —as a major source of funding for the park's realization came from Chevron Liberia Ltd, the local subsidiary of the San Ramon, California-based super major that is working some of Liberia's offshore oil blocks.

Monrovia Central Park isn't exactly central, in the sense that it is not located within the historic core of Central Monrovia, but is across the river, on Bushrod Island, and not far from what up until now has been Monrovia's only park-like setting: the historic Providence Island, which sits forlornly in the middle of Mesurado River, it's tiny surface a half-neglected barrenness bisected by the busy Gabriel Tucker bridge connecting Bushrod Island with Central Monrovia.

Heretofore, Monrovia has not had any other real parks: no dedicated public open spaces, other than the small, over-formal grounds of Centennial Pavillion Grounds There are a few non-dedicated open areas, such as the erstwhile make-shift football pitches at the end of the Spriggs-Payne runway, which were cordoned off in 2011 as the airport re-established control over its periphery. There is also the beach, although those are not exactly treated as public parks either by the public nor government authorities, who have made moves to wall off many beaches to the public in recent years, as has been previously noted on this blog. 

Monrovia Central Park is also not on the same scale as its Manhattan namesake. The postage stamp public garden wouldn't be hosting any carriage rides or ice-skating, even if the climate was more amenable. There's hardly enough space to kick a ball back and forth.

Also, the park suffers from a sort of over-intervention that is actually common to Liberian landscaping. There is far too much concrete, and far too little grass. These rough-shod surfaces take the shape of a surfeit of sidewalks and low walls, sitting areas where even the benches and tables are crudely cast in cement. This echoes the inner courtyards of many private residential and hotel compounds in Monrovia, which are often paved over into an unwelcoming expanse of hard surfaces, radiating heat.

There are some nice features added to the park, including several playground areas with slides and swing sets. The most monumental aspect is an enormous two-story palaver hut, the largest I've ever seen. There a number of smaller, thatched-roof stands around the perimeter, like picnic pavilions.

There is still a fair amount of grass and large trees, which is definitely a worthwhile amenity, and all-too-rare in comparison with most of Monrovia's compounds. Perhaps the most successful detail is the waterfront pavement, which acts as a sort of riverside promenade, which even includes a boat dock, perhaps for a future water taxi service, but also utilizes the Park's location, with a pleasant vista across the wide mouth of the Mesurado, looking south towards historic Central Monrovia and Providence Island.

Hopefully, Monrovians will be able to make use of the park, especially young children, and hopefully this is only the first open space that is formally set aside for the city's residents. Excerpted from the Executive Mansion press release:

The President challenged the Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) to ensure that the Mesurado River is cleared of garbage, to allow those boating to have a garbage-free environment at all times...

The President seriously frowned at the Waterside section of the river, where makeshift latrines are built along the bank, terming them as unacceptable and should be removed immediately.She also instructed the committee to include the clean-up of Providence Island, to make it a tourist attraction and, at the same time, to complete the construction of the monument on the island. When completed, the monument will address one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that such a structure be erected in honor of those who paid the ultimate price for peace in Liberia.President Sirleaf encouraged parents to join the government and its partners in the effort to create an enabling environment for Liberian children. The park, she said, will go a long way in allowing the Liberian child to play once again, where they will know no war. She called upon parents to be good partners in achieving this objective.

Satellite Photos ©Google, other images taken from the Monrovia Central Park's Facebook Page. 

Building of the Month: The Ruin at Clay Street & Camp Johnson Road

One of post-conflict Monrovia’s primary architectural characteristics, featured through the M2M Architectural Tour, has been its ruins. The city is bookended by abandoned monuments, or rather monuments to abandonment—the never-was Ministry of Defense in Congo Town as you enter the capital, and the Ducor Hotel, situated both at Monrovia's highest point and atop the termination of the long Mesurado peninsula (with the oceanside Hotel Africa complex in Virginia as an eastward outlier). Megastructures of the country's former affluence and importance dot the cityscape: the Pompeii of Post-Conflict.

Aside from these larger commercial complexes, there have always been lots of smaller-scale ruins across the city, from shells of sprawling split-level '70s ranches the fin-de-belle-époque to skeletons of historic mansions in town. If the hulks of five-star hotels and the unfinished frames of intimidating ministries are mausoleums of Monrovia's Cold War relevance, these domestic dilapidations mark the graves of personal tragedies: families and businesses fallen. 

Carey Street, 2008 & 2009.

In Central Monrovia, there have been half a dozen such ruins featured in the Architectural Tour over the last five years: a few compelling examples where an intact, multistory stone or concrete shell stood vacant amid the crowded, chaotic bustle of the town. a Victorian-style façade, still grayish-white with old paint and once-resplendent with double-height front porch, now rooflessly houses a carpenter's yard on Carey Street. About a block away, a grandiose triple-decker whose front entry had been built out into a video club and garment shop, the front parlor home to a wide, green plum tree that reaches up to the crumbling eves, a second vines over the back of the house.

Carey Street 2009.

The most magnificent of all, unquestionably, was the Ruin on Camp Johnson Road at the corner of Carey Street. Like so many of Monrovia's old buildings, its original purpose was difficult to ascertain, although by its size and location is was almost certainly an anchor of what was once Monrovia's fifth avenue shopping street. Taking up an entire lot, the four-story high structure had five wide windows all around, and some sort of interior circulation shaft, perhaps a central stairwell, or almost as if a larger building had been built up around the outside of a smaller inner building. Whatever the relationship between the two elements, they unmistakably recall an outer peristyle and inner cella of a Greek temple.

Camp Johnson Road, 2013.

The scene is made rather less like the Acropolis in Athens and rather more like Angkor Wat by the last and third element: a massive, vining tree, sprouting knottily out the inner sanctum and over the top of the concrete structures like a dome. At its ankles, like many other of Monrovia's ruins, was an arcade of small shops, a bustle of hustle: a baby-care store, a bar and restaurant with an enclosed sitting area, painted in bright lime green. If Monrovia is post-colonialism's Rome, than here is a scene of Canaletto, or at least of Hubert Robert, as the ordinary citizens reoccupy the old edifices, not to keep their livestock, but sell plastic toys and warm Club Beer.

Hubert Robert, French. Roman Ruins, c.1760.

This arrangement was an arresting site. First, like all of Monrovia's other war wreckage, it is ruin porn, less ironic than the Ducor and less hilariously menacing than the Ministry of Defense, as the previous life of the building is not evident. It is striking both for the visual orchestration, and that such a feral germination had proceeded with only disregard and accommodation, without intervention or mitigation—without anyone on the busy street around it taking any action to stop it.

But it has stopped. As of earlier this week, the concrete-block walls have been knocked down. A pile of rubble covers the twisted roots of the thick-trunked tree, which will undoubtedly meet the blades of chainsaw in the coming weeks.

Photo ©Glenna Gordon February 2014. 

What will come in its place here is not known: another cement shop front, with heavy iron doors, selling used mattresses or auto parts. Perhaps the second floor will be apartments. A diesel generator will run outback. One more store for Camp Johnson Road. Jobs will be created, commerce will commence: it will be another step in the march of progress and recovery, and Monrovia will become more like every other West African capital, with one less of its unusual sights.

Special thanks to Glenna Gordon for use of her Instagram photo. All other photos ©Matthew M. Jones.

A Pessimist's Response to Bill Gates

I am not a scholar nor an expert on aid, and actually find that debate tired and dull. Despite living and working in Liberia, I have not paid much attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Health, women's issues, diseases, and the other topics foremost in the Gates Foundation's efforts are probably the furthest outside of my orbit of familiarity and knowledge. My impression is that this type of work is both effective, and has seen enormous and commendable results in eradicating global epidemics and improving conditions for the world's poorest.

So, I was only half-aware that the couple issued a widely-distrubuted annual letter, so this year was the first time I read it.

What I read surprised me, and predominantly not for very positive reasons. The letter sets out to debunk several “Myths” about aid and development work that Bill and Melinda frequently encounter, which they find variously frustrating, baffling, and/or false.  As the letter begins, “By almost any measure, the world better than it has ever been,” and they feel anyone who thinks otherwise is misinformed and pessimistic.

I think I might be one of the people Gates is talking about, although I would qualify the label Those Who Think The World Is Getting Worse, more eagerly accepting an invitation into the club of Those That Are Worried That The World Might Run Out of Time Before Solving Civilization-Threatening Problems.

So, although I am no Chris Blattman, much less a Bill Easterly, I am writing this brief response to Mr. Gates Annual letter, not only as someone who may be a bit pessimistic about the world, but also as a reader surprised by the way the letter's arguments were framed, or more precisely, how the “myths” it calls out were characterized, and what evidence was used to refute them.

I don’t actually believe any of the myths that the letter seeks to debunk, but I do think the way the letter’s arguments are framed suggests a false choice between Believing the World Is Getting Worse and Supporting the Eradication of Extreme Poverty and Disease. It’s actually possible to both worry that many of the world’s problems may prove insurmountable, and being in favor of eradicating extreme poverty and disease as quickly as possible. In fact, it’s logical that one of the problem’s that pessimists are impatient about it’s the progress in alleviating extreme poverty.

According to the World Bank’s statistics from 2011, and excluding mainland China, the world’s poverty rate has only decrease by 10% from 1981 to 2005, with well more than a billion people in the world living on less than $1.25 per day, and the absolute number of people in abject poverty holding stubbornly steady for decades, as the world’s population has burgeoned. This is not just a problem in the least-developed world, by the way the total population of poor people in our own United States is at an all-time high. So there’s not very much to feel overly proud about.

Not too far into the letter, I was floored by the incorporation of juxtaposed pictures of Mexico City, Shanghai and Nairobi as proof of humanity’s progress. “These photos illustrate a powerful story: The global picture of poverty has been completely redrawn in my lifetime,” the letter states.

This statement may be true, but not in the way Gates intends it, I think: the concentration of wealth into a constellation of cosmopolitan enclaves does demonstrate a radical change in the picture of global poverty, but I doubt it reflects the high summit of human achievement. A panoramic view of Nairobi, Mexico City or Shanghai in 2014 would surely encompass more poor people between the picture plane and the vanishing point of the photo than an identical aerial shot from 1980. Also, a lot of those high-rises in Nairobi were built twenty- or thirty years ago. In short, I am baffled that this before-and-after stuff made the final edits of this letter.

Also included here is a little anecdote of Bill and Melinda’s visit to Mexico City in 1987 versus more recently, and how much nicer it was and how “everyone was middle class.” This is Tom Friedman column territory. 

The next section of the letter breezes through some statistics about income per person in some of the world's poor countries and how these have skyrocketed. I am astonished both that Gates puts forth per capita GDP as a stand-alone measure of progress and that the letter so casually equates per capita GDP to per person income, much less ignores the major contemporary issue of inequality. I say, tell that to the people of Gabon.

Oh wait, Gates actually uses Gabon as a supporting example for his case. Next to Equatorial Guinea, there is hardly a worse case of a nation that is wealthy per capita but scandalously under-developed in terms of human progress. Also, Gabon also only has 1.4 million people, or roughly the population of Hawaii.

Gates also repeatedly sites Botswana, which has about 2 million people, Mauritius, a small island with less than 1.3 million, and Singapore with its 5.4 million, and Costa Rica, with about 4.5 million. It might seem impressive to alphabetically list aid-free countries, but not so much when the population of half the list adds up to metro Los Angeles. Those ruled by hereditary kleptocrats are also not impressive when trying to convince us that we are living in an era of humanity’s unquestionable zenith.

Gates does mention corruption, but again conflates terminology in a way that is unhelpful. I know there are technical definitions of official corruption that basically mean, graft, but in the global corruption debate, the world also encompasses a wide range of theft and tax evasion. This is what pessimists are concerned about: the vast shadow world of hidden billions illicitly flowing out of every countries into elite centers and offshore havens. The example Gates provides, of a bureaucrat's phony expense report, falsely narrows people’s impatience with the fight against global corruption with henny-penny knitpicking over rounding errors on a spreadsheet of a single implementation project. I’ll skip the corruption tirade for now, and also spare conjecturing on reasons why Gates might avoid talking more broadly about corruption, but I wholly do not agree with Chris Blattman and others that those illicit acts that are associated with the term corruption have only minor and discrete effects on the development of mankind.

The last part of the letter is perhaps it’s most harmful and poorly reasoned.  I certainly hope that there aren’t armies of skeptics rooting for millions of the world’s poor to die to stave off overpopulation. But even if there are, it is hardly fair to lump people worried about overpopulation into the same grouping, or to dismiss them as “Malthusian.”

In the 21^st century, it is simply irresponsible not to contemplate the absolute limit to the number of humans that this planet’s life-sustaining systems can support. While Malthus and his disciples may have gotten the number or timing wrong in the past, that doesn’t mean the general concept should be abandoned—or that we are already past the point of too many humans consuming too much of the planet’s finite resources.

Chief among the fears of the world getting worse are the questions of climate change, habitat loss, and overexploitation of the world’s natural provisions. People like me are worried about the plastic in the oceans, the loss of forests and glaciers.  Gates simply breezes through any concerns of this variety: he sees a future simply made of happier, more prosperous people, without addressing our century’s great conundrum: that only current model that we have to pull people out of poverty results in more pressure on the Earth’s natural habitats and systems.  That is an important and necessary concern.

People like me worry about humanity’s negative impact, and how we as a civilization evolve our economic and social systems past perpetuating destruction. Labelling people like me as a group who might prefer babies to starve to death is not just unhelpful but irresponsible. While I applaud the work of the Gates Foundation, and I am glad for their strong advocacy, this letter ignored more issues than it addressed, and invented more myths than it disproved.