The Past of the Central African Republic

Having finished watching Al Jazeera's 3-part documentary on Françafrique, I happened to reread this Brookings Institution blog post, "What is the Future of the Central African Republic?" from April, which reviewed some of that troubled country's post-independence, neo-colonialist experience:

...the legacy of French colonial rule left the C.A.R. with no visionary leadership and an ill-developed institutional and physical infrastructure. The C.A.R. is a very small country– its population is comparable to the state of Alabama. Yet its huge surface area – comparable to that of the state of Texas – is richly endowed in natural resources, notably timber and diamonds, which explains the continued interest of its former colonial master and other foreign nations in the country. Since the colonial period when the C.A.R was called Oubangui-Chari, France’s colonialism (and subsequent neocolonialism) was aimed at extracting the C.A.R.’s resources at the expense of developing the country’s human resources, institutional and physical infrastructure... 

For instance, right up to 1971 – almost a decade after independence from France – the C.A.R.’s gross secondary enrollment rate was barely 4 percent; less than 2 percent of the country’s total road network had been paved; and only about one physician per 50,000 people was available. 

Francafrique on Al Jazeera

Following on the last post about the corruption scandal in Guinea, a recently-broadcast 3-part Al Jazeera documentary is especially well-timed (now that Al Jazeera America has launched and subsequently Al Jazeera's website has been blocked in the US, I may be just teasing Moved 2 Monrovia's American readers). This excellent three-part exposé, The France-Africa Connection, can be accessed online in three 45-minute episodes on the Al Jazeera website.

While reading up the topic will give interested viewers more depth into the long, sordid, shocking relationship between France and its colonies, documentary programming like this are electrifying for their vintage footage, however fleeting. Anyone interested in African history can only dream of having hours to look through all these archive news reels. 

In this respect, Episode Two is especially riveting, concentrating on the shocking "Elf Affair," which revealed how metropolitan French politics were infused with dirty money from oil exploitation from Francophone Africa, especially Gabon. Included here are brief glimpses of rare footage of Brazzaville, pockmarked by gunfire in the wake of the Nguesso-Lissouba conflict. 

Legendary prosecutor Eva Jolly also makes an appearance at the end, calmly recounting her life-risking exposure of the Elf scandal. 

All three episodes reference astonishing chapters in this complex, often ugly history, such as the mention in Episode 1 of the now openly-admitted poisoning of Cameroonian opposition candidate Félix Roland Moumié, and the counterfitting of the Guinean currency to destablise the regime of its democratically elected leader, as well as some disturbing retelling of the Biafran crisis, where France tried to undermine British power in the Gulf of Guinea.  

Across the entire broadcast, the grey-haired, liver-spocked old men, sitting in their gilded salons in Paris, could not be more frank in admitting to and confirming the malfeasance and shenangians that went on for decades in French West and Equatorial Africa, from Conakry to the Congo. 

One of the more compelling interviews is Jean Pierre Cot, who, as a young public servant was named Minister of Cooperation in the early days of the Mitterand cabinet. Having never been to Africa, much less positioned within the corruption networks, Cot's year in office was a rare, brief moment of reform, retold in his own words from 30-year old footage as a baby-faced Cot steps off an Air Afrique jet to visit a village, and speaks of a new era of fairness and partnership that never came.

The third episode is especially fascinating. In post-cold war era, as realpolitik pros age and die and new powers, especially China, arrive on the continent, and the traditions of feality to Paris slacken. The bonds with metropolitan France aren't exactly broken, but in some cases are reversed. 

Gabonese President Ali Bongo's endless suitcases of cash, stashed in corners of Crillion Hotel suites, not so much lubricated French party politics, but became one of the post important power nodes in the entire country, hand selecting freshman ministers across the political spectrum. Rather than simply being an industrial-commodity exploitation, now cash was the main extraction flowing out of Africa with the Presidents-for-life playing their former colonial masters.

Just as this bizarre arrangement reached its sprawling, viscous apex, its main underwriters, the founding father of Cote D'Ivoire and Françafrique itself, Hophouët-Biogny, passed away. The other pillar of Françafrique, Ali Bongo, died in 2009, succeeded by his son. 

This last episode includes several pristine panoramas of the Basilica in Yamoussoukro... 

...but more memorably features some shocking footage of the night-time bombing of Gbagbo loyalists on bridges Abidjan, and hundreds scattering and falling as French forces fire on protesters outside the Hotel Ivoire. 

Rather than being the final unravelling of Françafrique, the arrangement seems to live on in a post-classic form, as French intervened in the Gbagbgo-era Ivorian crisis, and its commercial tentacles still firmly grip the economic levers of West and Central Africa in the Sarkozy era, when ministers who spoke ill of Françafrique found themselves suddenly without portfolio.  While Hollande has declared a new era, French companies still operate ports and mines from Cote D'Ivoire to Congo. 

Simandou Scandal

It's not often that West Africa features in America's leading periodicals, but the surprise at glimpse words like Conakry and concession jumping off glossy pages only partially accounts for why Patrick Radden Keefe's article on Guinea, appearing in the July 8th edition of the New Yorker was so compelling.

Guinea is one of the poorest countries on the planet. There is little industry and scarce electricity, and there are few navigable roads. Public institutions hardly function. More than half the population can’t read. “The level of development is equivalent to Liberia or Sierra Leone,” a government adviser in Conakry, Guinea’s ramshackle seaside capital, told me recently. “But in Guinea we haven’t had a civil war.” This dire state of affairs was not inevitable, for the country has a bounty of natural resources. In addition to the iron ore in the Simandou range, Guinea has one of the world’s largest reserves of bauxite—the ore that, twice refined, makes aluminum—and significant quantities of diamonds, gold, uranium, and, off the coast, oil.

Keefe's report details the saga of Guinea's massive Simandou iron ore mine, in the interior highlands of east of the crescent-shaped country, north of Liberia. In particular, Keefe records the account of Israeli billionaire Benny Steinmetz's success in gaining control of the Simandou rights, in which the original concession was stripped multinational giant Rio Tinto, only to be handed over to one Steinmetz's companies, who then resold its interest in the potential mine to Brazilian behemoth Value, for billions of dollars in profit, as Guinea lurched from the death of its President-for-Life Lasana Conté, through chaotic military junta, to nascent democracy under General Alpha Condé.

Instead, B.S.G.R. could pursue a cheaper option: exporting the ore through Liberia, which already had the necessary infrastructure. For years, the government of Guinea had resisted such a scenario when Rio Tinto had proposed it. As a concession, B.S.G.R. agreed to spend a billion dollars developing a passenger railway for Guinea.

It's definitely worth reading in full (as well as the Photo Booth feature that accompanied the article), not only because it carefully explains a very complex situation and is otherwise thoughtfully written, but because of its dramatic unfolding, including President's wife's collusion with an aging Steinmetz proxy, which may have resulted in the purchase of a McMansion in Jacksonville, Florida; only the most memorable detail of what is a sprawling opera of kleptocratic corruption.

Cilins hired Touré’s brother to help promote the company’s interests in Guinea, then secured an introduction to her. Not long afterward, Cilins and several associates from the company obtained an audience with the President. 

While the story is compelling in that documentary evidence seems to exist that would prove the guilt of a billionaire taking advantage of one of the world's poorest countries. But the best passages of the Keefe's stellar 13-page story are those that zoom outward for a panoramic view of 21st-century robbery of African nations. The Simandou saga is allegorical of the kleptocratic corruption in many corners of Africa:

But how do you prove corruption? By its nature, corruption is covert; payoffs are designed to be difficult to detect. The international financial system has evolved to accommodate a wide array of illicit activities, and shell companies and banking havens make it easy to camouflage transfers, payment orders, and copies of checks. Paul Collier argues that there are often three parties to a corrupt deal: the briber, the bribed, and the lawyers and financial facilitators who enable the secret transaction. The result, he says, is “a web of corporate opacity” that is spun largely by wealthy professionals in financial capitals like London and New York. A recent study found that the easiest country in which to establish an untraceable shell company is not a tropical banking haven but the United States.

The story has developed since July, as this Guardian report from earlier this month details how Britain's Serious Fraud Office (love that name) has taken up the investigation into Beny Steinmetz's holdings in the UK and Guernsey. 

Building of the Month: Pink Apartment Block

 ©2012 Matthew Jones.

I set these two photos aside from yesterday's post because I think they're actually two nice pictures, if I do say so myself, and of the many long-procrastinated ideas for this blog, I thought a 'Building of the Month' feature would be kind of fun. So here it is.

Obviously a pink building is strange anywhere, its implications of a certain juvenile femininity, perhaps, or even a twee tropical style. Whatever exuberance may have been intended or is possible to interpret is muted by the dark skies, pot-holed dirt boulevard and over-pruned tree. I see the resulting image as forlorn, in an unintentional way that compounds its melancholy. Some of Glenna Gordon's photos hold this aspect, such as this one, among others.

Tiling of buildings as a finish is common in Monrovia, as in other parts of tropical Africa, and the range of tiles that gets imported to Liberia (as with many categories of imported goods to West Africa) tends to be low-quality stuff from Dubai and China. In this example, I imagine these may have been more intended for bathroom interiors than multi-story façades. The builders obviously continued the theme with the paint job on the exterior wall ("fence") and elevated generator house. Note lastly the tinted glass windows, shaded much like the rain-heavy clouds, and balcony rails.

This building around Warren Avenue and 18th Street in Sinkor, went up through 2011-12 and is an example of the rapid in-fill on non-prime sites, away from the major streets and beaches, that have now experienced dense, high-end construction. This block  is now occupied, although I've never been inside and I think that ex-patriates from Asia, who may or may not be the building's owners, live there.

That Sinkor Feeling: The Two Monrovias

In babbling on about Monrovia's divergent real estate markets and how it is similar to, and different from, the phenomena in other African cities, it occurred to me that some visuals would help illustrate the on-going building boom in the city, which has been seemingly increasing in the last half-decade. I've previously run similar photoposts here (All Photos ©Matthew Jones). 

One of the taller towers going up, an 8-story tower on 8th Street and Gardiner Avenues, part of a larger, 4-building development going up in phases across the street, facing the beach. I think it's nearly complete now but it took about an extra year to get it finish. Whether by lack of capital or other construction constraints, delays like this are pretty common here and elsewhere in African real estate development.

The architectural plan of the same tower, showing the 2-apartments-per-floor layout. 

 

One of the more noticeable examples of the densification of Sinkor is on Payne Avenue at 19th Street near the side entrance to JFK, where two recently-constructed towers, mainly apartments but also the local of the iLab tech NGO, were joined this past dry season by a third building, bulging up in between the earlier two. 

While Mamba Point and the city center have fewer available lots, this tall building at the top of Sekou Toure Avenue, seen at the center. Sekou Toure, home of many of the UN Agency offices, is something of the Turtle Bay of Monrovia. And while most diplomatic missions have decamped from Mamba Pint to Sinkor, the US Embassy and EU Delegation compounds are still nearby, in addition to the perennial hotel, restaurant, and nightlife options of Mamba Point.

 

The Naresh Brothers Building, completed in early 2012, is right at the center of Sinkor, 15th Street and Tubman Boulevard. While the building doesn't have a pool, its balconies have great views across the city, and its across the street from the Royal Hotel as well as other restaurants and supermarkets.

Similarly hidden on a side-street of Sinkor, this building went up on 11th street near the beach in just a few months in late 2012. The area is still characterized by informal structures, vacant lots with old cars, and abandoned buildings housing squatters, including the former Ghanaian embassy building. Increasingly in the last few years, however, these corners of Sinkor have been transformed into walled compounds with multistory apartment blocks like this.

 The grandaddy of them all has to be the 3-tower beachfront complex between 13th and 14th streets. Now home to the Swedish and Knights of Malta diplomatic missions, reportedly the British mission is set to move here any day now when it is formally upgraded to a full Embassy. There's a massive pool and other typical amenities, although, like many compounds, there isn't much space for parking. I took this in 2012 when they were still going up, but the buildings have been complete for about 10 months now.

Moved 2 Maputo

I've never been to Mozambique, but earlier this summer, both the title and the subject matter of this entry to The Economist's Baobab blog, titled 'Moving to Maputo" both hit home. The topic was the increasingly-common phenomenon in African capitals, where international-standard residential properties (those that ex-pats find suitable) sell or rent for prices comparable to apartments and houses in international cities in Europe and North America:

A thriving expat community has developed around the university, but few Mozambicans can afford to live there. Rents have increased dramatically over the past four years; purchase prices have doubled. 

“The most common type of property has three bedrooms and we are talking about $3,000 per month onwards,” says Gonçalo Marques, a local estate agent. “You can find properties in prime areas for $7,000 per month. For purchase prices you’ll find that the same property might be sold for about $500,000—sometimes more.” 

The arrival of migrants from rural areas and abroad has pushed up demand for housing. Attracted by strong economic growth and a common language, highly skilled Portuguese migrants have been increasingly flocking to their former colony over the past two years, as their own economy remains ensnared in the euro crisis. Registrations at the Portuguese consulate in Maputo rose by 25% in 2012, and the trend is expected to continue. 

The cost of living in Maputo has surprised some migrants. “I live in the centre of Maputo. The centre of town is not very big and the rents are so high,” says Ana Oliveira, who moved to Mozambique from Portugal three months ago. “You need to share the apartment with three or four people.” Landlords have started to demand that tenants pay six months’ rent, or more, up-front.Many have relocated to neighbouring Matola, where housing is cheaper. But now prices in Matola are rising, too. “A property that was on the rental market there two years ago for $1,500 a month might now be on the market for $2,500,” says Mr Marques. 

As new residential developments reach completion, the situation could change. The construction sector, having stagnated for decades, started to pick up two years ago. Encouraged by rising prices, developers have piled into the market. 

But while overall prices may be dragged down, the new developments are targeted exclusively at high-end buyers. “The number of people that are able to buy a property worth $500,000 is small,” says Rui Carrito, head of the Portuguese construction company Soares da Costa in Mozambique. 

“What you need is small, cheap houses for the people but you don’t see anything like that.”Buying a home is all the more tricky because the value of the property cannot be used as collateral for a loan. Interest rates for personal loans—when they are available—are around 20%. Until prices come down and ordinary people gain access to financing, most Mozambicans will continue to struggle to get a foot on the property ladder.

Foreigners settling in Monrovia in the last decade have experienced similar astronomical price points for apartments with security and reliable utilities, even as supply has expanded constantly (there have been at least 20 new multistory apartment buildings added to Mamba Point and Sinkor in the past year). About $1,500 per month per bedroom is pretty standard, depending on the number of hours of electricity available, and perhaps the age and condition of the building (even lavishly-featured multi-story structures that are only a few years old often show the wear of the extreme climate and shoddy construction).

Like Maputo and other cities, Monrovia has two completely different real-estate markets, with a high-end catering to wealthy foreigners who expect the closest possible semblance to their accommodations back in Washington, New York, or London, and a local housing profile for Liberian nationals, which ranges from newly-constructed homes for those with sources of income to the innumerable informal structures which house the majority of the city's people, from the city center to its expanding edges. I struggle to call this a "market," due to the ubiquitous quagmire of land ownership uncertainties, disputes and scandals, real estate purchases only happen at the suburban fringes of the capital. Hence, 'The Two Monrovias.'

Exasperating all of this, Monrovia suffers not only from the financial and judicial constraints of mortgage lending mentioned in reference to Maputo above, but also from a scarcity of land whose chain of ownership can be reliably verified. Finding a secure property to buy or lease is unusual for developers, squeezing supply and adding to costs. In my anecdotal observations, as prices for ex-pat style apartments and leases have skyrocketed in the last few years, some property disputes seem to have been solved, or at least, the owners have gotten their act together (whether simply returning to Liberia from abroad to facilitate the development of their property, or coming to an agreement in a family dispute to share revenue from a lease instead of endlessly arguing).

Monrovia remains a small market at the top end, with limited demand (which I don't see growing as the population of expatriates, and the presence of foreign NGOs and concession companies has stabilized), so it hasn't seen the prices of places like Lagos, Maputo, Accra or Luanda. I've long heard predictions of a price-crash when UNMIL leaves, I am not sure how much housing UNMIL or its personnel lease; and wonder if perhaps the rapidly-deteriorating earlier stock of multi-story structures will be priced for the secondary, local market instead of being upgraded again for ex-pats.

Global Entrepreneurship, Sub-Saharan Entrepreneurs

A few weeks ago, former IMF Economist and current MIT Sloan Professor posted in the NY Times Economix Blog about the 2012 Global Entrepreneurship Monitor Report, and mentioned Entrepreneurship in Sub-Saharan Africa several times: 

First, when the overall environment for business is bad, there are many entrepreneurs.  For example, while there is a great deal of variation shown by the data within Africa, it is also clear that this is a difficult place to do business, because, for example, regulation is unpredictable and property rights can be hard to defend against powerful people.

Lack of human capital is also a weakness.  You need capable engineers, managers and many others to help companies grow.  The education system in many African countries is not in good shape.

Yet, there are plenty of potential entrepreneurs in the study: “Sub-Saharan Africa reported the highest intentions of any geographic region (53 percent), which is consistent with their positive perceptions about opportunities and their belief in their capabilities” (Table 2.2).

The explanation is simple.  In such economies, entrepreneurship is a fallback option, when it is not possible to get a decent job in larger business.

The full report is here, wherein the reader will note that, while the GEM Report astonishingly surveyed nearly 200,000 people in 69 countries, representing 87% of the world's GDPs and 74% of its population, only 10 Sub-Saharan African states were included: Nigeria, South Africa, Angola, Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Uganda, Ethiopia, and Namibia. Of these, only Malawi is anywhere close to the developmental stature of present-day Liberia.  

A New School for Ganta

Cleaning up some desktop files  recently, I found this old link (September 2011) to a UNICEF report on a school in Ganta that the organization supported. It's an uplifting story, but I was especially impressed by  the architecture of the facilities, which seem akin to, if not inspired by, Francis Kéré's award-winning schools in Burkina Faso. The schools apparently opened in 2010, so I hope they're not only holding up three years later, but some of the supplies and functions have come online. While an old news story, perhaps a timely find as a counterbalance to the painful education headlines coming out of Liberia this week. 

China's Fishing Fleet, Africa's Seas

A Quartz post earlier in August, entitled, "China’s government is subsidizing your sushi—and driving other countries’ fishermen out of business,"while worth reading in full, included two graphics that I'm reposting here, which highlight the impact of China's worldwide fishing trawl on Africa's local fishing industry and the fish themselves:

While China might not be exactly subsidizing the sushi in Monrovia, which to my understanding most of the restaurant owners procure themselves from Liberia's waters, the issue of overfishing is a proxy for our global over-exploitation of resources, and the strain of the burgeoning emerging markets' billions of consumers have added in the past decade.

  For more about Liberia's fishing situation, there's no better place to check out than the government's Bureau of Fisheries website, which was relaunched last year, and is a great resource and shares a lot about what it being done to protect Liberia's oceans.

A Liberian in London

A lot of my Liberian friends have never left the country, or boarded an airplane. I've often imagined what it would be like to have one of my Liberian friends visit America or Europe (and I am sure a lot of Liberians daydream about the same thing). I would love to be witness to their reaction to all the things they've never seen before.

I had the opportunity recently to experience this in some form when I showed a co-worker around London recently. It was much like I had foreseen it to be, in terms of his general astonishment, but I thought his observations, those things he did take in and those he didn't comment on, were worth sharing:

(1) Heathrow Airport, larger than the entire city of Monrovia.

(2) The difficulty of finding rice at meals. Liberians are famous for their preference for rice, and I know many don't even consider a dish without rice to really even be food, and I saw this in practice where my colleague was left dissatisfied with couscous and basmati rice. He said he would recommend that Liberians travel with their own rice when going abroad, although the practicalities of having this served at a restaurant would still be an issue.

(3) We had a bit of time for sightseeing, and he wanted to see "that huge church," so I took him to St. Paul's Cathedral. It being the summer, it was quite crowded with tourists; there was a line out the door to get tickets (St. Paul charges for entry). Luckily but also a bit curiously, my colleague had little interest in seeing the inside, but mostly wanted his picture taken outside the building. So we were there about 5 minutes.

(4) The London Underground mesmerized him. "A whole city under the city," and "There are people living underneath us while we walk on top of them," were just a couple of a the many comments he made. He seemed less impressed with actually riding a train and the whole automatic entry system etc than with the general idea of inhabiting the subterranean. He commented on this repeatedly; the whole idea seemed to almost terrify him. I think he found it unnatural that people spend time under the surface of the earth like that.

(5) Back at ground level, he observed that most buildings were made "out of stone," which I took to mean the marble and portland stone façades, as opposed to the painted cement of most multi-story buildings in Liberia.

(6) Also, he didn't recognize what was sticking out of the roofs of most buildings; I hadn't anticipated this: I explained what a chimney was, which confused him a bit as he didn't see any fires lit inside any of the buildings he had been in. I realized how odd it sounds to explain that everyone has central heating but occasionally uses a fireplace, for recreational or ceremonial purposes...? How strange is that, when you think about it that way.

The Imprisonment of Rodney Sieh

Uplifting reports of the successful running of Liberia's second marathon are being overshadowed by two negative stories out of Monrovia: that the entire prospective entrant class to the University of Liberia, all 25,000 of them, failed their entry exams, and secondly that the editor of FrontPage Africa, one of Liberia's most respected online and offline newspapers, was jailed last week following a failure to pay a libel fine of US$1.5m. FrontPage Africa's presses were halted, although the US-based website still operates. For details, the below is reposted from the Committee to Protect Journalists, including links to the original government audit report:

The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemns moves by Liberian authorities to shut down FrontPageAfrica and jail its publisher for not paying US$1.5 million in damages related to a libel conviction.
Police shut down the offices citing a court order, pictured on FrontPageAfrica's website, that said the offices would remain closed and publication cease until the damages are paid in full. The website is registered in the United States, not in Liberia, and is still publishing news.
FrontPageAfrica's publisher, Rodney Sieh, was jailed on Wednesday after telling a judge that he was unable to pay the damages owed to Chris Toe, a former government minister who had sued Sieh, FrontPageAfrica, and Samwar Fallah, a reporter for the paper, for libel three years ago. Toe sued them for US$2 million in February 2010 after the paper reported the findings of an official government inquiry that accused Toe of corruption, according to news reports. Toe resigned from his government position and was never charged. In his complaint, he saidFrontPageAfrica's reports were libelous because he was never convicted in court. He has denied all of the allegations against him.
In February 2011, a court convicted Sieh, FrontPageAfrica, and Fallah and ordered them to pay a total of US$1.5 million in damages and US$90,000 in court costs, Sieh told CPJ before he was jailed. Sieh told CPJ that FrontPageAfrica could not afford to pay the damages. Local journalists told CPJ that the heavy fine imposed was a deliberate ploy to shut down the critical newspaper. FrontPageAfrica has repeatedly reported on corruption, official misconduct, and human rights abuses.
Information Minister Lewis Brown said that Sieh had chosen to go to jail rather than "abide by the court's ruling to pay," according to news reports. Sieh has refused to eat or drink water since he was jailed, his colleagues told CPJ. He will remain jailed until he pays the damages, according to news reports.
"The excessive damages levied against FrontPageAfrica have all along been a transparent ploy to shut down a newspaper that has gained international acclaim for exposing corruption and official misconduct at the highest levels of the Liberian government," said Peter Nkanga, CPJ's West Africa Consultant. "Rodney Sieh does not deserve to spend a moment in prison, but if authorities would concentrate on investigating and prosecuting corruption allegations, they might find someone who does."
In 2011, the court denied FrontPageAfrica's motion for retrial despite reports of the jury being bribed. Liberia's judiciary ranks as the third most corrupt Liberian government institution, according to Transparency International's 2013 Global Corruption Barometer. Liberia has a history of silencing press critics through libel lawsuits, according to CPJ research.
On July 16, 2013, the Supreme Court upheld the judgment against FrontPageAfrica, saying that the appeal process had not been completed, Kofi Woods, lawyer for FrontPageAfrica, told CPJ. Under Liberian law, an appeal can only be heard after the defendant pays a bond of 2 percent of the total amount, Woods said. The lawyer said Sieh did not have the money for the bond.
Authorities have not been able to find Fallah, who has resigned from FrontPageAfrica.
FrontPageAfrica said the newspaper is appealing the case before the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. The ECOWAS Community Court, which has jurisdiction to hear individual complaints of alleged human rights violations, is the judicial arm of the Nigeria-based Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The court's decisions are legally binding on ECOWAS member states, which include Liberia.

The Press Union of Liberia has also called for Sieh's release. Both these embarrassing developments are black eyes to Liberia during a week when a 7-member Congressional Delegation, accompanied by Bono and Condi Rice, held an audience with President Sirleaf and members of her cabinet, a session of profuse mutual admiration, reportedly. No mention if the issue of Sieh's imprisonment was raised during the event, but on Twitter and elsewhere, including the comments sections of the articles boasting of the CoDel, Liberians and non-Liberians are clearly upset.

Liberia Marathon tomorrow

The second Liberia Marathon is tomorrow, and while once again I am not running in either the full 26.2 mile race, nor the 10K, I wanted to highlight two runners that are, and both for good causes.

The first was mentioned in the previous post: Blair Glencorse, head of the Accountability Lab, is running the 10K. Check out their Facebook page, also.

Secondly, Bert Monro, head of business development for Hummingbird Resources, a UK-based mineral exploration company, will be running the full marathon in a pink pygmy hippo costume, to raise funds for, and awareness of the Pygmy Hippo Foundation, which Hummingbird founded a few years ago to protect critical forest habitat of pygmy hippos, less than 3,000 of which survive in the Upper Guinean forests of West Africa, particularly Liberia. 

To support to Bert's ridiculous run, visit his Just Giving Page, where every donation of £30/$45 or more will receive a "Run Like a Pygmy Hippo" t-shirt. Also check out the Pygmy Hippo Foundation's Facebook page. All donations go to the Pygmy Hippo Foundation, which will directly be used for conservation initiatives for Liberia's unique pygmy hippos. 

Accountability

One more post related to last weekend's 10-year anniversary since the end of Liberia's civil war:

Two posts, both authored by Blair Glencorse, a friend who runs the very innovative Accountability Lab. Both reflect on the state of Liberia's society a decade since the end of the conflict. At African Arguments, Blair talks about the scourge of corruption and impunity, a topic close to my heart, and outlines how the Accountability Lab's philosophy and work set out to combat these civil ills and build a more robust social contract. Blair boldly, and to my mind, rightly identifies corruption as the leading impairment to Liberia's progress.

"Liberia is still far from a well-functioning society with secure peace and sustainable development."

Secondly, on Devex, Blair looks at Liberia's aid dependency, and the massive volumes of direct and indirect foreign assistance Liberia and its government have achieved in the last ten years, and whether all those millions have translated into much in terms of substantial change among Liberia's citizens.

How can we square the amount of attention, resources and effort put into rebuilding Liberia with these conditions on the ground? At its heart, this is an accountability problem through which the Liberian government has become oriented not toward its citizens, but toward a well-meaning, generous but ineffective international community. While there are many truly excellent development workers in Liberia, they are operating within an outdated aid system that breeds dependency, undermines capacity and ignores sustainability. Well-qualified Liberians are drawn away from government or civil society positions by higher wages in donor organizations. Each of these entities has their own agenda, procedures, obligations, reporting methods, funding streams and target beneficiaries. The result in many cases is overlapping authorities, duplication of efforts and significant space for corruption.

Both are worth reading in their entirety, and the Accountability Lab is a great organization to follow. 

...Showcased Their Talents

 EJ Roye Building towers of Monrovia Harbor, from a postcard c.1970.

"The E.J. Roye Building, on Ashmun Street, before it was 

damaged during the civil war, used to include a theater where 

Liberian children showcased their talents."

This is probably the last post I'll make on the 10-year anniversary of the Accra Peace Accords, with culminated in a weekend "Jamboree" attended by the President and many of her ministers. 

EJ Roye Building, ©2012 Matthew Jones

There's been a fair volume of journalistic reflection on this milestone, a spectrum ranging from colorful and at times anguished and personal writings in the Monrovian newspapers, and some more cursory and rather high-altitude perspectives in the international press. I liked this clever architectural allegory, concluding a New Dawn report from the Decade of Peace celebration on Saturday, both an all-too-rare bit of atmosphere exposition for local journalism, and a poignant image of how Liberia is still scarred, and what it has yet to regain. 

Positive Peace

Finally, this weekend's anniversary of the Accra Peace Accord signing saw a good deal of press coverage marking the decade since the end of Liberia's Civil War. Liberian journalist and researcher Robtel Neajai Pailey wrote a very nice essay, published on the Guardian website, which included this poignant passage: 

However, a decade on, we are reminded of how far we have left to go. A raised voice, threats of riot and protest, and overall disillusionment remind us that peace is the mask we wear to hide our fears of violence. Although the guns have fallen silent, Liberia is experiencing what social theorist Johan Galtung called negative peace – that is, peace derived from the absence of physical violence. Over the next decade and beyond, Liberia must strive for positive peace: the absence of indirect, structural violence manifested in poverty, inequality, and impunity. 

When Liberians publicly rebuke corruption, they are calling for positive peace. When Liberians lament that a third of their land is being leased to concession companies without local consultation, they are calling for positive peace. When Liberians scorn the pay disparities between those who come from abroad and those who remained in the country during the war, they are calling for positive peace. When Liberians call for a war crimes tribunal and full implementation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommendations, they are calling for positive peace.

MICAT Panel Discussions: A Decade of Peace

Monrovia marking a decade since the end of Liberia's civil war is culminating around the date of August 18th, which is when the Accra Peace Accords were signed in Ghana in 2003.

In this week leading up to that occasion, Liberia's Ministry of Information, Culture, and Tourism (MICAT), has been hosting several panel discussions, inviting members of the various delegations to the Accra negotiations to recount the events of that time. The sessions were broadcast on YouTube and I've reposted two of them below.

MICAT has a fairly decent and active Twitter feed, which has been partly live-tweeting these panel events. Many of those speaking forth are figures who are either in the present administration, or have notorious reputations from the civil war era.  I'll let the often-times candid statements and testimonies on the videos speak for themselves, but for press reactions and opinions on these conversations, I'd recommend reading FrontPageAfrica's filings, or the reporting of American journalist Clair MacDougall, who also blogs at North of Nowhere.

10th Anniversary of Taylor's, and Many Others, Exile

August 11th, 2003 was the day that Charles Taylor departed Liberia for Nigeria. Local reporter Jonathan Paye-Layleh, filing for the Associated Press, interviewed Jewel Howard-Taylor, at the time Taylor's wife and now his ex-wife and a Liberian Senator, about the exile.

This is one of the few press reports marking the anniversary of the end of the Civil War, although the article states that President Sirleaf will mark that 10th anniversary of the signing of the Accra according on August 18th.

Relatedly, a BBC reporter assembled a short news video about refugees in neighboring West African countries who have not returned home to Liberia in the 10 years since their flight. The caption article states that Liberia has been "marking 10 years since the end of the civil war" but there has really been very little of that at all, and almost none outside of the international press.

The report also does not examine motivations for staying outside of Liberia beyond fear of violence, trauma, or lack of peace in the country, despite that general absence of civil violence in most parts of Liberia over the last decade. While these reasons are surely legitimate motivations for staying put, the reporter doesn't not investigate other compelling reasons, such as better access to jobs or other income opportunities, or social and economic advantages, for staying in Nigeria, Ghana, or elsewhere.

Providence Journal Series: Rebuilding Liberia

Photo ©Professor William J Pellicio via the Providence Journal

Providence Journal staff writer Philip Marcelo has launched a series of short posts about Liberia, at the crux of one of Liberia's larger diaspora communities in Rhode Island and marking the passing of a decade since the conclusion of the Liberian Civil War.

Some of the posts are understandably pretty elementary, introducing the general reader to Liberia and its history. Of the posts thus far, perhaps the most insightful is an interview with Brown University trustee William H. Twaddell, who was Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Monrovia in 1992, early in Liberia's conflict period.

The series will culminate next month when Marcelo will visit Liberia. The above image accompanied a post last week on the Rhode Island-Liberian community's efforts to help rebuild the country (partly through remittances). Looks like Camp Johnson Road to me, c.2003.