President George Manneh Weah

Stricken Statistics on the Need for a Radical Socio-Economic Reform in Liberia (the 1970s -2018):
It is an exigent imperative to point out that Liberia needs a broad-based development agenda for its socio-economic transformation. This is a fact that the nation has been lagging behind in all most all spectrums of development, especially, in the area of infrastructures and market-driven human capital. For instance, only 10% of 11, 400 km of roads are paved. 60% of the unpaved road is in a terrible condition. Only less than 3% of the population is connected to power-grid; the nation is one of the highest costs of electricity in the World at a rate of 39 Cent per KHW. The high unemployment rate has witnessed an increment from 2.30% in 2016 to 2.39% in 2017, according to the International Labor Organization. Considering these frustrating statistics on the economy and infrastructures, President George Manneh Weah declared upon his popular victory at 2017 polls that his administration would be a Pro-poor one. That means it will place more emphasis on issues and projects that anticipated and aimed at taking thousands of underprivileged Liberians out of poverty and unbearable standards of living through its social and economic projects across the nation. The plan will remain the core development strategy for the Weah –led administration until 2023. It is, however, pertinent to state that prior to this new agenda, the former President had also designed the Agenda for Transformation (AFT) which was not fully implemented until it got replaced by PAPD of the current government. The PAPD is a hope for many Liberians and the yardstick of the success of the Weah-led government. The projected gains of the agenda, if met, will be considered a paradigm shift of Liberia’s economic recovery and infrastructural development. Nevertheless, the program like any other national transformative agenda is confronted with many challenges, as it will be detailed in subsequent discussions.

From the historical context, it can be claimed that the 2018 Liberia is not too different from Liberia in the 1970s in terms of disparity between the poor and wealthy class. In other words, inequality is still wide and the line between the masses and the so-called bourgeois is still thick.  In 1970, less than 20% of the labor force was employed in the formal modern sector, while 74 percent was employed in low-productivity agriculture. Concessions employed only 7% of workers, notwithstanding their large share in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and exports. Salary disparity across the sectors was stark:   A mere 3.9 % of the population controlled more than 60 % of income, and a large share of the benefits from enclave sectors was repatriated by foreign investors.   By the 1970s, the government was trying to counteract these trends, but the efforts were too little, too late. With the global decline in commodity prices during the late 1970s, expected revenue flows from natural resource rents failed to materialize, and the government’s fiscal position deteriorated. Liberia began a long-term economic decline, which was exacerbated by a subsequent military coup and ultimately outright civil conflict. (see Agenda for Transformation: steps towards to Liberia RISING 2030). According to the World Bank, the extreme poverty in Liberia is more than 50%. That means more than two million Liberians are living under the poverty line. This indicates that previous efforts since the 1970s have never yielded any proper fruition in terms of equitable distribution of wealth through inclusive and comprehensive development that can touch everyone’s life within the Republic. Therefore, there is an exigent need to review the nation’s development policies in order to tackle and address the root causes of poverty and underdevelopment. Hence, the President Weah’s PAPD with its four cardinal pillars – if it is well executed and implemented- will be a great step and good continuation for the attempted previous efforts to shift the paradigm of development and socio-economic reforms in Liberia. According to Mrs. Sara Walter, the Country’s Director of USAID in Liberia “The launch of the PAPD will have long-term positive effects for Liberia’s future”. (Menkor, 2018). She also pointed out that the PAPD plan lays out a bold vision and provides a framework for advancing national development priorities as the government works to implement this agenda in the best interest of Liberians. (Menkor, 2018). 

Relational Correlation between the PRS, AFT, and PAPD:
The Pro-Poor Agenda for Development and Prosperity is a continuation of previous efforts exhibited by the former administration, which was led by the Ex-President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Liberia is a poverty-stricken nation. Thus, inclusive and comprehensive economic growth have been embodied in predecessors of the PAPD such as the Ellen-led Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) followed by Agenda for Transformation (AFT). All of those socioeconomic policies sought to reduce the gap between the poor and the wealthy through equitable distribution of wealth, transparency in the governance process and addressing the infrastructural deficit in the country. The PRS - a three-year development plan (208-2011) - had five pillars: security, economic revitalization, governance and the rule of law, infrastructure and basic facilities. These fundamental pillars of the PRS were designed to address poverty and its root causes in Liberia. However, it considerably achieved in some areas such as peace and security, relative restoration of the rule of law and building infrastructure. Among the direct impacts made by PRS were inter ilia, construction, and pavement of nearly 2500km of the road, electrical generation capacity increased from practically zero to 23 megawatt (MW). As a result, exports have increased from US$175 million in 2006 to US$295.2 million in 2011. Nonetheless, there was still an urgent need to put a new strategy together to further address poverty, weak infrastructure, and fragile peace and governance structures as a result of that, AFT was instituted by the previous administration as well. Therefore, the connection can be established between these two economic programs of the previous administration and the current one by saying that PAPD aimed at addressing Liberia’s abject poverty and weak institutional and infrastructure system. Of course, these were somehow embodied in the predecessors of PAPD even though the problems were not fully addressed and remedied. 

Relational Correlation between PAPD & International Development Programs:
The PAPD is a national agenda that aims at narrowing down the economic and infrastructural problems in Liberia. However, in order for this ambitious development policy to succeed, it has to be in line with some regional, continental and global development agenda to ease the persuasion of external partners such as IMF, AfDB, EU, and Liberia’s development partners in the Middle East to fund and finance the program. Hence, this piece chooses the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals ((SDGs) and the 2063 agenda of the African Union (AU) to compare and see the correlation between these two development initiatives at both continental and global levels and Liberia's PAPD. The 2063 Agenda is a long-term strategic plan for socio-economic reforms on the African continent spearheaded by the African Union. It builds on and seeks to accelerate the implementation of past and existing continental initiatives for growth and sustainable development; these are vividly noticed in the PAPD. Meanwhile, the United Nations' SDGs or Global Goals according to the UNDP "are a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity". The overall objective of the SDGs is to reduce abject poverty and narrow the gap between the poor and rich through humanly and decent lives for the people of the planet. Hence, if careful perusal and analysis are done on the four pillars of PAPD, it would be concluded that they are in line with the United Nations’ SDGs. 

Challenges of PAPD:
 It is undeniable fact that PAPD encounters huge challenges to successfully achieve its four cardinal pillars, which are: 1. Power to the people. 2. Economy and job. 3. Sustaining peace. 4. Governance and transparency. However, having said that the agenda has many challenges is not exceptionally labeled on the PAPD alone. Any national development program even in highly advanced nations can face a set of obstacles. Especially, Liberia is being crippled in almost all of these pillars. This means that the government has to invest a lot of efforts and resources both tangible and intangible, human and financial to have these pillars in full or achieve some in the set period. Because the task is too huge, and five years period is too short but not impossible to make a remarkable achievement if good modalities and coordinated teams are put into place. Further, the nation is being faced with huge economic downturn since Mr. Weah took over the office. This situation even led the World Bank to project that Liberia’s fiscal year will likely experience a budget shortfall or fiscal deficit at about 5% of its GDP or $USD 112 Million dollars. However, the recent announcement by the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) indicates that it is in a better position to generate US$647.6 million 2018-2019 fiscal year according to Thomas Doe, Commissioner General of LRA. (Yomah, 2018). Besides, rising and securing the confidence of development partners and investors to raise about 6.2 billion to finance the agenda calls for coordinated and strong policy reforms. Furthermore, Samuel P. Jackson, a renowned Liberian economist has extensively written on the challenges that face PAPD faces, which can be summed up by saying that the program is highly aspirational but considering the economic, social and infrastructural realities on the ground makes him be a little bit skeptical about the timely success of this ambitious plan of the Weah-led administration (Jackson, 2018). Nevertheless, these challenges are simply capable to be used as opportunities for the CDC-led government lay down a formidable foundation for the socioeconomic reform in Liberia.   

Prospects of PAPD:
Realistically and optimistically, there are a lot of positive prospects for the Pro-Poor Agenda for Development and Prosperity to shift the paradigm of economic recovery, improving on infrastructures and other connected and annexed development programs. This thesis is based on the fact that the previous administration had relatively laid down the foundation in many of those areas that President Weah-led government is focusing on now, though the method and acceleration might be different. In addition, security and peace which are the backbone of development had been relatively sustained over the last decade since the Civil War ended in 2003. Notwithstanding the nation is still listed as a fragile state according to the International Monetary Fund, (IMF, 2018). Nevertheless, it has made lots of progress in sustaining its stability for all most 15 years now since the Accra Peace Accord was signed and sealed in 2003. These above-mentioned indicators are clear signs for the successfulness of the PAPD if it takes other measures into considerable accounts such as accountability, swiftness in its development projects implementation with less bureaucracy and red-tapism. These have been over the years the major obstacles for having impact-driven development agenda on the masses in Liberia. It is highly projected and anticipated that PAPD will make a big success in improving on the nation’s dilapidated road infrastructures which, if done, will set a roadmap for resuscitating the economic and domestic revenue generation. Building road infrastructure will play a pivotal role in booming agricultural production from rural areas, it will also ease decentralization of commercial activities thus creating thousands of job opportunities and demonrovializing (Not centralizing governance in Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia) the economy.

Recommendations:
This work, however, recommends to the government of Liberia these following points as mechanisms to ensure and assure the proper implementation of the four cardinal pillars of  PAPD - power to people, economic and job, sustaining peace and governance and transparency -; (i) Zero tolerance to corruption, it is never a novel to discuss financial malpractices at all levels of implementation of such an ambitious project of the government, because it can be the major obstacle that can simply change the opportunity to calamity in any progressive journey for   national development programs. This was emphatically pointed out by Mrs. Sara Walter the USAID’s Country Director to Liberia during the launching of the Agenda when she said, “Achieving targets in the Pro-poor Agenda will require tradeoffs, hard work sacrifice, zero tolerance for self-enrichment…”. Thus, Mr. President needs to double up and further strengthen his effort in fighting misappropriation of the public fund when he really wants to be successful in achieving this promising agenda (PAPD). (ii) Effective Public-Private Partnership (EPPP), it is fact that can never be denied that Liberia’s national budget is unable to carry out its development aspiration under the frame of PAPD if more than 85% of the budget is consumed by recurrent expenditures. That means less than 15% of the budget is being allocated for the capital investment, which is the core for sustainable development. Of course, this percentage is categorically unable to help the government to achieve its Pro-poor agenda in five years. Therefore, among the many options and alternatives is to form an effective partnership with the private sector by creating smooth, smart and less bureaucratic investment climate. Privatization with its various formula is highly needed and must be employed for Liberia’s development drive. For instance, encouraging the private sector to engage into building operating and transferring (BOT) or building, transferring and operating (BTO) or building own-operate (BOO) and other forms of EPPP as urged and encouraged by section (73) of the Public Procurement and Concessions Act of 2005.

This practice can lessen the burden on the government, at the same time, it can expedite the development pace. (iii) holding persuasive and effective conversations with the nation’s major development partners such as the World Bank, IMF, African Development Bank, USAID, the United States Government, European Union, African Union, China and Liberia’s economic partners in the Middle East such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE among others. In other words, economic diplomacy needs to be atop of Liberia’s foreign relations in order to attract foreign direct investment in billions of dollars to fund the PAPD. (iv) Encouraging the Liberianization Policy by encouraging local technicians, engineers, and business to adopt and claim the ownership of the agenda, this is because that PAPD is not but a process of the socioeconomic recovery scheme of the State. As such, long-term mechanism needs to be instituted for sustainability and reliability on local skills and firms to continue this lofty and supercilious adventure. Empowering local firms will have more and direct economic impact on people than foreign businesses. This does not mean in any way not to work with others, but the nation is developed and promising if its people are positively engaged in its development programs. (vi) Investing in capacity building and preparing reliable and market-driven human resources through investing in education especially vocational training in the most needed fields. For example, construction, carpentry, IT, electrical engineering, entrepreneurship, and others. This will help young people who constitute two-thirds of our population to gradually graduate from poverty, and eventually equip them to not only be productive employees but also be job-creators and innovators.  Finally, demonrovialization of public goods and services will also play a significant role in helping the Weah-led administration to achieve this ambitious and socioeconomic revolutionary agenda (PAPD).  

About the Author:  Mory DA Sumaworo is a Ph.D. Candidate in Law (IIUM), Malaysia. Founder and Executive Director of the African Institute for Development Research (AIDER) @MSumaworo. mory6140@gmail.com