Liberia: A Post-conflict Country Poised for Full Re-engagement
WASHINGTON, January 26, 2008 — World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick, in a two day visit to Liberia, will meet with key government officials, members of civil society and the private sector, and will discourse with ordinary citizens. He will explore, with the Liberian leadership, full re-engagement and long-term strategic thinking in normalizing relations with various stakeholders.
A big focus of Mr. Zoellick’s trip will be on Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRSP). The goal will be to emphasize capacity building, explore private sector opportunities and focus on pro-poor growth. Continuation of the country’s work on infrastructure development and economic governance will also be discussed.
Mr. Zoellick’s visit is part of a wider trip to three other African nations, including Mauritania, Mozambique and Ethiopia, where he will address a summit of the African Union.
While in Monrovia, Liberia’s capital city, Mr. Zoellick will meet with the country’s legislative leadership including the president of the Senate, the speaker of the House of Representatives and members of the Parliamentary Network on the World Bank. The group will be a mix of government and opposition party representatives.
Mr. Zoellick will also meet with Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to discuss recent progress in Bank program implementation and possible improvements. The Bank’s direction following the December 2007 agreement on Liberia’s arrears clearance and continued urgent need for capacity building will also be discussed.
A meeting to discuss the evolving transport program, a program aimed at addressing Liberia’s extensive and immediate infrastructure needs, will be hosted by the World Bank team and will be attended by Liberia’s ministers of Public Works and Finance, the United Nations and key donors. Central to this meeting will be the way forward in the joint Bank-U.N. labor-intensive roads project that was critical to early post-conflict stabilization efforts.
A World Bank team will also convene in Monrovia for a roundtable on the Bank’s Fragile States/Post-Conflict Approach. The roundtable will bring together five ministers of Finance from fragile, ‘reengagement’ countries in West Africa, including Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Togo. The Bank group will solicit their feedback on experience with Bank reengagement and the Bank’s overall Fragile States Agenda. Some development partners, including the United Nations, European Commission, United States, International Monetary Fund (IMF), African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Department for International Development (DFID), will also attend.
The private sector is critical to Liberia’s economic development. In this regard, a Private Sector Roundtable will be hosted by the Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), and attended by a cross section of private sector representatives, including international, local, small and large businesses and members of the natural resource service sector. Discussions will center on the challenges of reviving Liberia’s economy, the reforms necessary to stimulate sustainable private sector investment and the requirement to ensure that benefits accrue across the wider Liberian society, including for the poor and underserved. It will provide a basis for shaping new IFC support and a possible IDA operation to support the emergence of the private sector.
A unique part of this visit will be Mr. Zoellick’s trip to Kataka, a 45 minutes-drive from Monrovia, in the company of President Johnson-Sirleaf, to witness one of a series of country-wide consultations on the country’s first full Poverty Reduction Strategy. The Liberian president has invited Mr. Zoellick to experience an important example of her government’s commitment to wide-ranging consultations on the PRSP. The consultation will be in the form of a dialogue with local government representatives, civil society and the main donors in the country such as the U.N., EC, World Bank and others. It will be an opportunity for Mr. Zoellick to interact with ordinary Liberians and share his vision of what is needed to support a peaceful Liberia: good governance and pro-poor growth, and the role of the international community.
President Johnson-Sirleaf and Mr. Zoellick will hold a media roundtable at the conclusion of the trip, at the Office of the President in Monrovia.
Mr. Zoellick will also meet with Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf to discuss recent progress in Bank program implementation and possible improvements. The Bank’s direction following the December 2007 agreement on Liberia’s arrears clearance and continued urgent need for capacity building will also be discussed.
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