Time 23Mar2020

(Frankie) #1
SIRLEAF IN HER
OFFICES IN MONROVIA,
LIBERIA, IN 2006

2000 s

2006


Ellen Johnson Sirleaf


A first for Africa


After 14 years of civil war, Liberia was


in shambles. Hospitals, schools and
major infrastructure were destroyed.
Hundreds of thousands of people had


been displaced and at least 200,000
killed. Corruption was rife in the post-
war transitional government. Into the


breach stepped Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
who campaigned for President on a
platform of fixing the mess that the men


before her had created. At her 2006 in-
auguration, she was lauded as the first


woman to be elected head of state in a
modern African country, engendering
hopes not only for Liberia but also for a


new generation of female leaders on the
continent.
As a woman in a traditionally male


environment, Sirleaf embraced her
contradictory nicknames—that of Ma


Ellen healing her damaged nation, and
Liberia’s Iron Lady. With an initial
budget of only $80 million, Sirleaf re-


built key infrastructure and ushered
in an economic revival, helped by her
savvy negotiation of nearly $5 billion


in foreign debt relief. She maintained
Liberia’s peace, helped ease its pain and
became a Nobel laureate in 2011.


But for all the international accolades,
Sirleaf ’s presidency, which ended in


2018, is regarded with disappointment
at home, where allegations of corruption
and cronyism have tarnished her record.


She appointed close family members to
top government posts. During the 2014
Ebola outbreak, she sent military troops


to quarantine a poor and heavily infected
neighborhood in the capital, with bloody


results. And she did not focus on empow-
ering women or other female leaders; of
the 19 candidates who ran to replace her,


only one was a woman.
For all the expectations, and inevita-
ble failures, she did achieve something


unprecedented in 70 years of leadership
by Liberian men: she stepped aside for
someone else when her time in power


was up. ÑAryn Baker


87
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