SIRLEAF IN HER
OFFICES IN MONROVIA,
LIBERIA, IN 20062000 s2006
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