Campaigner, insurgent, fugitive, rebel commander, commodity kingpin, elected president, exile and finally prisoner, Charles Taylor sought to lead his country to change but instead ignited a conflict ...which destroyed Liberia in over a decade of violence, greed and personal ambition. Taylor's takeover threw much of the neigbouring region into turmoil, until he was finally brought to face justice in The Hague for his role in Sierra Leone's civil war. In this remarkable and eye-opening book, Colin Waugh draws on a variety of sources, testimonies and original interviews - including with Taylor himself - to recount the story of what really happened during these turbulent years. In doing so, he examines both the life of Charles Taylor, as well as the often self-interested efforts of the international community to first save Liberia from disaster, then, having failed to do so, to bring to justice the man it deems most to blame for its disintegration.
In the 1860s, as America waged civil war, several thousand African Americans sought greater freedom by emigrating to the fledgling nation of Liberia. While some argued that the new black republic ...represented disposal rather than emancipation, a few intrepid men set out to explore their African home. African-American Exploration in West Africa collects the travel diaries of James L. Sims, George L. Seymour, and Benjamin J. K. Anderson, who explored the territory that is now Liberia and Guinea between 1858 and 1874. These remarkable diaries reveal the wealth and beauty of Africa in striking descriptions of its geography, people, flora, and fauna. The dangers of the journeys surface, too -- Seymour was attacked and later died of his wounds, and his companion, Levin Ash, was captured and sold into slavery again. Challenging the notion that there were no black explorers in Africa, these diaries provide unique perspectives on 19th-century Liberian life and life in the interior of the continent before it was radically changed by European colonialism.
The Government of Liberia is in the process of developing a new Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) that is intended to determine its path toward middle- income status. One central aspect of the ...strategy is likely to be a stronger focus on inclusive growth. This will mean that higher priority will be placed on growing the local private sector, and broadening the base of the economy. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure and services can be a key instrument for achieving these goals especially in an economy like Liberia. The analysis contained in this study identifies the steps toward establishing PPPs as both a policy instrument and method for deepening private sector investment in Liberia. Liberia's rich natural resource endowments have played a fundamental role in the way in which the economy has developed, and in the way in which Government manages private investment in extractive industries. The Government itself has a long history of entering into concession contracts with private investors and operators. Firestone rubber first signed a concession agreement in 1926, and re-signed their concession to last until 2041. More recently, the Government of Liberia has entered into several large natural resource and mining concession contracts that will see large sums of private sector capital invested onshore. This study is one element of a multi- faceted effort to support local private sector and financial sector development in Liberia. It takes into close account the Government's focus on job-creation, the post-conflict dynamics in the country, and Liberia's reliance on extractive industries as a primary source of revenue. The analysis also builds on previous economic sector work that has looked closely at how to stimulate private sector growth and investment, how to support small and medium-size enterprise (SME), and how to leverage existing private sector investment to generate deeper local markets and create new jobs.
Distinguished by its multidisciplinary dexterity, this book is a masterfully woven reinterpretation of the life, travels, and scholarship of Edward W. Blyden, arguably the most influential Black ...intellectual of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It traces Blyden's various moments of intellectual transformation through the multiple lenses of ethnicity, race, religion, and identity in the historical context of Atlantic exchanges, the Back-to-Africa movement, colonialism, and the global Black intellectual movement. In this book Blyden is shown as an African public intellectual who sought to reshape ideas about Africa circulating in the Atlantic world. The author also highlights Blyden's contributions to different public spheres in Europe, in the Jewish Diaspora, in the Muslim and Christian world of West Africa, and among Blacks in the United States. Additionally, this book places Blyden at the pinnacle of Afropublicanism in order to emphasize his public intellectualism, his rootedness in the African historical experience, and the scholarship he produced about Africa and the African Diaspora. As Blyden is an important contributor to African studies, among other disciplines, this volume makes for critical scholarly reading.
It's best to work with the system, and right now – the system is war. 2003, civil war is raging in Liberia. At a rebel army base four young women are doing their best to survive the conditions of the ...war. Yet sometimes, the greatest threat comes not from the enemy's guns, but from the brutality of those on your own side. With the arrival of a new girl, who can read, and an old one, who can kill, how might this transform the future of this hard-bitten sisterhood?
Making Liberia Safe Gompert, David C; Oliker, Olga; Stearns, Brooke ...
2007
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Liberias new government, under President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has made security sector transformation a high priority. The authors analyze Liberias complex security environment, set forth an ...integrated security concept to guide the formation and use of those forces and new institutions to manage them, and assemble a complete security structure. They then develop specific force-structure options and discuss the cost-effectiveness of each. Finally, they suggest immediate steps toward implementation of the new security structure. These include development and coordination of detailed integrated force plans with the United States and the UN; a design and plans for a small police quick-reaction unit and small Coast Guard; attention to building court and corrections-system capacity; and consolidation, reduction, and appropriate recruiting, vetting, and training of the currently independent multiple police forces, customs, and intelligence personnel.
Journey of Hope Barnes, Kenneth C
2005, 2004, 2004-09-30, 2005-10-12, 20040101
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Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the 1820s as an African refuge for free blacks and liberated American slaves. While interest in African migration waned after the ...Civil War, it roared back in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. The back-to-Africa movement held great new appeal to the South's most marginalized citizens, rural African Americans. Nowhere was this interest in Liberia emigration greater than in Arkansas. More emigrants to Liberia left from Arkansas than any other state in the 1880s and 1890s. In Journey of Hope, Kenneth C. Barnes explains why so many black Arkansas sharecroppers dreamed of Africa and how their dreams of Liberia differed from the reality. This rich narrative also examines the role of poor black farmers in the creation of a black nationalist identity and the importance of the symbolism of an ancestral continent. Based on letters to the ACS and interviews of descendants of the emigrants in war-torn Liberia, this study captures the life of black sharecroppers in the late 1800s and their dreams of escaping to Africa.
“Never has the story of American African colonization been so thoroughly explored."—Violet Showers Johnson, coauthor of African & American: West Africans in Post–Civil Rights America “Succeeds ...admirably in putting us back in touch with the diverse sources of support for the American Colonization Society. We learn much about the complex nature of human motivations and about the changes in attitudes, goals, and government policy that occurred over time."—Paul D. Escott, author of Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States “Thought-provoking and challenging. These deeply researched and gracefully written essays refine our understanding of this often misunderstood group."—Douglas R. Egerton, coeditor of The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History This volume closely examines the movement to resettle black Americans in Africa, an effort led by the American Colonization Society during the nineteenth century. Over a century later, the subject remains vigorously debated: while some believe recolonization was inspired by antislavery principles, others view it as a proslavery reaction against the presence of free blacks in society. Moving beyond this simple duality, the contributors to this volume link the movement to other historical developments of the time, revealing a complex web of different schemes, ideologies, alliances, and motives behind the relocation of African Americans to Liberia and other parts of Africa. Considering the perspectives of both black and white Americans, as well as indigenous Africans, these essays address the many religious, political, and social aspects that influenced the recolonization project. Within nuanced nineteenth-century contexts, the contributors explain what colonization, emigration, immigration, abolition, and emancipation meant to the many different factions that supported or opposed recolonization. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller“Never has the story of American African colonization been so thoroughly explored."—Violet Showers Johnson, coauthor of African & American: West Africans in Post–Civil Rights America “Succeeds admirably in putting us back in touch with the diverse sources of support for the American Colonization Society. We learn much about the complex nature of human motivations and about the changes in attitudes, goals, and government policy that occurred over time."—Paul D. Escott, author of Uncommonly Savage: Civil War and Remembrance in Spain and the United States “Thought-provoking and challenging. These deeply researched and gracefully written essays refine our understanding of this often misunderstood group."—Douglas R. Egerton, coeditor of The Denmark Vesey Affair: A Documentary History This volume closely examines the movement to resettle black Americans in Africa, an effort led by the American Colonization Society during the nineteenth century. Over a century later, the subject remains vigorously debated: while some believe recolonization was inspired by antislavery principles, others view it as a proslavery reaction against the presence of free blacks in society. Moving beyond this simple duality, the contributors to this volume link the movement to other historical developments of the time, revealing a complex web of different schemes, ideologies, alliances, and motives behind the relocation of African Americans to Liberia and other parts of Africa. Considering the perspectives of both black and white Americans, as well as indigenous Africans, these essays address the many religious, political, and social aspects that influenced the recolonization project. Within nuanced nineteenth-century contexts, the contributors explain what colonization, emigration, immigration, abolition, and emancipation meant to the many different factions that supported or opposed recolonization. A volume in the series Southern Dissent, edited by Stanley Harrold and Randall M. Miller
In the early 2000s, Liberian women wearing wrap skirts and white T-shirts, shouting: We want peace, no more war', attracted international attention. After almost fifteen years of civil war, the ...enduring active, multifaceted, and non-violent campaigning for peace by women's organisations contributed to the end of the fighting and the signing of a peace agreement between the warring factions. Although it is widely assumed that women's inclusion in peace processes yields greater attention to women's issues and needs in the aftermath of a conflict, this is only partly the case in Liberia. Thus, this analysis looks beyond the extraordinary commitment by women in Liberia and deals with the questions to what extent their role in the peace process has contributed to gender-sensitive outcomes in post-conflict Liberian society and why greater gender sensitivity was not achieved. By focusing on manifestations of patterns of masculinity in the public and private spheres, Anne Theobald identifies factors at different levels of analysis within different time frames that elucidate the unexpected outcome. Not only does this provide for a more encompassing understanding of dynamics of gender relations and context-specific variables impeding gender sensitivity in post-conflict settings, but it also helps to refine prevailing theoretical approaches on gender in peacemaking and peacebuilding and to develop more holistic, context-specific, and efficient policy approaches, which can effectively lead to gender-sensitive peace.
Contents: Poverty and the response to the economic crisis in Liberia. brief overview -- Poverty and human development diagnostic -- Poverty in Liberia. level, profile and determinants -- Education in ...Liberia. basic diagnostic using the 2007 CWIQ survey -- Health in Liberia. basic diagnostic using the 2007 CWIQ survey -- Impact of higher food prices and fiscal measures taken to respond to the crisis -- Rice prices and poverty in Liberia -- Benefit incidence of fiscal measures to deal with the impact on households of the economic crisis in Liberia. comparing import and income taxes -- Evaluation of the cash for work temporary employment program -- Ex ante assessment of the potential impact of labor intensive public works in Liberia -- Liberia's cash for work temporary employment project. responding to crisis in low income, fragile countries -- Impact of labor intensive public works in Liberia. results from a light evaluation survey -- List of tables, figures, and boxes.
