Monrovia – On a humid January morning in 2018, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf stood at the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Stadium in Paynesville and handed the keys of the Liberian state to a former footballer, George Manneh Weah. It was the first time in 74 years that one elected Liberian leader had peacefully passed power to another.

By Rodney D. Sieh

On a continent where presidents often rewrite constitutions to stay, she simply left. Her own party had expelled her weeks earlier. Many in the crowd blamed her for what had not changed. She smiled, waved and went home.

Today, October 29, the woman the world calls Africa’s “Iron Lady” turns 88. Her journey from a Monrovia schoolgirl to a Nobel laureate is, in many ways, the story of modern Liberia itself: brilliant, battered, contested and still unfinished.

A prophecy in Monrovia

Family lore holds that when baby Ellen was born in 1938, an elderly visitor looked at her and declared that the child would be great. Her father, Jahmale Carney Johnson, was the son of a Gola chief who rose to become one of the first indigenous Liberians in the national legislature. Her mother was a teacher and preacher of mixed Kru and German heritage.

That mix mattered. For more than a century, Liberia was ruled by a small elite descended from freed American slaves. Sirleaf straddled both worlds: rooted in the indigenous majority, yet schooled among the settler class at Monrovia’s College of West Africa.

She married James Sirleaf at 17 and had four sons in quick succession. The marriage was turbulent and later ended.

In 1961 the couple left for the United States, where she studied accounting at Madison Business College in Wisconsin, worked as a waitress to pay her way, and later earned a master’s in public administration at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

The finance official who talked back

Back home, she joined the Treasury and quickly earned a reputation for saying what others would not. In 1969, she delivered a blunt speech warning that corruption and economic mismanagement threatened the nation. It was a dangerous thing to say in the one-party state of President William Tubman.

Under President William Tolbert, she rose to become Liberia’s finance minister in 1979. She was one of the few women at the top table, and among the most outspoken. Within months, the table would be overturned.

Coup, prison and exile

In April 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel Doe and a band of soldiers stormed the Executive Mansion and killed Tolbert. Days later, 13 senior officials were tied to posts on a Monrovia beach and executed by firing squad. Sirleaf was spared, reportedly because she had once criticised the old order. She soon fled into exile.

She worked for Citibank in Nairobi and the World Bank, but she could not stay away.

Returning in 1985, she called Doe’s regime “idiots” in a speech and was sentenced to 10 years for sedition. International pressure won her release. After a failed coup that November, she was arrested again and held for months. She later wrote of being threatened with rape by a soldier in her cell.

She won a Senate seat in Doe’s rigged 1985 vote, then refused to take it in protest. Once more she left the country, this time for banking jobs in Washington and, from 1992, a senior post at the United Nations Development Programme heading its Africa bureau.

The Taylor stain

The darkest chapter of her story began in 1989, when warlord Charles Taylor invaded from Côte d’Ivoire to topple Doe. Like many exiles, Sirleaf backed the rebellion at first. She later admitted giving Taylor’s movement money, a sum she put at about $10,000, before turning against him.

The civil wars that followed killed an estimated 250,000 people. Sirleaf ran against Taylor in 1997 and lost badly, finishing a distant second with under 10 percent of the vote. Taylor’s government charged her with treason, and she fled again. That early support for the man who became one of Africa’s most notorious warlords would haunt her for decades.

“Ma Ellen” takes power

When Taylor was forced into exile in 2003, Liberia was a ruin. There was no electricity grid in the capital and no piped water. Unemployment ran above 80 percent. The national debt stood near $4.9 billion, several times the size of the economy.

In November 2005, Sirleaf beat George Weah in a runoff with about 59 percent of the vote. Market women, who had campaigned for her door to door, called her “Ma Ellen”. In January 2006 she was sworn in as the first woman elected to lead an African nation.

Her government’s first-year budget was about $80 million.

She used her Washington Rolodex ruthlessly. Lights returned to parts of Monrovia. Schools reopened. In 2010, creditors cancelled about $4.6 billion of Liberia’s debt, one of the largest write-offs of its kind. She also asked that Taylor’s war crimes trial be moved to The Hague, fearing it would destabilise the region if held in Sierra Leone.

Nobel and Ebola

In October 2011, days before she sought a second term, Sirleaf shared the Nobel Peace Prize with fellow Liberian Leymah Gbowee and Yemen’s Tawakkol Karman. The committee honoured their non-violent struggle for women’s safety and for women’s full part in peace-building. Critics at home called the timing an election gift.

She won again, though her rival Winston Tubman boycotted the runoff and turnout collapsed to about 37 percent. Her second term brought its sternest test. In 2014 Ebola tore through Liberia, killing more than 4,800 people. Early quarantines provoked riots, and one boy was shot dead in the West Point slum. Yet by May 2015 Liberia was declared Ebola-free, and her letters pleading with world leaders were credited with speeding the global response.

The Iron Lady’s critics

Abroad she was a heroine. At home the verdict was far more complicated.

In 2009, Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommended that she be barred from public office for 30 years over her early support for Taylor. She apologised, saying she had been fooled by Taylor’s intentions, and the recommendation was never enforced.

To her critics, it remained proof that the peacemaker had once financed war.

Then there was family. Her son Robert ran the national oil company, Charles served as deputy governor of the Central Bank, and Fumba headed the national security agency. She defended them as qualified professionals. Many Liberians saw nepotism. In 2019, after she left office, Charles was jailed over the controversial printing of Liberian banknotes; the state dropped the charges in 2020. He died in Accra in June 2024, a private grief for a mother who rarely speaks of her own pain.

She also admitted that corruption, which she once called “public enemy number one”, outlasted her. Concession deals were faulted for weak oversight, and she conceded in her farewell years that she had not won that war. Supporters answer that she inherited a gutted state on a shoestring budget and gave it 12 years of peace.

The handover

The 2017 election exposed how lonely the top had become. Her vice president of 12 years, Joseph Boakai, ran as the Unity Party candidate but kept her at arm’s length. At one debate he likened himself to a race car left parked in the garage for 12 years. When Boakai lost to Weah, the party expelled Sirleaf, accusing her of quietly backing the opposition. She denied it.

She did not fight back. On January 22, 2018, she handed power to Weah, the former striker she had beaten in 2005. It was the first peaceful transfer between elected Liberian leaders since 1944.

Weeks later, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation awarded her its Prize for Achievement in African Leadership, worth $5 million over 10 years. The prize is so demanding that it has often gone unawarded. She was its first woman winner. She dedicated it to Africa’s women and girls.

Reinventing the wheel

Most former presidents fade into memoirs and golf. Sirleaf built an institution. In 2020 she assembled a small team to found the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development in Monrovia, billed as the world’s first presidential center for a woman leader.

Its flagship Amujae Initiative selects up to 15 African women a year who are already rising in public life and trains them to aim for the very top. “Amujae” means “we are going there” in Kpelle. The fifth cohort launched in June 2026. In August, Senegal’s President Bassirou Diomaye Faye received her in Dakar before the centre opened its High-Level Leadership Forum there, with Namibia’s President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah among the leaders in the room.

The global stage still calls. In 2020, the World Health Organization chose her and former New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark to co-chair an independent panel reviewing the world’s response to COVID-19, a nod to her Ebola years.

At home, her estranged former deputy, Boakai, won the presidency in 2023, and the Unity Party is back in power. In March 2026, she addressed the House of Representatives, which gave her a Special Legislative Citation of Distinguished Honor. She urged lawmakers to scrap the constitutional clause limiting citizenship to people “of Negro descent”, to fix land disputes and to elect more women; only 9 sit in the House and 3 in the Senate. On unfinished reforms, she said she would trust history’s judgment.

At 88

She still claims her share of credit. On a Monrovia radio talk show in April, she said many of the roads and projects now under way began under her government. In the same breath she insisted they were “Liberia’s projects”, not anyone’s trophies.

That is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in miniature: proud, combative, impatient with ingratitude, yet disciplined enough to step aside. She was jailed by one dictator and wooed by a warlord. She was celebrated in Oslo and denounced in Monrovia. She buried a son and outlived most of her enemies.

Her legacy will be argued over in Liberian tea shops long after she is gone. But on one point even her harshest critics agree. When her time was up, she left. In much of Africa, that remains the rarest kind of greatness, and the old prophecy at her cradle may have meant exactly that.

Summary:

• Sickle cell disease is an inherited blood disease that kills up to half of the 1600 Liberian babies born with it each year before age 5. Until now most of them have died without ever knowing they had it.
• Low-cost care can help children with sickle cell live long lives, but Liberia has lacked the testing, medicine and specialists to provide it. Some patients leave the country for treatment. The government is now working on a plan to expand treatment.
• Most babies are never tested. Three hospitals in three of Liberia’s 15 counties now test newborns for sickle cell. The government plans to test in every county by 2030. And there are plans for a national count of how many people have the disease.

By Gloria Wleh, senior reporter with New Narratives

72ND COMMUNITY, Montserrado County — Suitcases are being packed here for yet another flight. For 19-year-old Tilnette Woods and her mother, Johnetta Harris-Kamara, plane journeys have become part of their lives.

Tilnette has sickle cell disease, an inherited condition that changes the shape of red blood cells, making them difficult to flow through the body. It causes extreme pain and frequent infections. Untreated, it kills half of the Liberian children born with it by the age of five.

Restricted blood flow to Tilnette’s hip bones has caused them to crumble and die. Now, she has travelled to India for her second hip replacement surgery. She had the first hip replaced in Nigeria in 2023.

Mother and daughter know this is another stopgap measure. Until now, it has been impossible to get the medicine and support she needs to stay alive in Liberia.  

“What am I coming back to?” Tilnette asks. “Am I coming back to a country that is going to give up on me? Like it always been giving up on me?”

The question captures the challenge facing thousands of Liberians diagnosed with sickle cell disease, forced to spend all their money on drugs that keep them alive and seek surgery overseas when that fails.

Sickle cell disease is one of Liberia’s most common inherited illnesses, and one of its least visible. The country has never conducted a nationwide prevalence study and has no national registry for sickle cell disease patients. But a screening study of newborns at a Monrovia hospital found that about one in every 100 babies is born with the disease. Applied to Liberia’s roughly 160,000 births a year, that suggests that 1600 children are affected annually.

Without early diagnosis, most will die before their fifth birthday from infections their bodies cannot fight. But simple, cheap treatments – penicillin, vaccines and malaria prevention – can keep most of them alive.

Now patient advocates are seeing some cause for optimism. The Boakai administration’s health ministry’s has worked with partners to initiate newborn screening in the J.J. Dossen Hospital In Maryland, the John F. Kennedy Hospital in Montserrado and the C.B. Dunbar Hospital in Bong counties, according to Jamesetta Smith, director of the ministry’s Non-Communicable Diseases and Injuries Unit.

Smith says the government plans to expand newborn screening nationwide by the end of 2030 and to include sickle cell in the next national demographic survey to get real data on sufferer numbers.

More than 300 health workers have been trained, Smith says. The building blocks for better treatment are in place.

“Sickle cell can be prevented. Sickle cell can be managed if people are aware early,” Smith says.

A Childhood of Unexplained Pain

As a baby, Tilnette cried whenever she tried to stand. Her family thought she simply did not want to walk. At 11 months, she was taken to Redemption Hospital, where doctors diagnosed an abscess in her leg and performed surgery. Finally, when she was a teenager, after repeated years of tiredness, dizziness, dehydration and anemia, Tilnette was diagnosed with sickle cell disease.

It was a devastating blow for her mother, Johnetta. “I was like, ‘God, how am I going to manage? How am I going to continue to carry on this load?’”

By then, the condition had already begun taking a toll. Tilnette loved dancing and playing with friends. But as the disease progressed, ordinary physical activities became increasingly difficult. During one dance performance, she attempted a split and could not get back up.

“My friends and my dance mates literally had to carry me off,” she recalls. “That was so humiliating.”

The experience forced her to begin researching her condition. She learned that she had to manage the illness every day, not just during crises. She must have plenty of water and avoid extreme heat, cold and physical exertion to prevent dehydration. Sleeping under a treated bed net was essential because malaria can trigger a life-threatening crisis.

Medicines matter – folic acid to help make new blood cells, penicillin to prevent infections, and hydroxyurea, a daily pill, to help stop red blood cells from turning hard and curved. Together they can cut crises by half. Hydroxyurea is now on the World Health Organization’s list of essential medicines, the basic drugs every health system should have. It was added to Liberia’s essential medicines list just last year, but the government is not currently purchasing it. Tilnette has to find it at local pharmacies and pay US$30 a month.

Any fever is an emergency because the disease damages the spleen and leaves the body unable to fight certain infections. Regular clinic visits, up-to-date vaccines and knowing the early signs of a crisis – pain in the chest, a sudden weakness on one side, yellowing eyes – can mean the difference between a hospital stay and a funeral.

By the time Tilnette was diagnosed, the damage to her hip bones was already done. Tilnette was preparing to enter her second semester of college in 2023 when her shattered hip sent her to the hospital. The cost for the replacement in Nigeria was US$10,000. She has started an online funding campaigns at Fundraizer and GoFundMe to raise the money needed for the India trip.

“You can’t be going to school, especially when you’re spending about $500, $600 a semester while you’re saving up for $10,000,” she says. “So I had to drop.”

For Johnetta, 50, her daughter’s illness has meant years of sacrifice. Money that she earns as a civil servant that might have gone toward clothes, shoes or other household needs is instead kept for emergencies. Tilnette’s father, her ex-husband, sometimes helps with money and provides his blood when the need arises.

“I won’t fix my hair. I won’t buy new bag. I won’t buy new shoes,” she says. “I must always have money on me to take care of her.”

The medication can be difficult to obtain. When local pharmacies run out, she has to order it from Ghana at a cost of $50. A month. Without it, the pain can be unbearable.

 “Even lying down is painful,” she says. “I turn and toss and turn about 50 times a night before I go to sleep for a couple of hours.”

She has also faced stigma. “Sickle cell patients, when we ask for medicines, like pain medicines, back-to-back, people look at us like, ‘Oh, she’s a drug addict,’” she says.

‘Every Air You Breathe, You Face Severe Pain’

The pain caused by the disease is difficult to explain to people who have never experienced it, according to Wegee Taylor, acting executive director of the Sickle Cell Association of Liberia, a private organization, and a sufferer himself.

“If you look at the level of pain a sickler goes through, when he or she is in crisis, every air you breathe, you face severe pain,” he says.

Misconceptions about sickle cell remain widespread. Some people still attribute the disease to witchcraft or other supernatural causes. The Sickle Cell Association has raised private funds for awareness activities, training of health workers and providing nutritional support to more than 100 sickle cell patients in the association’s database according to Taylor. The Ministry of Health’s Non-Communicable Diseases and Injuries Unit has now focused on awareness-raising to reduce stigma and spread the message that the disease is medical, not a curse.

Just $1000 Allocated for Sickle Cell in Health Ministry’s Budget

The funding gap remains an obstacle. Sickle cell is now included in the Ministry of Health’s five-year non-communicable diseases strategy and 10-year policy. But from the ministry’s total $102 million annual budget, the entire Non-Communicable Diseases and Injuries Unit, which covers cancer, hypertension, diabetes, stroke and disabilities- diseases responsible for two in every five deaths in the country – received just $20,000. Only $1,000 was set aside for sickle cell.

“Generally, the entire department is under-supported,” says Smith.

The main donor-led effort is the American Society of Hematology’s Consortium on Newborn Screening project, run in Liberia since 2025 through the pediatrics department at John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Monrovia. A heel-prick test at birth, costing a few dollars, allows babies to start penicillin and malaria prevention in their first months, get the vaccines that protect a damaged spleen, and have parents who know that a fever is an emergency.

“We’re not waiting for the sickness to start showing itself,” says Dr. Patience Franklin, national coordinator for newborn screening. “We’re running in front of the sickness.”

But the pilot has only reached newborns delivered within JFK’s catchment and the consortium’s five-year period of work ended in September.

Liberia’s neighbors have already shown what is possible. Ghana has screened newborns in Kumasi since 1995, and children found early there survive at rates close to 90 percent. In 2024 the government launched a national sickle cell strategy and now covers hydroxyurea, folic acid and penicillin under its national health insurance, the first African country to offer that standard of care. Nigeria, which has more sickle cell births than any country on earth, has added sickle cell screening to babies’ immunization visits.

Dr. Franklin remains upbeat. The JFK program has trained 175 health workers. The foundation for expanding the program is there.

“What we need to do as a government is to integrate it into our care and make it a priority,” she says. The work on a national strategic plan is a good sign. “That gives me hope that there is some light. I don’t want to be too excited, but I see morelight.”

Knowledge Can Stop the Disease Before it Starts

A simple blood test for would-be parents, costing a few dollars, could be game-changing. Carriers of the gene that causes the disease are healthy and usually have no idea. But when two carriers have a child, there is a one-in-four chance with every pregnancy that the baby will be born with the disease. If people knew their status before they married or had children, couples could plan and seek counseling.

Other African countries have made the test routine. In Nigeria, many churches and mosques now require couples to show their genotype results before a wedding, and several states have passed laws encouraging premarital testing. In Ghana, testing is widely available through public hospitals and church-run pre-marriage counselling, and the government’s 2024–2028 sickle cell strategy makes carrier awareness a national goal.

In Liberia, the test is rarely offered outside a handful of Monrovia hospitals. But the Ministry of Health says it is working toward making genotype testing a compulsory part of premarital counseling once testing capacity improves.

Harris-Kamara wishes she had known more before her daughter was born.

“If I had really known, I would have never had to make her to go through all of this,” she says.

For now, Tilnette is grateful to the public donors who have made this latest hip surgery possible. But she also knows that fundraising cannot replace a health system designed to treat her. Her future and the future of thousands of other children suffering from sickle cell disease now depend on how much of a commitment the health ministry decides to make to helping them.

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the “Investigating Liberia” project. Funding was provided by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. The funder had no say in the story’s content.

Monrovia- Every Sunday, pastors across Liberia climb into pulpits to comfort the grieving, counsel the broken and lift the weary. Few in the pews stop to ask who comforts the preacher.

By: Rodney D. Sieh

That question is the heart of The Bleeding Leader: Leading While Wounded in the Battle of Ministry and Life, the new book by Bishop J. Allan Klayee of Jubilee Ministries International.

Published in 2026 and printed by Denva Books in Accra, the 123-page work makes a case that is simple to state and hard for many churches to accept: leaders bleed, and a ministry culture that forbids them to say so is setting them up to collapse.

The book will be officially launched this Saturday, October 31, at the Monrovia City Hall.

“Followers see the polished sermon, the steady hand guiding a congregation through crisis,” the book’s introduction says. “They see the fruit. They see the confidence. What they rarely see is the bleeding.”

The foreword is written by Bishop Nathaniel N. Zarway, Sr., Diocesan Bishop of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith in Liberia, who calls the author his “son in the gospel” and recommends the book “to every leader who has ever shed tears in private while standing strong in public.”

Although it is written mainly for pastors, the author insists its reach is wider. “The book is not only for the church but speaks to every leader in every sector,” Bishop Klayee said.

Twelve chapters, one wound at a time

Across twelve chapters, Bishop Klayee takes the hidden injuries of leadership one by one. There is the bite from inside the flock (“When Sheep Bite, It Hurts”), the betrayal of trusted friends, the loneliness of being “surrounded by people, known by none,” the weight of carrying other people’s burdens, and the danger of suffering in silence. The final chapters turn toward healing, and toward the idea that a scar can become a source of wisdom rather than shame.

His guides are the great figures of Scripture, chosen, he writes in the preface, “precisely because they were not” invincible. Moses tells God the burden is too heavy and asks to die. Elijah sits under a broom tree days after his triumph on Mount Carmel and prays for death. David writes psalms from caves and flees his own son Absalom. Peter weeps in a courtyard. Paul admits the “daily pressure” of his concern for the churches.

The second chapter, “Protecting the Bleeding General,” turns the lens on congregations. Using the image of Aaron and Hur holding up Moses’ tired arms during the battle with the Amalekites, the author argues that the church has been “far more practiced at expecting protection from its leaders than at providing protection to them.” He calls protecting a pastor “the most self-interested thing a community can do for its own future.”

Where the book is strongest

The book’s greatest service is that it names something many church cultures prefer to keep quiet. It rejects outright the teaching that suffering is proof of weak faith. That kind of “false comfort,” the author writes, adds “a layer of shame and spiritual self-condemnation” to people who are already struggling.

Some of its readings of familiar passages are fresh and memorable. When Moses breaks down in Numbers 11, the author notes, God does not rebuke him. He appoints seventy elders to share the load. When Elijah collapses in the wilderness, the first thing God sends is not a sermon but food and sleep. “The body had to be addressed first,” Bishop Klayee writes, a line that every overworked pastor and every demanding church board should read twice.

The chapter on why

congregations turn on their leaders is wise and generous. The author identifies three causes: misunderstanding, because leaders often cannot explain decisions built on confidences; displaced pain, where a member’s own suffering is aimed at the nearest authority figure; and disappointment when a pastor fails to live up to an idealised image. He urges leaders to ask what may be happening in the life of an attacker, so that an attack becomes “information” rather than only a wound.

The book also offers practical warning signs that a leader is running on empty: emotional flatness, sharpness out of proportion to events, and a quiet withdrawal from prayer and Scripture. And it has lines that stay with the reader, none sharper than this: “The prayer meeting that prays for everyone in the congregation except the person leading it has missed the most obvious application of the very theology it is practicing.”

Importantly, the call to protect leaders is not a call to shield them from scrutiny. Bishop Klayee treats accountability as protection, arguing that “the leader who operates without accountability is not free. They are exposed.” At a time when public trust in institutions, including churches, is fragile, that balance matters.

Where it falls short

The book is not without flaws. The most noticeable is repetition. Elijah under the broom tree appears in at least four chapters. Moses’ plea in Numbers 11 and Paul’s “daily pressure” of concern for the churches are each worked through twice. Galatians 6:9 both opens and closes the argument, and a full passage about the congregation that watches its pastor suffer faithfully appears almost word for word in both the first and last chapters. A firmer edit would have tightened the book considerably.

The prose, while clean and readable, leans heavily on certain words. “Genuine” and “genuinely” appear about 170 times, and “specific” is not far behind. In places, the sentences grow long and abstract, circling an idea rather than landing it. More significant is what is missing.

In the preface, the author says the book grew from years of walking with wounded pastors and from “my own seasons of wounding.” Yet readers hear almost nothing of those stories. Beyond the biblical figures, there are few real cases, no Liberian pastor who burned out and recovered, no congregation that learned to care for its leader.

Those stories would have given the book a local heartbeat and made its lessons easier to apply.

The practical guidance is also thinner than the diagnosis. The book briefly names compassion fatigue and clinical depression but says little about when a pastor should seek professional counselling, how a church might arrange rest or sabbatical time, or how to build the kind of shared leadership Moses received. Readers looking for a step-by-step plan will find encouragement more than instruction.

Verdict

The Bleeding Leader is a sincere, pastoral and timely book. Its central message, that a wounded leader is not a disqualified leader, needs to be heard in Liberian churches and beyond, in boardrooms, ministries and public offices where leaders are expected never to break. Its repetitions and missing personal stories keep it from being the definitive work on the subject. But for the pastor preparing a message of hope on Saturday night while privately feeling hopeless, it offers what its author promises: the assurance that “you are seen. You are not alone.” 

It should be read by pastors, and perhaps even more by the deacons, elders and church members who sit in front of them every Sunday.

Unification Town, Margibi County – While launching Liberia’s first mining and energy conference within a decade and a half, President Joseph Nyuma hinted at the imminent establishment of two major institutions: the National Mining Company of Liberia and the Liberia Sovereign Wealth Fund.  

Speaking at the landmark international conference that brought together a thousand-plus delegates from Liberia and the globe, the Liberian leader pointed out that for long, resource-rich countries, including Liberia, have exported raw materials while importing finished products, technology, and expertise, stressing that Liberia intends to take a different path.

“Our minerals should support domestic processing, industrial development, infrastructure, technology, and decent jobs. Electricity should power industry, agriculture, small businesses, and public services, improve competitiveness, and help reduce poverty,” asserted President Boakai.

Move Towards State Participation

The Liberian Chief Executive announced the government is advancing three important initiatives as it aims to change the narrative in the mining and energy sectors.

In a bid to achieve this, he disclosed that the first step is the establishment of a National Mining Company of Liberia that moves the country toward more active state participation through equity and strategic ownership, rather than relying only on royalty collection.

Secondly, he revealed that within two years, Liberia seeks to establish its first gold processing facility, advancing the African Minerals Strategy Group’s call for value addition before minerals leave the continent.

According to him, Liberia intends to contribute to this continental agenda by retaining more value at home and creating skilled jobs.

“The Government’s stated policy is for gold extracted in Liberia to undergo primary and secondary refining to internationally recognized purity standards at licensed domestic facilities before export,” he furthered.

Third, President Boakai informed the gathering that government has authorized the creation of the Liberia Sovereign Wealth Fund, which is intended to operate as an independent investment vehicle in line with the international Santiago Principles.

“By directing a fixed percentage of mineral revenues into diversified domestic and global investments, the Fund would help convert finite mineral wealth into long-term financial security for future generations as well as reduce exposure to commodity-market cycles.”

“If mining is one engine of Liberia’s economic transformation, energy must power that engine. Unreliable, expensive, and limited electricity constrains businesses, raises production costs, discourages investment, and limits services for hospitals, schools, agricultural processors, manufacturers, small enterprises, and households.”

More Energy Generation

On the energy side, he explained that the government is pursuing renewable generation, stronger transmission and distribution, regional electricity integration, better utility performance, and greater private-sector participation.

“The 20-megawatt solar photovoltaic facility associated with the Mount Coffee energy development program is an important step toward diversifying generation and reducing dependence on more expensive and less sustainable power sources.”

It could be recalled that the government sometimes ago announced additional financing to expand solar generation capacity from 20 to 30 megawatts, install a 12-megawatt battery energy storage system, and make further improvements to the Mount Coffee facility.

The Liberian leader indicated that the government will encourage utility-scale solar, distributed renewable energy, mini-grids, and other technically and commercially viable clean-energy investments.

An Ambitious Energy Plan In Sight

The President asserted that the national ambition is to increase renewables to 75 percent of the electricity generation mix while expanding access and improving reliability, adding that government will pursue this through sound planning, credible procurement, environmental and social safeguards, and partnerships capable of delivering results.

“Liberia’s hydropower resources offer important long-term opportunities. The Government will continue technical, environmental, financial, and procurement preparations for additional capacity, including the proposed Saint Paul River hydropower development.”

“These projects require careful consideration of financing, construction costs, environmental impacts, any necessary resettlement, water-resource management, and long-term operations.”

Accordingly, the Liberian chief executive intoned that the key objective is to strengthen energy security, support industrial growth, and contribute to regional electricity supply where feasible.

“Generation alone cannot solve our electricity challenges. Power must be transmitted efficiently and distributed reliably to businesses, communities, and households. Our I Government will continue working to improve transmission capacity, strengthen distribution networks, reduce technical and commercial losses, and expand connections to underserved communities.”

Mining, A Major Pillar To Economic Growth

The President reminded Liberians and international partners that mining remains a major pillar of Liberia’s economy, contributing to exports, foreign exchange, public revenue, employment, infrastructure, and community economic activity.

Since January 2024, he recalled that mining and energy have been central to our national growth strategy. Mining expanded by 17 percent.

“Liberia achieved overall GDP growth of 5.1 percent, with real GDP growth of 5.5 percent projected. Mining contributed 18.4 percent of real GDP in 2025 and is projected at 19.4 percent in 2026.”

Statistically, President Boakai reported that the sector contributed approximately US$124 million directly to national revenue in 2024 and US$432 million to domestic revenue to date.

“This supports the US$1.1 billion domestic revenue milestone projected for this year, compared with US$699 million in 2024, and helps fund infrastructure, education, and healthcare.”

“Liberia is entering a new investment cycle. Iron ore remains an important foundation, while gold, diamonds, and emerging mineral opportunities offer prospects for diversification. Our priority is to attract investment while strengthening governance, geological information, domestic participation, and national economic returns.”

A Need For Reliable Geological Data

He also informed the conference that the government is advancing geological mapping, analysis of new findings, improved mineral information management, and access to technical data through a coordinated national exploration program over the next five years.

“A US$30 million airborne geophysics data collection is planned under the MCC compact to support systematic exploration and improve knowledge of critical and strategic minerals. Transparent procedures will improve qualified investors’ access to geological information while protecting legitimate commercial interests and the public interest. Our objective is to reduce uncertainty and build a stronger pipeline of viable mining projects.”

“Our Government is strengthening mineral-rights administration, licensing, oversight, and accountability. We will review the Minerals and Mining Law and related regulations to reflect investment practices, environmental standards, technology, and Liberia’s development objectives.”

Seeking Fair Trade

In a clarion call to would-be investors, President Boakai sounded a caveat for fair and responsible investment that lays to bed equity revenue for them and returns for the country.

“We seek clear rules, fair administration, and predictable procedures. Operators must obey the law, pay required fees and taxes, meet environmental obligations, and respect workers and host communities. Mineral resources are finite, and we must ensure they generate lasting returns for Liberians.”

An Aggressive Approach

Also speaking at the occasion, Mines and Energy Minister R. Matenokay Tingban says Liberia is moving aggressively to build a domestic gold refinery and formalize its artisanal mining sector as part of a broader push to retain more value from its mineral wealth.

Min. Tingban reckoned that about 80% of Liberia remains geologically unexplored since early mineral mapping in the 1970s, leaving the country without reliable data to negotiate.”No data, no view,” the Minister stressed. “We must know what we have before negotiating how it is developed.

Gold Refinery and State Miner Confirmed

Prior to President Boakai’s official opening remarks, Tingban, who first took the podium, confirmed the government’s pursuit of a domestic gold refinery, saying the Ministry has opened a transparent process to attract technically capable and financially credible partners who meet recognized standards for responsible sourcing, assaying, refining and certification.

“A domestic refinery could retain more value in Liberia, strengthen oversight of the gold trade, improve traceability and revenue collection, create skilled jobs, and provide small miners, brokers and dealers with credible local markets.”

He indicated that the facility will require reliable electricity, sound environmental management, anti-money laundering controls, and a traceable supply chain that includes artisanal and small-scale miners.

The company, he noted, will serve as a vehicle for responsible state participation and will pursue viable exploration, mining, processing and value addition with qualified Liberian and international investors.

“The company must have high professional management, transparent financial reporting, strong corporate governance and clear accountability,” Tingban noted, adding that its commercial activities must remain separate from the Ministry’s regulatory function to avoid conflict of interest.

Artisanal Miners Organization Drive

Min. Tingban also announced the launch of Liberia’s Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Organization initiative, aimed at bringing thousands of miners currently operating outside the formal system into the legal economy.

“Many miners remain outside a system that will improve safety, protect rights, and connect production to formal markets. Our approach must be practical and inclusive.”

The initiative, he said, will make licensing and registration more accessible, help miners form cooperatives, provide training in occupational safety and environmental protection, and improve access to equipment, financing and mineral traceability systems.

US Eyes Liberia, But Calls For Reforms

On behalf of the Government of the United States of America (USA), U.S. Chargé d’Affaires, Kristin Gilmore says American businesses are now actively considering Liberia for long-term mining and energy investments, but their decision to stay will depend on Liberia’s ability to deliver transparent and predictable reforms.

The American diplomat Gilmore, stated that her introductory meetings since arriving in Liberia a few weeks ago showed a clear desire by the Liberian government to move up the value chain, create jobs, and attract international investors.

The US envoy Gilmore believes that those goals align directly with Washington’s push to diversify global supply chains and secure reliable access to metals, critical minerals, and derivative products.

She disclosed that the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) last year reaffirmed Liberia’s eligibility for a second compact, which is now under development and will focus on mining and electricity sector reforms, two areas she described as critical to unlocking private investment and long-term economic growth.

The US envoy also announced that the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) is finalizing a grant to assess Liberia’s rail infrastructure capacity in support of President Joseph Boakai’s vision for a multi-user rail system.

“Multi-user rail is key to unlocking opportunities in Liberia’s minerals and agricultural sectors,” Gilmore declared, stressing that Washington welcomes government’s commitment and looks forward to timely passage of legislation establishing a transparent, independently regulated rail system.

MONROVIA — Lawyers representing two Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) sergeants dismissed after a viral video showed one of them allegedly assaulting a young woman are demanding their immediate reinstatement, accusing the military leadership of violating their constitutional rights and bypassing established disciplinary procedures.

By Gerald C. Koinyeneh

In a letter dated October 27, 2026, and addressed to Acting Minister of National Defense Cllr. N. Oswald Tweh, the law firm Kailondo & Associates argued that the October 21 discharge of Sergeants Abu S.B. Sheriff and Robert Menyon was unlawful because the soldiers were allegedly dismissed without a formal investigation, hearing, or opportunity to respond to the allegations.

The lawyers are asking the Defense Ministry to reverse the decision, reinstate the two former soldiers, and restore their salaries, privileges, and pension contributions. They have also requested a formal, confidential, and impartial investigation into the incident should the authorities wish to pursue disciplinary action.

The demand places the military’s response to the viral video under scrutiny, raising questions about how the AFL balances discipline and accountability with the constitutional and statutory protections afforded to its personnel.

Lawyers Cite Constitutional, Legal Violations

According to the letter, the two sergeants served the Liberian military for more than 18 years and maintained clean service records before their discharge.

The firm argued that their dismissal violated Article 20(a) of Liberia’s 1986 Constitution, which protects individuals against deprivation of their rights and privileges without due process of law.

It also invoked Article 21(h), which guarantees the presumption of innocence until guilt is established beyond a reasonable doubt, arguing that the military’s public action against the soldiers effectively punished them before a formal determination of their alleged misconduct.

The lawyers maintained that the circulation of a video on Facebook could not, by itself, replace an investigation or a disciplinary hearing.

They further cited Sections 7.7 and 7.13 of the National Defense Act of 2008, arguing that although the law provides grounds for discharging military personnel, disciplinary action must comply with applicable AFL regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Section 8.4, which provides AFL personnel with legal protections and safeguards comparable to those enjoyed by other Liberian citizens, was also cited in the complaint.

The firm argued that the military could not invoke the need to preserve discipline or the good of the service as justification for bypassing established procedures.

“The military justice system must not be sacrificed on the altar of public opinion,” the lawyers stated in their letter, warning against what they characterized as “social media justice.”

They contended that allowing dismissals based on viral videos without appropriate procedural safeguards could expose other military personnel to arbitrary punishment.

Viral Video Triggers Military Action

The two sergeants were dismissed after a video circulated on social media showing an altercation involving a soldier and a young woman identified as Blessing.

According to Blessing’s account, the incident began when soldiers pursued a group of boys who were playing football in their community. Her younger brother was among the boys and reportedly ran into their home as the soldiers chased them.

Blessing said she intervened and pleaded with the soldiers to leave her brother alone. She alleged that Sergeant Sheriff began beating her while she was holding her baby.

She said Sergeant Menyon attempted to intervene and stop his colleague but was unsuccessful.

The woman also indicated that the soldiers later apologized and that she forgave them. She reportedly wanted them to face some form of punishment but did not want them to lose their military careers.

Her account has added another dimension to the controversy surrounding the dismissals, particularly as the military’s disciplinary response has consequences beyond the two former service members.

AFL Chief of Staff Major General Davidson F. Forleh condemned the soldiers’ alleged conduct, describing them as “bad apples” within the military and likening them to an “Ebola virus.”

Following the dismissals, the two men were publicly presented, and Forleh reportedly instructed the Liberia National Police to handcuff them.

He also directed that their families leave the AFL barracks and that the former soldiers be taken to an area near the Samuel Kanyon Doe Sports Complex to find their way home.

The measures have raised further questions about the treatment of the dismissed personnel and their families, although the lawyers’ October 27 letter primarily challenges the legality of the discharge itself.

Defense Ministry Asked to Intervene

Kailondo & Associates has called on Acting Defense Minister Tweh to intervene and reverse the decision, arguing that the military should investigate the incident through established procedures rather than impose what it considers summary punishment.

The firm requested a response within 10 working days of receipt of the letter.

Copies were sent to President Joseph Nyuma Boakai, who is commander-in-chief of the AFL; Major General Forleh; and Senator Momo T. Cyrus, chairman of the Senate Committee on National Defense, Security and Veteran Affairs.

The letter was signed by Counsellor-at-Law Sylvester G. Lormie II.

The legal challenge does not dispute the need for the military to address allegations of misconduct by its personnel. Instead, it argues that accountability must be pursued within the framework of the law and that the soldiers should have been afforded an opportunity to answer the allegations before the dismissal decision was made.

The Defense Ministry and AFL leadership are yet to respond.

The outcome could test the military’s disciplinary procedures and the extent to which administrative decisions affecting service members must comply with constitutional due-process protections.

MONROVIA – Liberia’s House of Representatives has ordered a sweeping review of salaries and benefits across government, days after a rare public disclosure of a senior official’s pay reignited anger over the cost of running one of the world’s poorest countries. 

By Emmanuel Weedee-Conway

In a unanimous vote on Tuesday, the lower house of the national legislature instructed two of its committees, on Ways, Means and Finance and on Public Accounts, to examine the pay and perks of government officials and report back within two weeks. The motion was brought by Representative Alex S. Noah of Sinoe County.

Lawmakers argued that they are wrongly blamed for the country’s swollen wage bill, while ministers and the heads of state-owned enterprises earn far more.

The disclosure that lit the fuse

The vote came less than a week after Euphemia G.T. Swen-Monmia, President Joseph Boakai’s nominee for Deputy Governor for Economic Policy at the Central Bank of Liberia, appeared on October 22 before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency for her confirmation hearing.

Asked about her pay, she did something Liberian officials rarely do: she gave the numbers. She testified that her monthly salary is US$9,000, that she receives around US$5,000 in cash benefits on top of that, and that her housing allowance should be about US$15,000. She has served in an acting capacity since August 12.

That amounts to roughly US$168,000 a year in salary and cash benefits before housing is counted. A civil servant on the government’s US$150 monthly minimum would need more than seven and a half years of uninterrupted work to earn what she receives in a single month.

Swen-Monmia is a career central banker who joined the bank in 2010 as a management trainee and rose to director of its Financial Markets Department. The controversy is not about her qualifications but about what her testimony revealed: pay at the top of Executive agencies is generous, and almost never made public.

No lawmaker cited her testimony by name during Tuesday’s debate. But the timing, and the focus of the two letters that triggered it, on officials earning more than US$5,000 a month, suggest the disclosure handed fresh ammunition to a chamber long cast as the main villain in Liberia’s debate over official pay.

‘We are suffering’

On the floor, several members described their own compensation as “peanuts” compared with Executive officials and argued the legislature deserves more because representatives serve larger numbers of constituents.

Representative Moima Briggs-Mensah of Bong County said a US$2,000 budget line meant for constituents’ school scholarships often never arrives, and that lawmakers lack the insurance enjoyed by Executive officials.

“We don’t even have Social Security benefits. We are suffering and people in the Executive are making mockery of us,” she said.

Representative Anthony Williams of Maryland County said lawmakers were being “falsely crucified” by the public while benefits such as fuel arrive months late.

“The Executive, especially SOEs are reaping the honey, while we are being falsely crucified,” he said, demanding that state enterprises disclose their gross and net pay and benefits to the House.

The numbers tell a different story

Lawmakers’ complaints sit uneasily with the figures. Senators earn US$8,000 a month each, according to the draft 2026 budget, and a bill to cut that to US$5,000, first introduced by Senator Abraham Darius Dillon in 2020, has stalled for years. In 2025, House members’ basic salary was put at roughly US$8,569 a month, with additional funding for security guards, drivers, cooks and other support staff.

The legislature as a whole has also grown more expensive. The draft 2026 budget gave lawmakers US$51.7 million, up from US$41.3 million in 2024.

That is in a West African nation of about 5.2 million people still rebuilding from 14 years of civil war that ended in 2003, whose national budget crossed US$1 billion for the first time this year. About half the population lives below the poverty line.

Meanwhile, front-line public servants struggle to get paid at all. Teachers’ U.S.-dollar pay has gone unpaid since October 2025, and nurses are demanding a monthly minimum of US$500.

A chamber in revolt

Tuesday’s vote follows weeks of turmoil inside the House over lawmakers’ own money. More than 40 members boycotted the legislature’s reopening session on October 9 in protest over unpaid benefits and allowances, including constituency visits, district projects, fuel and medical allowances. Calling themselves “Reformists,” they accused the chamber’s leadership of withholding benefits and legislative support funds.

The Senate faces its own scrutiny. A proposal from its Committee on Rules, Order and Administration, reported by FrontPageAfrica, seeks US$792,552 in the 2027 budget to raise salaries for 224 Senate staff, with some increases as high as 71 percent. The Senate has disputed the reporting and demanded a retraction; FrontPageAfrica stands by its story.

Two letters, two tones

The review was triggered by letters from two lawmakers who framed the problem very differently from their colleagues on the floor.

Representative Sumo Kollie Mulbah of Montserrado County asked the House to hold up the national budget until the Finance Ministry reports all salaries and benefits above US$5,000 a month for ministers, directors, county governors and commissioners. The central bank deputy governor’s testimony would place her nearly three times above that threshold.

Mulbah singled out housing allowances, fuel and phone-credit coupons, and overseas medical treatment on top of health insurance.

“While these elite benefits are sustained, critical national priorities like the increment of the minimum wage are continuously set aside,” he wrote.

Representative Musa Hassan Bility of Nimba County called for a special committee to review salaries, allowances, wasteful spending, duty-free privileges and tax exemptions across all branches of government, and insisted the legislature go first.

“We cannot continue to demand sacrifices from ordinary Liberians while protecting our own excessive privileges,” Bility wrote. “This must not be another selective exercise intended to embarrass particular officials for public applause.”

What to watch

The two-week deadline lands as the Executive prepares to send the 2027 budget to the legislature by October 31. The government projects total spending will fall to US$1.02 billion next year, meaning any gains for one group of officials will likely come at someone else’s expense.

The test is whether the committees follow Bility’s call to start with the legislature, or whether the review becomes, as he warned, a selective exercise aimed at the Executive. Liberians have heard promises of pay cuts before. A proposal to cut senators’ pay to US$5,000 has been on the table for six years without passing.

A Liberian judge convicted a former national security aide of statutory rape and kidnapping but cleared him of gang rape. Four days later, his lawyers filed a motion arguing that the two halves of the ruling cannot both stand.

By Rodney D. Sieh

MONROVIA — When Judge Wesseh Alphonsus Wesseh Sr. delivered his verdict on Friday, October 23, he framed the case around three questions: whether the evidence supported a conviction for gang rape, for statutory rape, and for kidnapping. He answered no to the first and yes to the other two.

That split is now the battleground. On Tuesday, October 27, at 11:12 a.m., lawyers for Peter Bon Jallah, 63, a former special assistant to the director of Liberia’s National Security Agency (NSA), filed a motion for a new trial at Criminal Court “E” in Monrovia. The filing, received by Acting Clerk of Court Abraham Richards, asks the judge to set aside his own verdict.

The motion is the first formal test of a ruling that, by the court’s own record, states its conclusions on each charge without detailing how it weighed every witness and exhibit. That gap is what the defense is trying to exploit.

What the court decided

Jallah was arrested on January 7, 2026, after the mother of a 16-year-old boy complained to the police Women and Children Protection Section. The boy did paid chores at Jallah’s home.

A grand jury indicted Jallah and two unidentified men in February on charges of gang rape, statutory rape and kidnapping. The indictment alleged abuse at Jallah’s home on November 29 and December 24, 2025. It also alleged that on January 1, 2026, Jallah lured the boy with an offer of football boots, drove him to a building off Camp Johnson Road in central Monrovia, and held him there for three days while he and two other men abused him.

The two other men were never brought before the court. Jallah, who has denied all the allegations, chose to be tried by a judge rather than a jury.

The court acquitted him of gang rape, finding the prosecution’s evidence insufficient. It convicted him of statutory rape and kidnapping. Jallah was remanded to Monrovia Central Prison pending a pre-sentence report from the Ministry of Justice’s Bureau of Probation Services. No sentence has been imposed.

The prosecution’s case

According to the written verdict, the prosecution called 13 regular witnesses and six rebuttal witnesses. The defense called eight witnesses, including Jallah, plus three subpoenaed witnesses from the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, the mobile operator Orange Liberia and the John F. Kennedy Medical Center.

The state’s strongest scientific evidence came from Pascal Bavugirije of the Rwanda Forensic Institute, which analyzed exhibits after Liberia sent them abroad. He testified that DNA profiles from four clothing exhibits matched Jallah’s reference sample. Material collected from the alleged scene produced a mixed profile from unknown people that matched neither Jallah nor the boy.

The boy testified in August that he was assaulted three times, and the court admitted his police statement over defense objections. Investigators also told the court that phone records placed Jallah near one of the alleged scenes, contradicting his account that he had no contact with the boy.

The defense’s four arguments

The motion, signed by Counsellor G. Wiefueh Alfred Sayeh of the Law Offices of Sayeh & Sayeh, makes four main claims.

1. The kidnapping conviction contradicts the gang rape acquittal. The defense argues that the kidnapping charge rests on the alleged three-day confinement off Camp Johnson Road, the same episode at the heart of the gang rape charge. If the court found too little evidence that the gang rape happened there, the motion says, it cannot find that the boy was held there. It describes the conviction as “contrary to weight of the evidence.”

2. The court lacked jurisdiction over kidnapping. Criminal Court “E” is Liberia’s specialized court for sexual offenses. The motion argues it has no jurisdiction over kidnapping as a separate crime. This is a purely legal question, and if the judge or a higher court agrees, it could void that conviction regardless of the evidence.

3. Penetration was never proven. Under Liberia’s rape statute, penetration is an essential element. The defense points to three pieces of testimony:

* A JFK Medical Center doctor, called by the defense, testified that an examination under anesthesia shortly after the boy’s January rescue found no evidence of trauma. The hospital’s operative record lists the post-procedure diagnosis as “normal findings.” The motion says the prosecution offered no rebuttal.

* The Rwandan forensic examiner testified that DNA analysis cannot establish guilt or innocence and that his report did not show whether penetration occurred.

* A nurse examiner from the hospital’s One Stop Center for survivors of sexual violence, a prosecution witness, testified that she could not say the boy was not raped, adding that she was there only to report what she saw. The defense argues that statement does not prove rape and creates doubt that must favor the accused.

The motion goes further, accusing the judge of attributing the words “penetration” and “blunt object” to the nurse’s testimony when, it says, no witness used them.

1. The defendant did not get a fair trial. The motion alleges the judge remarked in open court that the prosecution was “asking weak questions.” It also says that after reviewing the defense’s Orange phone records, the judge on his own initiative subpoenaed Jallah’s records from a second carrier, Lonestar Cell MTN, over a defense objection that the court could not introduce evidence on the state’s behalf.

How strong are the arguments?

Each claim faces hurdles, and none has yet been tested by the prosecution’s response.

The medical findings do not settle the question on their own. Forensic medicine broadly recognizes that the absence of physical injury does not rule out sexual assault, particularly when an examination comes days after an alleged act. The prosecution can also point to the DNA findings and the boy’s testimony. A judge sitting without a jury is entitled to weigh credible testimony against an inconclusive medical record.

The kidnapping argument may be harder to dismiss. The acquittal on gang rape could reflect doubt about the two unidentified men rather than about the alleged confinement itself. Whether that distinction holds depends on reasoning the published verdict does not spell out.

The fair-trial complaint about the phone subpoena raises a recognized principle: a judge in an adversarial system is not supposed to build the prosecution’s case. How much weight the court gave those records is not clear from the verdict.

What happens next

Judge Wesseh must rule on the motion. If he denies it, the case moves to sentencing once the probation report arrives. The defense has already said it will appeal to the Supreme Court of Liberia, and the arguments in this motion offer a preview of that appeal.

The case has been closely watched in Liberia because of Jallah’s position close to the head of the country’s main intelligence agency, and because it tests how the courts handle sexual violence against children. It has already passed through two courtrooms, a failed prosecution bid to move the trial out of Monrovia, and a change of judge.

The Ministry of Justice, which prosecuted the case, had not filed a response to the motion as of Tuesday.

A coalition of civil society groups says signing long-term contracts under Liberia’s 2000 mining law would lock in the weak oversight, lost revenue and pollution that have marked the sector for decades.

MONROVIA, Liberia — A coalition of civil society organizations in Liberia has called on the government to stop signing and ratifying new long-term mining contracts until the West African nation replaces its 26-year-old mining law.

The CSO Consortium on Minerals, Mining, and Inclusive Sustainable Development made the appeal on Monday, October 26, at a press conference in the capital. It urged President Joseph Nyuma Boakai and the national legislature to impose a moratorium on new Mineral Development Agreements (MDAs) — the contracts, typically lasting 25 years or more, that set the terms under which large mining companies operate and that carry the force of law once lawmakers ratify them.

“We strongly believe that entering into new or additional long-term mineral development agreements under an outdated legal framework risk perpetuating existing governance weaknesses,” the coalition said.

Its members include the Center for Transparency and Accountability in Liberia, Integrity Watch Liberia, the Sustainable Development Institute, Medica Liberia and ActionAid Liberia, among others.

Wealth that has not reached communities

Mining is central to Liberia’s economy. It accounts for about a fifth of gross domestic product and dominates exports, according to a March 2026 assessment by the Washington-based research group Forest Trends. Iron ore and gold are the main products.

Yet the coalition said decades of extraction have not delivered matching jobs, public services or development for the communities that host mines. It blamed weak enforcement, corruption, the export of unprocessed ore, poor transparency, environmental damage and the exclusion of local people from decisions.

The Forest Trends report reached similar conclusions. It found the government may be losing millions of dollars a year in uncollected mining revenue. Mining companies paid just over $844 million to the state between 2007 and 2023, according to figures from the Liberia Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (LEITI), the national arm of a global revenue-disclosure standard. Mining licenses now overlap more than two million hectares of forest in a country that holds about half of what remains of the Upper Guinean rainforest biodiversity hotspot.

A year of illegal mining and license violations

The call follows a year in which government inspectors repeatedly found companies mining outside the limits of their permits, or with no permit at all.

Liberia issues several tiers of mining license. Class C permits are reserved for Liberian citizens and allow only hand tools. Class B permits cover small commercial operations. Large industrial projects operate under MDAs.

In March, a committee of the House of Representatives suspended Hurine Mining Company in central Bong County after investigators found it had exceeded the limits of its Class B license.

In April, the Ministry of Mines and Energy closed JinXin Mining Company in Rivercess County for mining without a valid license on ground licensed to another firm. The ministry said JinXin had ignored an order in January to stop. Days later it shut Alex Gee Group of Companies in Grand Gedeh County, whose license had lapsed. Officers also dismantled an unlicensed site whose alleged Chinese operators fled before they arrived.

In June, officials in Gbarpolu County seized excavators working a Class C claim, where heavy machinery is banned. They also found Chinese nationals mining under another company’s license, outside its approved boundaries.

Mines and Energy Minister R. Matenokay Tingban has acknowledged that many small commercial license holders fail to account for the minerals they extract.

The problems are not new. In 2024, the then-minister sought legal advice on revoking licenses issued since 2018, citing letters from the presidency directing that license applications be routed through the Office of the President. In 2025, a ministry investigation found that two companies, Hamak Mining and its successor 79 Resources, had misrepresented their license status and owed the government more than $400,000 in fees.

Big miners under scrutiny

Concerns extend to the largest operators. An investigation by The Associated Press and The Gecko Project published this year found that Bea Mountain Mining Corporation, Liberia’s biggest gold producer, repeatedly leaked cyanide, arsenic and copper at levels the country’s Environmental Protection Agency said exceeded legal limits.

The investigation found the company failed to report a 2022 spill on time and had earlier blocked government inspectors from its laboratory. Bea Mountain exported more than $576 million worth of gold between July 2021 and December 2022.

Why the coalition wants a pause now

Liberia’s Minerals and Mining Law was enacted in 2000, before the country’s 14-year civil war had fully ended. Lawmakers opened public hearings on amendments in July. At those hearings, the Liberia Chamber of Mines, an industry body, warned that changes limited to small commercial licenses would not fix the sector’s deeper problems. It called for a full overhaul covering taxation, licensing, environmental protection and strategic minerals such as lithium, cobalt and rare earths.

In January, the legislature ratified an amendment to the contract of steelmaker ArcelorMittal, Liberia’s largest iron ore producer, extending it to 2050 with an option to renew for 25 more years. Some senators praised the deal as a model for renegotiating other contracts. Another senator abstained, citing the company’s record of unmet commitments to host communities.

For the coalition, that timeline is the core of the argument. Contracts signed under a law that government, industry and activists all describe as outdated will outlast any reform that follows.

What the activists want in a new law

The coalition drew up its proposals at a meeting with mining-affected communities on October 1 and refined them at an October 21 roundtable with government agencies, donors and companies. Its 10 recommendations include:

* Binding transparency rules for licensing, contracts and revenue, including public disclosure of who ultimately owns mining companies;

* Clear penalties for violations by companies and by officials, and legal remedies for affected communities;

* Enforceable benefit-sharing for communities, building on a 2018 land rights law;

* Requirements to process more ore locally and to prioritize Liberian workers and suppliers;

* Binding obligations for mine closure and land restoration;

* Measures to protect women, young people and people with disabilities, including against sexual exploitation and abuse in mining areas; and

* Tighter regulation of small-scale mining, including sand and quarry operations.

The coalition praised the Boakai government’s stated commitment to reform but said the new law “must go beyond updating existing provisions.”

The Ministry of Mines and Energy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MONROVIA – A prominent Liberian lawyer and leading figure in the Grebo community has called for calm and a swift investigation into the death of Samuel Gekor, a young Grebo man found dead on a cassava farm near Zwedru, the capital of southeastern Grand Gedeh County.

Gekor’s body was discovered in the Kanneh area of Electoral District Two after he had been missing for three days. The circumstances of his disappearance remain unclear.

Counsellor Kunkunyon Wleh Teh expressed deep sadness over Gekor’s death and extended condolences to his family and the wider Grebo community, one of Liberia’s major ethnic groups, concentrated largely in the country’s southeast.

Teh, a former student of Bishop Juwel High School in Zwedru, said he has spoken with Gekor’s family to offer his condolences and support.

While acknowledging the community’s grief, fear and frustration, and its legitimate demand for answers, Teh urged residents to remain calm, peaceful and law-abiding as the search for justice continues.

He called on the Liberia National Police and the Ministry of Justice to speed up the investigation, establish the facts surrounding the disappearance and death, and ensure that anyone found responsible is held accountable under the law. The family and the public, he said, deserve timely updates, transparency and credible answers.

“Every Liberian deserves the right to life, safety, and dignity, irrespective of tribe, county, or social standing. No family should be left without answers when a loved one dies under troubling circumstances,” Teh said.

He said the community’s responsibility at this moment is to stand with the family, promote peace and demand justice through lawful means, cautioning against letting grief and anger turn into actions that could endanger lives or deepen divisions.

“Justice must be pursued, truth must prevail, and peace must be preserved,” he said.

MONROVIA – President Joseph Nyuma Boakai will open a two-day international mining and energy conference on Wednesday, as Liberia steps up efforts to attract foreign investment into the natural-resource sectors that underpin its economy.

The Liberia International Mining and Energy Conference and Expo (LIMEC 2026) runs October 28–29 at the Farmington Hotel in Margibi County, near Roberts International Airport outside Monrovia. Government officials, international investors, mining executives, energy developers and development partners are expected to attend.

Boakai is scheduled to deliver the keynote address, setting out his government’s plans for drawing investment and promoting responsible development of the country’s mineral resources.

Mining, chiefly iron ore and gold, is one of the West African nation’s main sources of export earnings, while chronic power shortages remain a major obstacle to industrial growth.

Held under the theme “Transforming Liberia’s Economy: Driving Development Through Sustainable Mining and Energy Investments,” the conference will feature panel discussions, presentations and exhibitions on investment opportunities in mineral exploration, production, renewable energy and related infrastructure.

Amara Kamara, president of the Liberia Chamber of Mines, said the gathering offers Liberia a chance to deepen ties with international investors, showcase its resources and build partnerships that could create jobs and drive growth.

He said the event’s value should go beyond investment promotion to opening doors for Liberian businesses, increasing local participation in the mining industry and ensuring that communities benefit from investments.

Kamara credited Mines and Energy Minister R. Matenokay Tingban and his ministry for coordinating with the Chamber of Mines and AME Trade Ltd., the international organizer, to stage the event.

Sponsors include Avesoro Resources, Mantrac Group, Huawei, CORICA Mining Services, Mansa Resources, Sarmin Metals, Westcrest Liberia, AGL Africa Global Logistics, the Liberia Electricity Corporation (LEC), the Liberia Petroleum Regulatory Authority (LPRA) and WBHO.