Monrovia – A lecturer at the University of Liberia has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree by the Commonwealth University’s London Graduate School for his services in the field of economics.
The lecturer George Gould received the honorary degree at an elaborate ceremony in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), which preceded the Dubai Leadership Summit held between July 17 and 19 under the theme “Fifteen Effective Strategies to Make Your Next 10 Years Count in All-Round”.
The school said it awarded him due to his “exceptionally meritorious contributions as a lecturer specializing in economics and your scholarly publication on the subject”.
Mr. Gould, the school said, was selected from a “rigorous” process initiated by its alumni and vetted by its alumni peer review and finalized by its academic council.
Following his arrival back in Liberia over the weekend, Dr. Gould told FrontPage Africa that he would use his degree to increase visibility and participation in macroeconomic debates and research on the national and global scene and further contribute to capacity building and human resource development especially in the University of Liberia. He said he would seek to provide competency-based economic advisory consultancy at all levels in various institutions, national and international organizations and promote the idea of teamwork and leadership in Liberia and the developing world. He added that he would also increase advocacy for greater nationalism and self-identity among Liberians, Africans and the developing world.
Dr. Gould, a deputy head of the Financial Sector Development department at the Central Bank of Liberia (CBL), is the author of several journal publication including “Capital Flight from Liberia: Extent and Mitigation Recommendations” and author of the book “Capital Flight from Sub-Sahara Africa: Extent and Mitigations (English and French). He has written a number of other publications on private public partnership (PPP) and Infrastructure Development for Africa. He has over 15 years of experience in the field of economics.
In 2010 Dr. Gould was awarded UNDP International Poverty Center Award for Knowledge and Wisdom Sharing. He is a fellow and board member with the Global Academy for Finance and Management (GAFM), USA an internationally acclaimed certification scheme for financial sector and management professionals. And he is also member of the World Economic Association, The Global Microfinance Association, African Economic Research Consortium and Association of Certified Chartered Economists.
Additionally, in the early 1990s, Dr. Gould organized the Liberia Wrestling Federation to get youths from participating in conflict during Liberia civil war (1989-2003). The Federation still provides alternatives for young people in Liberia, and this year Liberia for the first time qualified to participate in the World Wrestling Championship under the auspice of United World Wrestling. The country hopes to qualify for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games.
In a recent interview with FrontPage Africa, Dr. Gould gave his opinion on much heralded, combined (nearly) US$1 billion loan agreements between Liberia, and Singaporean ETON Financial Private Limited and Burkinabe EBOMAF.
“In the first place, the method about taking loan now is wrong,” said Dr. George Gould in that interview. “You should not borrow external loan. You should borrow internal loan because of exchange rate issues.
“Over a period of time, if you borrow from outside of your economy, the value of your currency will depreciate and the value of the debt will increase and you will never be able to pay. The advisable thing that successful economies do they establish capital markets and then they borrow from those markets in local currency thus the value of the debt is constant and is sustainable over a long period of time,” he added.
Dr. Gould also had a thing or two to say about the Liberian economy and what could be done to sustain it over a long period of time.
“First of all, we have to find out what is going on. Do we have the kind of policy in place to run the economy? Are we implementing them correctly? If we are not implementing them correctly, why are we not? And what can we do to implement them correctly.
“We have integrity institutions all over the place. How functional are they for violators or rules and regulations? If you want to invest in the economy, how open is it? How smooth is it? How transparent are our processes?” He asked rhetorically.
“We must be able to say we must change our ideas, change our behaviors or attitude.
“The unfortunate thing about that, the leadership and government have not been moving in that direction.
“A political will backed by a strong economic drive can gain success and development for a country but unfortunately, politics is more or less eventful. Most of the times, they are making decisions that are politically driven, not economically driven. Once we don’t do that, we’d continue to see ourselves fluctuating.