Category Archives: Blogs

Fazzole – The Next Big Deal

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Written by <Diamondonlinelib>

The new generation of musicians in Liberia are many; every now and then there is a new musician coming to the scene.

It is clear that new generational music has come to stay, yet it is the hope of most Liberians that its artists focus on conveying good messages and promoting the culture of Liberia and one of the people who stand out to push this to the full whack of his career is Fazzole.

Fazzole is a Liberian artist who have making a wave in South Africa since his introduction to the music scene. Daniel Dennis who’s professionally known as Fazzole is a 26 years old rapper who’s prowess in the Trap genre, Afro-pop, Jazz and subconscious music.

Music everywhere in the world is business and as a promising artist, you got to venture into business in order to boost your craft and this is one of the fascinating things about the artist; Like Jay-z runs Tidal and Rock-Fella, Fazzole is an entrepreneur and owner of a 50k stream platforms known as Lokogang, which was named after his Genesis Mix-tape. Years in years out the artist has worked on a couple of songs including, “Night Thing”, “No Mistakes” that dominated airwaves in South Africa.

Make sure you follow Fazzole on all social media platforms for more information.

Liberia-made Products Pitching Contest to be Held in Monrovia

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Written by<>

The Liberia Chamber of Commerce and the Ezzat N. Eid Foundation have organized a contest to attract products made in Liberia.

On Monday, August 27 entrepreneurs will be invited to pitch their products at a pitching contest and fundraising event in Monrovia. Friday, August 24 is the deadline for entrepreneurs to apply to get their local products selected.

Winning entrepreneurs will get the opportunity to showcase their Liberia-made products at the African Growth and Opportunity Act Expo and Trade Fair scheduled for September 25-30 in New York.

The organizers note that between 10 to 15 companies will win an opportunity to attend the AGOA Expo and Trade Fair in the U.S.

AGOA is a law passed in the U.S. to increase trade between the U.S. and participating African countries. The law provides duty-free preferences for thousands of products manufactured and processed throughout the region. It was initially signed into law in 2000 for 15 years and then it was later extended in 2015 for 10 additional years.

The festival is a cultural and business platform to celebrate U.S.-Africa cooperation, strengthen bilateral trade relations, and promote the AGOA key export products and investment opportunities. Goods such as apparel, textiles, footwear, beverages and food, skin and leather products prepared in Africa, cosmetics and essential oils, jewelry, and African music are usually on display at the festival.

The festival is also a unique platform for American companies to expand their businesses or introduce new products and services in the 40 African countries eligible with direct access to authorities and business leaders.

A wide variety of activities are organized periodically by AGOA in several cities in the U.S. aimed at boosting African exports and take advantage of the organization’s legislation with new partnerships and joint ventures.

Featured photo by Lloyd Massah

The Game Changer for Young Liberian Women

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Written by <>

January 16, 2006 was an unprecedented victory that altered the status quo for women in Liberia. It wasn’t only shocking that a woman rose to power in one of the world’s most patriarchal nations, it was also the extraordinary role that women leaders played in ending the civil war. President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s victory meant an awakening to women’s role in society and a new dawn for Liberian women. Ellen, the most powerful person in Liberia, was evidence of what happens when women recognize their inherent potential and see themselves as a part of the solution.

I was 12-years-old when Ellen won, but that event stirred up sentiments about what would happen if more women ran for public offices. I hoped to see more replicas of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. But to my dismay, women accounted for only 10.2 percent of successful candidates in the 2011 elections, and between 2005 to 2015, only 11.9 percent won.

My prayers were answered when Cornelia Kruah-Togba announced her candidacy for representative in Montserrado’s 13th district. I do not know Cornelia personally, but the many people who talk about her always confirm that she is a natural leader, exceptionally knowledgeable, hardworking, and compassionate.

In our pro-poor times, one cannot deny that we desperately need leaders with expertise in governmental affairs – leaders who understand the fragility of our state and the pressing economic issues we face. In the last five years, Cornelia has developed that expertise at the highest level: she served as program assistant within the President’s Delivery Unit at the Ministry of State for Presidential Affairs, executive assistant to the minister of public works, and chief of staff to the minister of education. In all these positions, she served with distinction and was recognized and recently awarded the Star of Africa by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Cornelia also has experiences outside of government, a critical trait given that public service increasingly cuts across diverse sectors. She runs recreational programs that foster girls education and youth empowerment. Her organization, Young Women’s Empowerment Network, is an NGO that aims to create a community of talented women leaders for professional excellence in high profile careers in Liberia. Every two years, YOWENET recruits 10 young women between the ages of 17-30 and empowers them to implement community service projects across Liberia. These projects are implemented by teams that include both male and female youth, enforcing a sense of gender equality.

Although the fact that Cornelia is a young woman may limit the support she receives, she is, however, the most qualified candidate in the district. She took advantage of opportunities afforded to her to materialize opportunities for her peers. Not only is she a role model for many women in her community, but Cornelia also provides scholarship and professional development coaching to young people. She has impacted more than 30 students through one-on-one interaction and support, most them residents of the 13th district.

As a young Liberian woman, I know the insurmountable distractions and hurdles that hinder us from reaching our full potential – teenage pregnancy, dropping out of college for financial reasons, forced early marriages, prostitution, and poor education. Nevertheless, Cornelia beat these obstacles and today, by electing her, she can utilize her platform and prioritize women empowerment. This can be done through increasing vocational training opportunities for girls at Monrovia Vocational Training Institute.

After Cornelia, I want to see more women participating in politics, which in turn will influence the next generation of female leaders. To do so, we need to alter the way we socialize young girls because political scientists have attributed the limited female political participation to the environment girls are exposed to.

Socialization around traditional gender roles means girls are taught to be caretaker and mothers while boys are taught to be leaders and achievers. Girls grow up to see political organizations and institutions inherently occupied by men, which enables a system of male-only participation and that leads women to have less interest in pursuing politics. Even after Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, this political socialization is still ingrained Liberia’s politics, ushering in fewer and fewer women into public offices.

Why is this important? In addition to the feminist rhetoric of equality, we must realize that great leadership potentials go unnoticed because, for one, many women are not contesting in politics and two, even if they surpass internal struggles to announce their bids, we prioritize male leaders over them.

While I am very excited about Cornelia’s candidacy, her innovative policy ideas, boundless energy, and what she could mean for women and young people, we need to do more to encourage the political participation of young people and get them into political offices.

While Ellen’s presidency did set the bar for Liberian women, I hope the uniqueness of Cornelia’s candidacy will incite change in our political culture allowing qualified young men and women to serve our country.

How Automation Can Reduce Corruption

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Written by <>

Corruption is a rampant plague across Africa, where officials get away with demanding and accepting bribes without fear of consequences. A culture of acceptance that “this is how it is,” “you have to grease the wheel,” and “everybody does it” perpetuates the problem.

Corruption costs the continent approximately US$148 billion per year — roughly 20 percent of the continent’s combined gross domestic product. Imagine US$140 billion being put to better use every year on anything from health care, education, energy production, infrastructure, agricultural investments, or social safety nets.

Lining the pockets of officials with massive sums of money is a shame, but technology can help reduce corruption through automation.

The International Society of Automation defines automation as “the creation and application of technology to monitor and control the production and delivery of products and services.”

Think about this for a moment: products and services delivered and monitored by technology. Being able to procure government services through automation reduces, if not completely eliminates, the interaction between a constituent and a corrupt official who might otherwise demand a bribe. With fewer human interactions comes fewer opportunities for corruption.

For example, paying property taxes in the United States rarely requires human interaction. The property owner simply looks up the property online, finds out how much tax is owed, and then submits payment. There’s no middleman who could possibly exert control over whether or not the tax is applied. There’s no person with the authority to reduce the amount due in exchange for a “fee.” It’s just a simple, transparent process handled automatically by software.

By minimizing interactions between the service provider and the end user through automation, you’ll have fewer opportunities for collusion. In addition, automation can create an electronic audit trail for each transaction. This type of monitoring can highlight discrepancies and flag suspicious transactions. Coupled with stronger penalties and actual enforcement, fear of detection could be a deterrent to corruption.

The Wilson Center reports that Kenya implemented several technologies to reduce corruption in the public sector in 2015 including:

  • An online portal for registering complaints and reporting corruption
  • Publication of the complaints received and the resulting actions taken
  • An electronic payments system for accepting legitimate payments for government services
  • E-government services
  • eProcurement systems for more efficient and transparent government contracts and licensing
  • Digital public records
  • An Integrated Financial Management Information System across Kenyan government agencies

Automation systems such as Kenya’s provide several benefits in the fight against corruption. For example, with uniform and transparent processes, citizens understand how it’s supposed to work, making them less vulnerable to corrupt officials offering an alternate method. Citizens may not even have to interact with a human in the first place, making corruption even less likely.

Another creative automation solution that helps reduce corruption is the Trade Route Incident Mapping System in Nigeria. Using a mobile phone, traders and truckers stuck at legitimate or fake border checkpoints where corrupt officials demand non-tariff payments in order to cross can instantly report the behavior.

An evaluation of TRIMS reported in the Nigerian Journal of Rural Society revealed that 60.7 percent of males and 39.3 percent of females encountered incidents of non-tariff barriers, with the largest offender being the Nigerian police (67.8 percent of all incidents). Anecdotal reports from truckers have illustrated that TRIMS has had a deterrent effect. The mere mention of TRIMS has resulted in some being let through without further harassment.

Automating tax collection and payments, digitizing public services, and providing portals and apps for whistleblowing are but a few examples of how automation can reduce corruption. These solutions fight corruption in several ways by:

  • Reducing human interactions
  • Creating uniform processes
  • Adding transparency
  • Creating audit trails and alerts
  • Providing a means for reporting — and publicizing — corrupt acts
  • Acting as a deterrent
  • De-normalizing the corruption culture

That said, there may be a few challenges to achieving automation. Countries where state actors have their hands in the pot and tightly control communication networks will resist automation as a solution to a problem that benefits them.

Moving on to countries that truly want to solve their corruption problems, automation requires both access to technology and technical and reading literacy. For example, a kiosk may provide citizens with a human-free way to apply for a permit or license, but if those citizens cannot operate a touch screen or read instructions, automation cannot help them directly. However, that’s a short-term issue as automation has the potential to shift the collective mindset from “this is how it is” (and, thus, corruption runs rampant) to “this is wrong” (and, thus, corruption is ruthlessly prosecuted and ultimately reduced).

With automation working to reduce corruption in Africa, the billions of dollars lost to corruption each year can be better spent to improve living conditions, literacy rates, education, health care, and other problems African countries face today.

Liberia’s president-elect, George Weah, has expressed his willingness to fight corruption. He has said that the everyday taking from people will not be tolerated and that “Persons looking to cheat the Liberian people through the menace of corruption will have no place in my administration.“ That’s a good start, but it’s only words at this point. Weah has a powerful tool that can help in this regard: automation. His administration could take advantage of technology to streamline government services and reduce corruption at the same time. With vision and technology, Weah has the opportunity to usher in a new era for the Liberian people.

Photo by Sergey Zolkin on Unsplash

Substance Over Size: RIA’s New Terminal Eyes Tourism Potential

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Written by < Joaquin M. Sendolo>

The euphoria that greeted news about building a modern passenger terminal at the Roberts International Airport (RIA) took a slump when viewers saw that the building was not as big as they anticipated.

In March of this year, the Daily Observer interacted with some departing Liberians, who said that considering the length of the airport, it was better to have a terminal building bigger and lengthier than what is being erected.

In response to this concerns, Liberia Airport Authority (LAA) Managing Director, Wil Bako Freeman, told the Daily Observer earlier this month that the size of the terminal was determined by the flow of passengers and flights coming into the country.

Citing Ghana’s example, which many Liberians reference in terms of development, Freeman said, “that country has about 20 million people, with four million people living in Accra, the capital, alone.” Complementing Mr. Freeman’s estimates, Ghana’s 2016 population statistics record well over 28 million people that year.

In that context, he said, there is a high concentration of passengers, which attracts flights in that country as compared to Liberia that has only 4 million people, many of whom are not travelers.

Wil Bako Freeman, MD, Liberia Airport Authority

Freeman agreed that countries with larger passenger terminals enjoy such facilities “because of the frequent flow of passengers, due to things [about the country] that attract them.  This, in turn, promotes the flow of revenue, which facilitates the erection of those larger terminals.”

Although the newly erected terminal at the RIA is considerably smaller in size as compared to the Kotoka International Airport in Ghana, or the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Kenya, the Project Manager for the terminal construction, Anthony P. Togba, II, says that the new terminal will contain all the characteristics of a contemporary modern terminal.  There will be escalators, shopping centers, restaurants and well maintained restrooms, offices for state security and airport workers as well as boarding and exit gates for passengers, he said.

Still justifying the size of the terminal, Mr. Freeman said Liberia is strategically located in West Africa, which is close to North and South America where a bulk of the people leaving from the country go in search of other opportunities.

Nevertheless, he said, the passenger demography remains so scanty that it cannot encourage the flow of more flights to Liberia.

While some valuable activities, such as cargo management, have led to improvement in services at the airport, Mr. Freeman said Liberia has to do more to attract visitors, especially tourists.

He said when tourism sites like Kpatawee Waterfall in Bong County, the Lake Piso in Grand Cape Mount and other beautiful natural landscapes in the country are developed to attract tourists, it is highly likely that more passengers will flow into the country, something which will determine the need to expand the terminal.

Freeman assured that in six months, another facelift is coming to RIA, but it is also imperative on the government and the people to do their part so that tourists will see the need to visit Liberia in order to boost the flow of in-bound flights.

He frowned on the negative public attitude of many Liberians, referencing the stealing of solar lamps that provided electricity along the road leading to Unification Town (Smell No Taste).

“Apart from the [immediate] vicinity of the airport where you find lights during the night hours, all other areas extending beyond are in darkness.  How can people be attracted when they visit here?” he asked.

He also called on government and business people to begin investing in accommodation and hospitality industries, as the LAA is contemplating on the same venture to make RIA an airport city.

Who is Wil Bako Freeman?

Mr. Freeman received his high school education at the erstwhile St. Patrick High School in Monrovia. He then enrolled in the University of Minnesota in the U.S. where he earned his Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Economics, and later enrolled at the Rutgers University in New Jersey where he obtained his Master of Business Administration (MBA).

He is a Commissioned Bank Examiner from the Federal Reserve System in the U.S. and has specialized in Banking Supervision and Market Risk Management for nine years with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Freeman obtained a Certificate in Airport Executive Leadership Program from the Airport Council International (ACI)/Aviation Management Institute at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia, University in Canada.

He worked as a Senior Advisor to the Minister of Commerce and Industry (RL) from October 2006 to September 2007.

Prior to taking over the Liberia Airport Authority in 2015 as managing director, Freeman served as director for operations and Regional Integration as well as Director of Corporate Services at the West African Monetary Institute (WAMI). He also served the Liberia Better Business Forum (LBBF) of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the World Bank Group.

Harnessing the Potential of Local Philanthropy in Liberia

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Written by <>

Liberia has relied heavily on foreign aid for decades. Over the last two years, many international NGOs involved in community development have been leaving the country, some due to global economic crisis, others due to completing their mission. As most African leaders and development experts have been calling for a shift from international aid, there’s no better time to encourage local philanthropy.

But the question is, how do we harness the potential of local philanthropy in a way that complements the government efforts in driving sustainable development.

If you haven’t noticed, there is a rise in local giving among Liberians. This is a welcoming development, especially in a time of economic crisis and deepening poverty, the need for giving is critical more than ever before.

From corporations and companies giving through their corporate social responsibility, to wealthy adults and young Liberians who are desperate to change the status quo, it almost feels like a competition. This competition is especially intense between Rotary and Lions Clubs in Liberia, and birth month associations (a recent trend in Liberia) – raising thousands of dollars to undertake projects in communities, hospitals, clinics, and schools.

Quite recently, Abraham Keita, the 2015 International Children’s Peace Prize winner from Liberia, along with several other young Liberians, embarked on a fundraising campaign where they raised over US$1,000 in less than a week to support orphans in Liberia by shining shoes along the main streets of Monrovia in return for a fee.

Last year, SMART Liberia, a youth-led social venture that develops innovative, youth-driven solutions to empower young Liberians to be change-leaders in their communities and beyond, launched the LIB Giving Challenge where they challenged Liberians at home and abroad to pledge at least US$5 to empower more young Liberians. Through this campaign, they raised over US$5,000.

It is unclear of how much these local philanthropists have contributed to the development of their communities, due to lack of data (a huge challenge in Liberia). Through data, we can truly understand who really needs help, what interventions are more critical, and the impact of our giving on development. When we direct our resources towards critical areas of development, we can accelerate development and hope for a win against poverty.

As it stands, the giving community is disorganized, and this is because people don’t have access to the information they need to give smart. Don’t get me wrong, it is in everyone’s right to give however and to whom or what they want to give. However, giving smart to me means teaching people to fish rather than giving them fish. For our giving to really make a difference, we need to give to causes that empower people to take ownership of their development.

To address this issue, an emerging trend in some developing countries over the last two decades or more has been the shift towards community foundations. Community foundations use local resources and assets to empower civil society organizations. For centuries, they have been part of the culture of philanthropy in the United States and Canada. In the 1980s, community foundations were introduced in the United Kingdom, and most recently in the global south.

According to a Global Philanthropy for Communication report, from 2000 to 2010, the number of community foundations grew by 86 percent with local donors investing in various types of community development initiatives. These development interventions have been shaped by local context, culture and individuals frustrated by failures of their government, failures of traditional development aid, and inspired by the belief that without local resources, leadership, and commitment, there would be no sustainable development.

Community philanthropy organizations have three noticeable characteristics in common. Firstly, though external resources may form part of their funding structure, they facilitate a culture of local giving, especially from ordinary people. Through this model, people get to participate and take ownership of their development by deliberately rebuking the ‘beneficiary’ mentally of traditional development aid.

Secondly, community foundations support local community groups working to address real problems in their communities. These local community development organizations are birthed from the desire to improve their communities, but are often beyond the reach of donors and end up dying from lack of funding.

Finally, through transparent and accountable stewardship, community philanthropy organizations are building trust within and among the communities they serve. They build relationship at the local level with people who have and are willing to give their resources to those who have ideas and are working to solve the most pressing problems in their communities.

The Makutano Community Development Association in Kenya, through community resource mobilization, has constructed dams and wells and developed farmland by empowering residents to drive their own development. It has also driven residents to demand government to play its part.

According to Jenny Hodgson, executive director of the Global Fund for Community Foundations, community philanthropic institutions are highly valuable – not just as a strategy for funding, but because “development outcomes are more lasting when people have invested in their own development.”

In Liberia, the Kids Education Engagement Project has built libraries equipped with computers across the country, trained teachers and empowered vulnerable girls through life skills just in three years. Most of this was made possible through local giving. Imagine what impact KEEP and countless of other local community development organizations could have if we support them with our resources, either directly or through community philanthropy organizations. Moving from foreign aid by amplifying local giving is a step towards gaining true independence and own our development.