Liberia will celebrate its independence anniversary next week with something of a light show when Monrovia’s street lights are turned on for the first time in 15 years, officials said on Wednesday.
Officials made the announcement to delegates at a United States-backed investment conference, hoping to underline progress since the election of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in November.
The resource-rich West African state — pillaged by corruption and civil war for over two decades — is looking to rebuild its economy and infrastructure under the government of Johnson-Sirleaf following last year’s democratic elections.
”Light will be restored to the main streets of Monrovia on July 26, to mark the nation’s independence anniversary,” the economic adviser to the president, Richard Tolbert, told delegates at the Leon H Sullivan Summit in the Nigerian capital, Abuja.
Tolbert, who is also chairperson of the National Investment Commission, said reconstruction programmes offered abundant investment opportunities in Liberia.
”Liberia is indeed a nation in rebirth. People of Liberia have shown tremendous resilience and intelligence in electing Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf as president of Liberia. They realised that we need a good mother, with motherly care,” he said.
”We hope to qualify for debt forgiveness within two or three years. I do not see any major political instability in Liberia on the horizon.
”Our doors are open to business, but it will not be business as usual,” he said, in a veiled reference to corruption under previous governments.
The four-day conference, which opened on Monday, brings together around 600 political and business leaders, mostly Afro-Americans and West Indians, to focus attention on Africa’s economic and social development.
Leon H Sullivan was an African American who devoted his life to the economic, political and social development of the poor in America and Africa. He died in 2001.
Previous summits were held in Ivory Coast, Gabon, Senegal, Zimbabwe, Ghana and Nigeria. — Sapa-AFP