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Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia are stories of hope

Wednesday February 21 2018
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Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia represent attempts at post-war reconstruction and nation building that are not led by the victorious rebel general or movement. FOTOSEARCH

By Charles Onyango-Obbo

Liberia’s former president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was last Monday awarded the 2017 Mo Ibrahim prize for Achievement in African Leadership.

She is the fifth winner of the $5 million prize, the world’s most lucrative, since it was first awarded in 2007 to Mozambique’s former president Joaquim Chissano. The prize has actually had more non-winners, than winners. It hasn’t been awarded six times, because there were no worthy candidates.

Sirleaf has been on a democratic roll of sorts. In late January she handed over power to former football star George Weah. There were cheers because in Africa, you still cannot take it for granted that a leader will serve their constitutional two or three terms and ride off into the sunset when the departure time arrives.

As we have seen all around us in East Africa and other parts of this fair continent, the more common thing is that they will change constitutions and cling on.

Sirleaf also didn’t bother to steal the election for her party’s candidate Joseph Boakai, both in the first and second rounds, although that seems to be partly because she didn’t like him.

Having made history as the first elected female head of state in Africa, she kept a clean sheet in her departure.

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But the bigger story about Liberia has often been missed, because of either the colourful and history-making cast of characters who have led it since the end of its brutal civil war in 1996.

The war criminal Charles Taylor, though had led the main rebel army in the war, didn’t win an outright victory. He was beaten to the punch by the allegedly cannibal Prince Johnson.

Taylor had to wait for some months to win power in UN-organised elections a year later. He resigned in August 2003, and was carted off to The Hague to face war crimes charges.

The difference

Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia, on the east side of the continent, therefore represent attempts at post-war reconstruction and nation building that are not led by the victorious rebel general or movement.

They are cases where another party — the UN, the regional bloc ECOWAS in West Africa, or AMISOM in Somalia — steps in to help share the political spoils, or actively manage the transition.

Because they don’t always result into a strongman or woman rising to the top, and lacking the extensive power and struggle legitimacy to shake up things dramatically as the National Resistance Movement did in Uganda, or the Rwanda Patriotic Front in Kigali, they don’t seem to excite journalists or scholars as much.

But perhaps it is time to pay greater attention.

While these countries have not always achieved the dramatic economic and social changes the winner-take-all liberators have, it seems they produce better democratic outcomes.

Their leaders and ruling parties observe the rule of law more; steal elections less; imprison or exile fewer political opponents; and amend constitutions less.

They have, as a result, less radicalised internal politics, and seem to have set out on a surer path to stability some years down the road.

Now we wait to see if a Liberia or Sierra Leone achieves economic take-off, or one of Africa’s more liberation party-ruled countries goes up in smoke, first. The waiting is not going to be long.

Charles Onyango-Obbo is publisher of Africapedia.com and explainer site Roguechiefs.com. Twitter@cobbo3

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