Since Liberian President William R. Tolbert was assassinated in 1980 by junior military officers, the country has been in turmoil, with rival armed factions competing for power. During the 14 years before an internationally enforced ceasefire in 2003, over half of Liberia's three million people were displaced by marauding gunmen who raped, killed, pillaged and bombed their way through the country.
Now Richard Tolbert, the Harvard-educated nephew of the former president and the son of an executed Cabinet minister, has the job of attracting foreign investors to help rebuild the economy. He returned to Liberia in January, after 25 years in exile in the United States, where he was an international banker at Merrill Lynch and senior vice-president at Payne Webber and the global financial firm UBS. Shortly after President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf named him as a senior economic advisor and head of the National Investment Commission, AllAfrica's Reed Kramer and Tamela Hultman spent a day traveling with him to the site of a demolished iron-ore complex, where Liberian entrepreneurs, with international partners, are developing several enterprises. Tolbert talked about the challenges he faces.
Your job is persuading investors to come to Liberia. Why would a high-performing, high-earning financial asset manager leave New York for a $69-dollar-a-month job asking people to invest in a ruined country?
I've always wanted to come back. Anyone who knows me well knows that I've never wanted to settle in the United States. I've been there 25 years, and I still have a Liberian passport; I don't have an American passport. In my family, we were raised with a sense of duty to your country. I feel it would be a great dishonor to them for me not to come back. I finally feel that there is good leadership, and I believe that there is tremendous potential for the country.
What do you tell potential investors? What is the argument for investing in Liberia?
The argument is that everything is open for re-doing - complete reconstruction. Obviously, in the last 25 years there has been complete disruption, infrastructure has been destroyed, but for those that are looking for an opportunity, a business opportunity, you can come and get in at ground zero right now. The upside is far, far in excess of the downside. Of course everybody knows about tremendous natural resources, which have hardly been touched. And the human resources are great. With proper management and proper leadership, there is a lot to be done. I'm going to try to make the process smooth for investors by making it easier for them to go through the red tape, which turns off so many foreign investors. But there is tremendous potential here. Tremendous potential.
The National Investment Commission has been working under the transitional government since 2003, but there have been widespread complaints of corruption and incompetence throughout that administration. Do you pretty much have to start from square one?
Absolutely. I've been in already and sat with the staff and talked to them and asked for brochures. The last one they have is 15 years old! So we're going to update the investment guide, information on the tax structure, the general policy framework for foreign investment. I've already told them I want to start listing the sectors of the economy that investors should be looking at and do basic pre-feasibility studies on some of the areas that we want foreign investors to come into. We'll use modern means of communication, particularly the Internet, which is very cost-effective. We'll update things on DVDs. We'll get out there and do road shows, and accompany the president when she's traveling, to tell the world that Liberia is open for business.
Is the Commission's focus on foreign investment exclusively or on a mixture of foreign and domestic investment?
The primary focus is providing a central point for attracting foreign investment, where investors can get information about the country - policies, guidelines, procedures - and then put in their applications for various businesses. That's the central focus, but it's not exclusive. If there are local investors who are trying to put up a major investment and are seeking government incentives, they come to the National Investment Commission.
You've said the lack of infrastructure here is a problem, but also an opportunity, because there is so much to rebuild. Beyond that, what do you see as the greatest challenge Liberia faces in attracting foreign investment?
If there is a perception that we're not unified, as Liberians, it will be very difficult to attract any serious interest in the county. I don't see a potential for the kind of wars we've had, but foreign investment is very wary and does not want to take major political risks. We have got good leadership now, and as long as people feel that we've turned the corner and been able to get away from this ridiculous internecine struggle that we've had for the last 25 years, we'll all benefit. Because I think that there's goodwill out there for the country, and there's tremendous goodwill for the leadership. That can translate into real resources.
After that, longer-term, is of course educating people, so that we have a skilled, educated workforce that can contribute and also that understands its rights. I think education is the long-term key.
We've heard a lot of Liberians worry about a 'lost generation', about the loss of cultural values, about the loss of the work ethic during the years of conflict. Do potential investors have to worry about these as labor-force issues?
There has been a loss of some fundamental values, obviously. It's very important to bring back the basic values of respect and discipline. Schools and other civic institutions are going to have to help reinforce those values.
The work ethic I don't see as a major problem. If you see how many hours people are willing to work just to make a couple of dollars - they've got the work ethic. And based on my experience before, and what I've seen here since I've been back, Liberians have always been able to work - and willing to work - if they are properly managed and paid. That's key.
You have to lead by example. You can't tell people, 'Go work', and you sit back and show up at 11 o'clock in the morning and leave at two, no. They'll follow your example. But if they?re given the right example and paid, they'll work. They'll put in the time. People just want to be able to feed their families, and they're willing to do a good day's work for a good day's pay. But if they don't have a good day's pay, they're not going to want to do a good day's work.
President Sirleaf is pleading with skilled expatriates to come home. So are you leading by example? What skills do you bring to the job?
I'm here because this is where I belong, but I hope I do set an example by coming home. People who take government positions may make financial sacrifices, and people who leave careers elsewhere to return as entrepreneurs may take risks. But if Liberia prospers, everybody benefits.
What I bring to the job, first of all, is a knowledge of the international financial markets and what it takes to run a business. I'm not just talking academically here. I helped run a business here for five years before the coup - the largest private company in the country. So I have a sense of knowing what it is that the private sector wants and needs.
Then my experience in the last two decades has taught me a lot about what the international markets are looking for. I know what investors are looking for - some of the factors that go into deciding where to put their money. And then, finally, there's the network of contacts that I've made. I think both the experience and the contacts should be very useful to my job.
Development aid goes through fads, and recently there has been talk of favoring 'poverty alleviation' over building infrastructure. But the president has emphasized that attracting investment and creating jobs requires a sizable expenditure on infrastructure.
Oh, absolutely. As far as I'm concerned, if the government and its aid partners could focus on the basics - roads, lights, water, security, sanitation, education - I believe the rest could be done by the private sector. That's always been my belief. We just need the infrastructural framework, and I think the people and private capital can do the rest.
How do you get the people involved? We've talked to young entrepreneurs who have felt excluded from bidding for government contracts and from access to capital. They say they've been having a hard time because it?s 'who you know' and 'who you pay'.
Well, first of all, there's a new procurement process in place. Most government purchases are going to be open to public tender now. So that's going to allow for much more accountability and transparency.
Obviously I love to encourage Liberian entrepreneurs. That's an area that we'll try to push - not to the exclusion of anyone else - but we'll certainly try to give them equal access, which they may not have had in the past. The biggest problem for many of them has been capital. If they can secure capital, then they can compete on equal footing, and they'll certainly be given an equal chance by this administration.
And what can you do help ensure people get access to capital who haven't had it historically?
You can't ensure it, all you can do is try to encourage it, by trying to get international agencies to put up money for small to medium-sized enterprises and, in general, by emphasizing support for the local private sector. I'm sure that there'll be more funding coming in through the commercial banks and also through the Liberian Development Bank, which had become moribund. That's going to be the emphasis, trying to see if we can get fresh sources of capital through the private sector.
The private sector has to be the engine of growth. Mrs. Sirleaf has said she's going to downsize the bloated public sector, so the burden's going to be on us to do some of that heavy lifting of creating new employment. Whatever it takes to help both indigenous and foreign investors in the private sector, we?re going to do it.
The president also says that one her goals is delivering development to the country-side, the rural areas, the indigenous areas. What can you do to encourage the spread of development and benefits?
By doing precisely what I did today, getting out of town and up into the rural areas. That's where the bulk of the population lives. You need an effective transport network though to help that sector. If the government can rebuild the basic road network that will allow people to get back to the farms and bring their products to the market, that's number one.
Secondly, we'll be encouraging agro-industry. We'll look at attracting people to the agricultural sector, growing citrus, processing crops, producing for export - whatever agro-industry includes. It's very labor intensive and can help to employ a lot of people in the rural areas. But we need a good infrastructure, road infrastructure and/or rail transport. As we saw today, with the railway to Bong Mines being rehabilitated, it's already happening.
In our travels in the last several days, everyone seems busy, on the move, trying to make things work. You don't see a lot of people just sitting around, as you do in so many underdeveloped countries. Does this represent a new spirit?
Liberians have always been entrepreneurial. If there's any bright side out of the dark cloud of the last 15-25 years, I think they've been forced to become more entrepreneurial, because everybody had to become self-sufficient and find ways to survive.
In the past, the public sector was the major way most Liberians, except those in subsistence agriculture, expected to make their living. With the government practically defunct during the wars, people had to become more self-sufficient. I think there's tremendous entrepreneurial spirit, and I think that's going to continue.
And not only Liberians in the country. There's a vast population of Liberians outside, don't forget. At least 10 percent of the population outside. They also learned skills, how to work and survive. In the United States, 200,000-300,000 Liberians have learned skills and discipline. I'm; telling you that most of them want to come home, and they don't want to work for $50-100 a month in government. They want to come and work in the private sector and bring their expertise to bear in the private sector. So I think there's tremendous potential for Liberian entrepreneurship in Liberia.
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You come from a privileged family, a sector of society that has been called Americo-Liberians, descended from the freed U.S. slaves that founded the nation. Historically, most people here were excluded from wealth and power, and resentment about that helped fuel the coup and brutalities that followed. How do you see a resolution of that divisive issue?
In my view, the problem was the difference between the haves and the have-nots. People put it in terms of Americo-Liberian vs. indigenous people, but it's really a question of the haves versus the have-nots. And it's a question of broadening the base of the economy. That, I think, is the challenge.
You can break it down into ethnic problems, you can break it down into class problems, you can break it into religious problems, if you want to, but the fundamental problem is that we're a developing country. And in developing countries such as this, you have, unfortunately, a small upper class, a small middle class and a large underclass, economically. That is the fundamental problem we have to solve. How do you raise the masses more into the middle and upper classes, so that you narrow the gap between the haves and the have-nots?
If we can do that, then I think tensions will dissipate. But that's the challenge of development. I don't think it's particular to Liberia. When people emphasize ethnic differences and class differences, and when people talk about Americo-Liberians versus indigenous people, that's not really understanding the issues. That's a wedge that people can use, but we have to tackle the wealth divide; that's basically the problem.
So bringing in investment, creating economic development, creating jobs is a key part of the reconciliation everybody is talking about?
Oh, absolutely. It's essential. I mean we can't just talk reconciliation. Bringing prosperity to as many of the people as possible, that's implementation of reconciliation.
I think the future is in our hands. All Liberians across the spectrum. There's a minority that may still want to divide and hope to conquer, but I think the average Liberian wants to be united. People want to be able to go to work, to pay for their basic needs and support their family.
So I'm very optimistic, and I think that's shared. I feel a great sense of optimism, compared to the one other time I've been back here in the last 25 years. I feel a bright spirit.
Richard Tolbert was a founding member of the board of directors of AllAfrica.
