Washington, DC — When she walked up the podium on Saturday evening, October 21, 2006 to receive the Africa Prize for Leadership for the Sustainable End of Hunger, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia joined African leaders who have been recognized for their work to end hunger in Africa. The prize is awarded by the U.S.-based Hunger Project.
Some recipients have been as famous as South Africa's Nelson Mandela; others have been little known outside their countries. What they have had in common is the ability to provoke a shift in thinking, by providing new hope and a sense of empowerment.
The 1989 recipient, for example, was Dr. Bernard Ouedraogo, founder of the Naam Movement, a grassroots initiative for self-reliance. The project motivated hundreds of thousands of small-scale farmers in the dry Sahel region of west Africa to take command of their own development through a variety of self-help and collaborative schemes. Today, Burkina Faso exports strawberries and grapes to Europe!
Similarly, Maryam Babaginda launched the Better Life for Rural Women project in Nigeria in 1987, which encouraged women to become self-sufficient in food production. Despite the ups and downs of Nigerian politics, that program is still alive.
Sirleaf, the first elected female president on the African continent, has long been active in development projects that attempt to bring to local communities a vision for their futures. Although known mostly for her political and international development work – as a former minister of finance, an investment banker, a World Bank official and head of the Africa division of the United Nations Development Program, Sirleaf has also spearheaded grassroots organizations in Liberia. They include Measuagoon, a rural development organization she founded in her ancestral village of Kormah in 1997. Although interrupted by war, the Measuagoon concept has spread, with participating communities making all decisions and taking full responsibility for program priorities and implementation. Measuagoon supports those efforts by mobilizing support, financial and material, and by arranging capacity development effort.
Sirleaf has also sparked a small loan project for women in rural areas, and for many years, even while in exile, she financed market projects and schools and provided scholarships for children from various parts of the country. In accepting her prize in New York last week, Sirleaf said she would donate the $100,000 award to Measuagoon.
In announcing Sirleaf as the 2006 prize recipient, Joan Holmes, president of the Hunger Project, referred to the near total destruction of infrastructure and civil society in Liberia during 25 years of instability and 14 years of war. "Can you imagine," she asked, "the courage it would take, the wisdom it would take, and belief in the goodness and resilience of people it would take to lead a country with this amount of devastation? We have always said that we award the Africa Prize to leaders who exhibit courage, vision and the commitment to the well-being of Africa's people. This statement has never more true than in the case of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf."
Indeed, if offering a model is a criterion, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf lives up to the award. Many believe she is the most inspiring story on the continent in this past year – not simply because she is the first elected woman president on the continent, although that may count for some – but because she takes over a nation that has been so identified with failure and with 'strong men' for an entire generation.
The eradication of hunger is just one among the many challenges facing the Sirleaf administration. During her campaign a year ago, an aide is said to have asked her, while she was having her usual frugal breakfast of oatmeal and papaya: "Why does anyone want to be president of this country at this time?" It was early, around six o'clock, and the campaign caravan was set to plow the muddy country roads to reach voters in small villages. Sirleaf is said to have held her spoon in mid-air and looked at the aide, intensively, without uttering a word, before resuming her meal. Perhaps there was no other answer than that someone had to do it.
Hunger is a known quantity in Liberia. In a recent speech, Sirleaf said that hunger had even caused her compatriots to harm the environment. Just a few years ago, the president said, Lofa County was the breadbasket of Liberia. It produced enough food not only to feed the entire nation, but also to export grains to neighboring Guinea, Cote d'Ivoire and Sierra Leone. Lofa County, however, had a curse: because it is rich in diamonds and gold, it became a killing field for the warlords who strived to finance their war machines with the minerals. As peace returns to the nation in 2003, Lofa was all but an empty land, with most of its courageous farmers living in refugee camps and displaced centers. What happened in that county epitomized the tribulations of the entire country.
In Monrovia itself, not too far from the U.S. Embassy in the plush neighborhood of Mamba Point, there was a natural park called Coconut Plantation. It was a breathtaking natural setting, right on the beach, with thousands of palm trees on golden sand. Kids played soccer between the trees, and it was a natural haven to cats and dogs. At the height of the war, 15 years ago, the inhabitants of Monrovia not only cut down every palm tree to eat the cabbage, but they also killed and ate every single dog and cat that could be found. But the killing and the suffering continued, and by 1991, thousands of people were buried in the sands of Coconut Plantation.
During the war, more than two-thirds of the entire national population was uprooted from their dwellings and forced to live in refugee camps and displacement centers. Women and children were, as usual, the greatest victims of this social upheaval.
Now the movement towards a new life has begun. A year ago, the first truly democratic elections in the history of Liberia were held. The fact that Liberians elected Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to lead the recovery process is an indication of their resilience and their will to move forward.
The difficulties facing the government are many. Just deciding what is priority one and what is number two is a major challenge. Getting Liberians to feed themselves again is another serious challenge. Moving from survival level through international aid and handouts to self-sustenance will be an even bigger one. A nation that cannot feed itself is doomed to dependency, and the first most important accomplishment of President Sirleaf will be to get her compatriots to feed themselves, not through food aid or imported cheap rice, but rather through their own production.
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In most instances, a prize is awarded for work that has already been accomplished. This one to President Sirleaf is, in one sense, a prize for things to come – in other words, a challenge to her government. She has inspired Liberians, Africans and women throughout the world. Now, it is time to translate that faith and promise into a national policy of self-reliance.
The first indication of self-reliance will not be found in the amount of iron ore exported, the number of ships flying the Liberian flag or the number of companies flocking to the country to take advantage of cheap labor. Rather, the sign will be in how much food Liberians will produce to feed themselves and whether most of them can go to bed without worrying about the next allocation of food aid or the upcoming shipload of cheap rice.
Sirleaf says that Liberia has a tremendous wealth, in her people and her natural setting. This all bodes well for the future. The challenge ahead is to build on the capacity and determination she has already shown and provide inspiration to the people to take advantage of the great possibilities facing them.
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