There has been a mixture of low-key publicity and comic reactions greeting the visitation of President Sandra Prunella Mason of Barbados to Liberia. Prior to her visit, there was no serious publicity about her coming to the country, not even from the Liberian Government that was inviting her. The social media pages and websites of key communication entities did not bother creating any momentum.
I doubt if the same would have been where it a President of the USA, China or a European power; there would be at least three months of nonstop hype and bragging of such visitation.
Some Liberians have been reacting disparagingly to Madam Mason's visit, deriding the Boakai-led Government of developing relationships with "low level" countries - a somewhat naive thought that has permeated the Liberian political space for decades. Supporters of the government have also not been publicizing this visit as they would with others to gain bragging rights.
The thought that Barbados will not donate millions in aid to Liberia, invalidating the significance of this visit could be at the core of the different reactions.
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Which country is Barbados?
Barbados is a 430 - 439 sq km small Caribbean Island country with an estimated 2024 population of over 300 thousand people, according to the CIA Factbook. Statista estimates Barbados's 2025 GDP at 7.55 billion US dollars, while the country's 2024/2025 Budget stands at 2.33 billion US dollars and now the 2025/2026 budget is ambitiously projected at a total expenditure of 5.13 billion US dollars.
Barbados has a literacy rate of 99.6%, spending 6.5% of GDP on education (2021 Est). 98.8% of its population has access to improved water sources, 100% to improved sanitation facilities, spending 8.1% of GDP on Health (2021) with a 2.96 physician ratio to 1000 population (2022) - all according to the CIA Factbook.
No wonder the BBC and the CIA Factbook describe the country as a prosperous, high income Caribbean Island with a relatively high standard of living. I could go on with more interesting stats, but let's make progress to the main point.
How Liberia can maximize generational benefits from this relationship
Besides the indelible historical ties between the two countries, Liberia can benefit a lot from Barbados through a mental revolution. Barbados's population can come from Liberia's more than 17 times - okay, Nimba County's population of more than 620,000 (2022 census) is twice the population of Barbados. Yet, it's 2024/2025 budget is approximately three times Liberia's budget, not to even mention the projected 2025/2026 budget. This, together with all of the other positive areas mentioned about Barbados, should tell us it is not just about population, but doing governance smartly and innovatively to meet the needs of the people.
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Hence, I recommend that rather than looking out for aid, our government should include in the discussions how some of our policy people and experts in different fields of growth and development can go to Barbados and learn about how they are doing, even with limited resources. Singapore and other countries used this model of learning from other countries to grow and develop theirs.
The government should sponsor some students on scholarships to Barbados and other similarly situated countries whose cultures, history and evolution align with ours. The models of highly developed powers may be too far and frustrating for us to grasp and develop, but with those of Barbados, I believe we can be better inspired and aspire for the better.
Conclusion
So rather than mocking the President and the Government for this visit because it isn't a big-name country with big aid donations, and rather than the Government itself and its supporters adopting a lukewarm approach to the visit, a new thinking should emerge that sees us being able to do it because Barbados is doing it.
Let's move beyond thinking aid and what we can immediately get free. We've got more resources and human beings than Barbados. We can use their story to goad ourselves into using our human beings and our resources to build for ourselves a great, prosperous nation. This, for me, makes this visit more historic and more significant!
