Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the current President of Liberia. She is the first elected female head of state in Africa as well as the world’s first elected black female president. In 2011 she was jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.”
Sirleaf was born in 1938 in Monrovia, Liberia. She attended the College of West African in Monrovia before continuing her education at Madison Business College in Madison, Wisconsin where she earned an associate degree in accounting. In 1970, she enrolled at the Economics Institute in Boulder, Colorado where she received a degree in economics. From 1969 to 1971, she studied economics and public policy at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, graduating with a Master of Public Administration. Sirleaf then returned to Liberia, and in 1972 she gave a commencement address at the graduation convocation of her alma mater (College of West Africa) she criticised the government and set out her intentions to always speak the truth no matter the consequences. She then gained further attention when giving a speech to the Liberian Chamber of Commerce in which she claimed that the economy was being harmed by the country’s corporations who were hoarding or sending profits overseas.
In 1975, Sirleaf joined the Treasury Department, and by 1979 she had become the Minister of Finance. Sirleaf used her position to introduced measures to curb the mismanagement of government finances. In 1980, President Tolbert was overthrown in a military coup d’état led by Samuel Doe and killed. Sirleaf briefly served as the President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment (LBDI) but was then forced into exile in Nairobi, Kenya after speaking out against Doe’s management of the country. Sirleaf served as Vice President of CITICORP’s Africa Regional Office, before returning to Liberia in 1985 to run for a seat in the senate as part of the Liberian Action Party. She spoke out against the military regime once again, and as a result was placed under house arrest before being sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served part of her sentence, but after international pressure calling for her release, she was released early. Sirleaf secretly fled the country to Washington D.C. where she became Senior Loan Officer at the World Bank, then Vice President for Equator Bank.
In 1992, Sirleaf joined the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) as Assistant Administrator and Director of its Regional Bureau of Africa with the rank of Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations. During her time at the UN, she was one of seven designated by the Organisation of African Unity to investigated the Rwandan genocide, one of five Commission Chairs for the Inter-Congolese Dialogue and one of two international experts selected by UNIFEM to investigate and report on the effect of conflict on women and women’s roles in peace building. She was also the initial Chairperson of the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) and a visiting Professor of Governance at the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA).
Sirleaf had supported Charles Taylor’s rebellion against President Doe in 1990, and in 1997, she returned to Liberia to run as a presidential candidate for the Unity Party as his opposition. She received 25% of the vote, and Taylor charged her with treason. She would later speak out about Taylor, apologising to Liberia for supporting him and stating that “When the true nature of Mr. Taylor’s intentions became known, there was no more impassioned critic or strong opponent to him in a democratic process” than her. Sirleaf went into self imposed exile in Côte d’Ivoire, where she continued to maintain an interest in Liberian politics. She established the Kormah Development and Investment Corporation, a venture capital vehicle for African entrepreneurs, and Mesuagoon, a Liberian community development NGO.
In 2003, Sirleaf was considered to serve as Chairperson of the Governance Reform Commission upon the formation of the National Transitional Government of Liberia (NTGL) following the Second Liberian Civil War. She took a position as head of the Governance Reform Commission instead, and led the country’s anti-corruption reform. Two years later, she resigned her position to stand for president of the Unity Party in the 2005 general election. Following investigations into election fraud, Sirleaf was declared the country’s next president. On her inauguration in January 2006, she became the world’s first elected black female president and Africa’s first elected female head of state. She focused her attention on rebuilding Liberia, and has been able to strengthen national security, revitalise the national economy and infrastructure and restore Liberia’s international reputation and credibility. In 2010, she successfully negotiated for $4 billion in debt relief for the country and UN trade sanctions were lifted to allow Liberia access to international markets. By 2011, she had increased the national budget from $80m to more than half a billion.
In 2011, Sirleaf ran for a second term as President. Four days before the election, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for her non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women’s rights to full participation in peace-building work.” Sirleaf won the election, and announced the creation of a “national peace and reconciliation initiative,” led by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Leymah Gbowee, to address the country’s divisions and begin “a national dialogue that would bring us together.”
In addition to her role as President, Sirleaf is Chairperson of the African Leaders Malaria Alliance and has served as Chairperson of the Mano River Union, for which she led the effort for political stability and economic cooperation among Sierra Leone, Guinea, Liberia and Côte d’Ivoire. She is also Goodwill Ambassador for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) in Africa, was a founding member of the International Institute for Women in Political Leadership. Sirleaf has been the recipient of many honours, including the the FAO CERES Medal (2008); the Crisis Group Fred Cuny Award for the Prevention of Deadly Crisis (2008) for outstanding leadership in democracy, development and peace-building in Africa; and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2007), the highest civilian honour bestowed by an American President and the Indira Gandhi Prize (2013) In addition to this, she has 14 honorary degrees from American colleges and universities. In 2010, she was listed as one of the ten best leaders in the world in Newsweek magazine, placed in the top ten female leaders by Time and named the best President the country has ever had” by the Economist.