What's Really Different About Liberia

Before I landed here, I posted a bit about what I’d heard about Liberia: how incredibly poor it is, how people live, how little economic activity there is. Now that I’ve been on the ground for three weeks now (time flies!) I can say that much of that was just plain misleading.

The fact of the matter is people living in poverty, people living off a dollar or two a day, people without running water, without proper waste treatment facilities, without electricity, in homes that could blow over in a bad storm – I’ve seen it before. It hit me first when I went to Mumbai with Google back in 2006 (see the posting here!). A drive by its enormous slums, the sight of millions of people (literally) sleeping on the streets, the children begging at every turn, and you’ve looked dire poverty in the eye firsthand. That same poverty is in abundance here, but in India it’s literally orders of magnitude larger in terms of absolute numbers.

What makes Liberia different isn’t the poor, it’s the lack of much of a middle and upper class above it. In so many other developing countries there’s enough wealth and expertise above the poor to establish businesses, to pay taxes to fund public services and investments, to justify the existence of nice hotels, restaurants, and to create enough demand for foreign companies to export their goods and services.

Here there’s a very thin veil of it, almost nonexistent. Any Liberian with the money or means or skills to leave did, and few of them have come back. Those who remained weren’t building businesses and skills; they were surviving. They weren’t sitting in school or university; they were fleeing their homes. As a result there is an enormous lack of capacity to do the work required to move this country forward, let alone support a tax base for redistribution and government programs or create demand for expensive imported goods.

It’s this lack of in between that makes Liberia’s struggle forward so challenging. The problems we are targeting in most other developing economies are premature here in Liberia. It’s not that we need capital for entrepreneurs to flourish, it’s that we need to provide training to create the entrepreneurial skills in the first place. It’s not that we need to figure out how to fix the incentive problem in health and education, it’s that we have to train doctors and teachers in the first place. The list goes on and on.

Building capacity from next to nothing doesn’t happen overnight. It’s not something that happens in one incredibly capable President’s term either. Building this fundamental capacity in Liberia will probably take an entire generation. But hopefully, if this country can avoid slipping back into conflict, it will happen.

The process, as slow as it is, is definitely on.

I Just Want A Happy Life!

I’m not sure where to even begin with this one. I wanted my roommate Javi to write a guest post to do the story justice (because its his), but he refuses to write in English (he’s Spanish) so I’ll do my best to recount it.

Javi has been taking incredible pictures in Liberia (check them out here: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=278304&id=858825494&l=e7a5e0e541 He’s quite brazen and takes the camera everywhere: to the markets, the street corners, the soccer fields, the neighborhood high school, and then just the other night, he scored a press pass to the big soccer game.

His camera has been the key that has opened the door deeper into Liberian society than I could ever hope to explore. With it he has been able to engage in conversations with people whose stories make it clear how far this country has to go to repair the damages of the war. Tragically, I can’t help but wonder if a whole generation will find itself unable to recover from the scars of the past.

One night last week at the soccer game, two young men approached Javi. Visibly intoxicated, they told him they were former child soldiers. They recounted doing cocaine, heroine, and marijuana at the age of seven -- and then going out and killing people. They showed him the scars on their arms from the needles.

They asked for a picture, and then looked at a young man in the distance, who shook his head sternly. He was their commander. Javi was taken aback at not just the fact that they still had a commander, but even moreso that these kids, who had killed so many people, were clearly terrified of him.

“This guy must be totally insanse,” Javi thought.

The young man walked over, leaned in uncomfortably close to Javi’s face and said, “I’m monitoring you.”

Now at that point it would have been game over for me. I would have gotten my a** out of there as quickly as I possibly could. But not Javi (does this mean Javi is insanse?). Javi put his camera away and walked back over to the guy and started talking to him. Not only had he been a commander in the war, but he had also served in Charles Taylor’s Anti-Terrorism Unit (essentially his personal army, long story there).

“Do you know what the ATU was?” he demanded to know.

“Yes, I do.” Javi said…

He showed him his scars: bullet holes in his legs, huge cuts on his arms, and of course scars from the needles. He was only 23 years old. That means that he was only 17 when the war ended six years ago. He couldn’t go back to his village. They know who he is, what he has done. They are terrified of him. He is branded a killer.

But the most disturbing part of it was the one thing he repeatedly said, in an angry, exasperated voice: “That life if over. I just want a happy life!”

“They didn’t just steal his childhood,” Javi said to us later that night as he told the story. “They stole his life!”

Mob Justice: Is it Just?

I missed a raging ethical debate during the drive this morning, thanks to whatever I ate in the past couple days that I shouldn’t have, which has kept me home for the day.  Our driver told my housemates that his community caught a thief last night.  And then they cut off one of his hands.

This isn’t the first I’ve heard of something like this happening in Liberia. Another friend was at a graduation party recently when people started yelling “Thief! Thief!,” which was immediately met by everyone running out, chasing down the culprit, and beating him.  The Liberian people are justifiably sick and tired of having not just their livelihood but also indeed their lives stolen from them.

There are signs around Monrovia urging against mob justice, but it’s not as if there is much of an alternative, at least not yet.  The police force in Liberia is nearly nonexistent, so there is little formal deterrent to crime.  Mob justice is an informal institution that has arisen due to the lack of formal institutions in Liberia.

Clearly it is a problem if crime becomes rampant due to the lack of consequence (and I understand this actually happening, which is particularly concerning given the numbers of ex-combatants), but is it okay for communities to be cutting off someone’s hand if they are caught stealing?  Should angry mobs be determining and carrying out criminal punishment?

I've only put a morning's worth of thought on this, and haven't had a chance to vet my thinking with anyone yet, but here goes. There is a practical and a theoretical way of thinking about this question.

Practically speaking, without the informal institution you risk the establishment of criminal norms and networks, but with it, you are risking the establishment of tensions within communities and norms accepting brutality. 

I’m inclined to argue that the government should take a stand against mob justice, despite the fact that it is playing a critical role the government does not yet have the capacity to.  Down the line when the capacity does exist, I think it will be easier to take on criminal networks than to remove the societal tensions and shift the unhealthy norms that will inevitably arise from current behavior. 

In reality of course, a government without the capacity to stop theft doesn’t have the capacity to stop mob justice either.  It will still play a valuable role deterring theft.  But I don’t think the Liberian government can afford to indirectly condone such violence by not taking a stand against it.

Though, that’s my thinking on a practical answer.  What’s the theoretical one?  Is mob justice just?  What does justice mean in a country lacking formal institutions?  Or is there some definition of justice that is universal?

When Credit Isn't the Constraint? Just a hunch...

One of my responsibilities for the summer is to write a report on several commitments made at the Clinton Global Initiative last year. There are three, one of which is the creation of a $30M fund to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs) by offering entrepreneurs loans to start their businesses. Recognizing the capacity constraints that run alongside credit constraints in a place like Liberia, the Liberia Enterprise Development Fund (LEDF) also provides training and other support for its clients.

In the two years since inception, LEDF has not made many loans, and many of those it has made are not performing. The impression I got when first talking to people here in the government is that they just fell short of their commitment due to mismanagement. After a few more conversations, I’m not so sure that’s the case.

There were clearly management issues, and big ones. But my hunch is that even if LEDF had been executed well, it still would have fallen short of expectations. I think this actually might be a classic case of targeting the wrong constraint. For all my raising issues about the idea of a binding constraint, I think I’ve encountered a real world illustration of what happens when you target the wrong problem.

Surely credit is an issue. But it’s not the only one, and the LEDF’s experience may be evidence it is not the biggest one. I suspect the bigger problem is actually that there are few people with the entrepreneurial ability and skill set to formulate and execute a business plan. They recognized this by pairing the loans the training and other support, but I have a feeling whatever was offered fell far short of what would have been needed to fill the gap between current capacity and successful new businesses.

We’ll see if my intuition is right. Thanks Harvard for giving me the tools to have it in the first place.

Internet Infrastructure in Liberia

I had a meeting yesterday with Ben Wolo, the Managing Director of Libtelco, Liberia’s national telecommunications company. I’ve spent much of the past week learning more about Internet infrastructure (just because I worked at Google doesn’t mean I understand these things very well!). After yesterday’s meeting, I now understand the set up behind the horribly slow Internet that I battle on a daily basis.

Liberia has next to no infrastructure. There is no connection to submarine fiber, no domestic Internet backbone, no exchange server, no data center, no copper wires. Everything connects to the outside world via satellite, and communicates from there via microwaves. What is exciting about the utter lack of infrastructure is the opportunity to build from scratch: to leapfrog the technologies on the decline such as copper wires and land lines. This is precisely what the private foundations are interested in supporting.

Now comes time to apply what I’ve learned over the past year. I can hear Dani Rodrik’s voice already. “Why aren’t investor’s doing it already? It might be that it’s not profitable – the economy isn’t developed enough to generate enough demand to make it profitable. That would certainly have been my guess. It might be a coordination failure: the demand isn’t there because the infrastructure isn’t there, and the infrastructure isn’t there because the demand isn’t there. I would have thought that easily possible. Maybe it’s credit constraints. It could be regulatory hurdles. I’m sure those exist too.

Turns out there is sufficient demand in Monrovia today to justify investment in fiber, a landing station to connect to submarine fiber, an exchange station, and a data center. The issue is not demand or a coordination failure. The issue is funding (the issue might also be regulation but I haven’t had a chance to explore that one yet).

Libtelco’s status as a wholly owned government entity creates these challenges. Public funding from the government would be difficult because of its limited budget and donor priorities. The Managing Director would have to convince public officials to support it. Libtelco raising commercial debt would be equivalent to Liberia raising commercial debt, which it cannot do due to its status as a heavily indebted poor country (HIPC). Libtelco could look for investors to take an equity stake, but that would require legislation since the government owns it. There may be creative options such as giving investors a revenue share instead of a share in the company.

There are many pieces that I still need to work through to determine the right answer for foundation support: the regulatory environment, the competitive environment, the appropriate ownership for the infrastructure, the politics, the list goes on. But it's exciting to know that the national telco is trying to do exactly what I was intuitively thinking needs to be done.

Thinking about ICT in Liberia

I’ve only been here a few days, but I’ve been thinking about the leapfrogging technology part of my internship for weeks now. I landed in Monrovia with ideas.

What little information I had on the big idea to support leapfrog technology investments was seemingly arbitrary and nebulous. They wanted to 1) develop a nationwide wireless communication platform 2) implement networking programs in government ministries 3) utilize technology to improve capacity of NGOs, schools, hospitals, and private sector and incredulously 4) build technology enabled industries (outsourcing). So I assumed that they probably weren’t sure what they wanted and that I had a blank slate to think about things.
So I asked myself, if I were to invest in ICT in Liberia, where would I do it?

The mobile infrastructure is actually will built out. There are four players, so there is a lot of competition and prices are on par or even lower than elsewhere in the region. You can even get Internet via EDGE and GPRS. There are about 750,000 mobile subscribers, and many of the phones are shared. This means mobile penetration is probably between 30-50%.

I know everyone always talks about focusing on mobile, but part of the power of mobile is the ability to connect to the Internet, even if it is invisible to the user (i.e. via SMS to a database somewhere). Liberia has next to no Internet infrastructure. So when I’m thinking about where to focus investments, it’s at this core. You can’t build a wireless platform unless you have a backbone to connect to, you can’t implement networking programs, improve capacity, or build a technology industry when the average speed of the Internet is 0.4kbps.

Ny thoughts have gravitated towards building a domestic backbone and getting it connected to submarine cables. Even if demand is years out, especially in rural areas, Liberia is building roads now and could possibly simultaneously lay fiber. This, coupled with training for maintaining infrastructure, scholarships for computer science at Liberian Universities, and grants / loans for tech entrepreneurs could potentially create an enabling environment for myriad applications to spawn.

So that’s where my intuition landed before I landed in Monrovia. And then I met Ben Wolo.

Busy Summer Ahead

Most internships are not about getting much accomplished. Many of my fellow interns her are complaining about how little they’ve done so far, and many of my classmates abroad are two weeks into the job, still waiting for their projects to materialize. In all honesty it was never my goal to have a big impact over a nine-week period. I just wanted the perspective that working in a capacity constrained government in Africa would afford. Turns out I’ve got my work cut out for me, and I’m loving it.

I have three projects. The first is to oversee the development of the Philanthropy Secretariat website. I’m designing the site’s overall structure and functionality as well as creating the content to give to the technical team. The second is a report on progress against three Clinton Global Initiative Commitments made regarding Liberia last year. The third, and this is the big one, is coming up with a plan for foundation support for ICT investments in Liberia. This could easily materialize into my thesis next year. And on top of all this, I’m working to support the Secretariat Program Manager across the board to make sure that the organization is meeting its goals for 2009. I have to admit, I’d love to have his job.

I’m just three days in but the perspective I was looking for is certainly coming along as well. The inefficiencies are mind-boggling. The biggest issue so far is actually the Internet. It’s down as often as it is up. As the President’s Energy Advisor said to me today you “click and pray” – i.e. pray that your email goes out or that your attachment downloads. If you need to download or upload a document, often you just start it running in the background and check back in a few hours. We share documents with jump drives instead of via email. You always copy your emails before hitting send so they don’t get lost. I’m also unable to print in any significant quantity so have the pleasure of reading a 120-page document on PDF. There is no ink for the printers in many buildings. These are just the technical obstacles. I haven’t encountered the bureaucratic and capacity ones yet.

First Night in Liberia

It’s almost a joke. I haven’t even seen Monrovia yet, but I’ve just returned from the opening party of Liberia’s first luxury resort, which also happens to be spitting distance from the intern house I’m staying in.

Also in attendance was the President, Governor of the Central Bank, Chief Justice, Ambassadors from the United States and China, various Ministers, Ambassadors, and heads of pretty much every major company in the country.

This was my introduction to Liberia. At first I thought it was a little ridiculous to be attending such a lavish event on my first night in Monrovia. But what’s even more ridiculous is that there I was, mingling with these people. After just a year of grad school, I’m actually completely comfortable engaging on development issues with anyone. I chatted with the Chinese Ambassador. I joked with the President and General Manager of Buchanan Renewables and Buchanan Energy, two arms of one of the most exciting private companies in the country. And I met the managing director of Liberia Telecommunications Company. Turns out we think very similarly about technology investments in Liberia. It’s good to know I’m on the right track.

But there was something else striking about last night. Children from the high school performed traditional Liberian dances for the President. Mid way through, they stopped dancing and started talking -- one at a time. And this is what they said.

“My name is Michael, I’m ten years old, I’m in third grade, and I want to be a teacher when I grow up.”

“My name is Ellen. I’m fifteen years old, in third grade, and I want to be a nurse when I grow up.”

“My name is George. I’m nineteen years old, in fifth grade, and I want to be a businessman when I grow up.”

The disconnect between age and grade was striking, a stark reminder of what this country has been through. And where it’s going.

Touchdown Liberia

Taking off and landing in Ghana and Liberia today, I peered out the window looking for roads. In Ghana there were many, though few were paved. In Liberia, nearly all I saw was dense jungle. Maybe a few foot paths. One road. As we touched down at the airport the US transportation security deemed unfit for Delta to fly to, I noticed a dead plane sitting near the runway, collecting rust. I hurriedly pulled out my camera to capture the image, but as I stepped off the plane the lens immediately fogged up from the humidity.

Liberia’s main airport is tiny. There’s one belt for baggage claim. The carts to carry your bags are so old and rusted that I had to try out several before I got one that didn’t’ screech horribly loudly. But shockingly, my bags made it (there was a bit of a debacle in Accra). And now I’ve arrived.
There are eight of us in the intern house, which has four bedrooms. There is no hot water, but I’m pretty used to it after the past week in Dakar and the water warms up quite a bit because of the heat outside. We only have electricity for half the day. And we’re about thirty minutes from downtown Monrovia. I’m yet to report to work, but I really can’t wait hit the ground and start running. I’m going to need all the time I can get; they are really loading the work on me this summer.

Constance

As I sat down to wait for my delayed flight to Monrovia, a woman asked what the confusion was all about.  I spent the next couple hours talking to Constance, a Liberian woman who lives in Ghana and was coming home for her mother’s funeral.  As I continued to ask her about herself, her experience in the Liberian civil war unfolded.

She escaped on foot to Sierra Leone.  Walked from Monrovia.  She had left the suburb her family lives in to visit friends for the day when the rebels took over.  First they overtook the area where here parents lived, then where she was visiting. She wasn’t raped, but her friend who was three months pregnant was.  The rebels forced everyone to leave their homes and took them to refugee camps.  She stayed there for a few days, without food, in rooms so cramped that you wouldn’t dare leave your spot on the floor lest you would have to stand from there on out.

Then she escaped and walked to Sierra Leone.  There wasn’t really food or water.  They ate rats.  They crossed rapid filled rivers in canoes so laden with people she feared they would drown.  The final stretch was a treacherous bridge crossing at the border (she says it was about as big as a rope), only to find it was closed.  And then they were told the rebels would come to kill them.

Fortunately they didn’t, they managed to cross the border, and Constance now lives in Ghana with her husband and two children.  She was the sweetest woman. 

But what impressed me most was her resilience.  

A Note on Air Travel in Africa

I continue to be shocked at how difficult and expensive it is to travel around Africa.  Upon reflection it’s not that surprising – clearly only a tiny sliver of the population even dreams of flying, which doesn’t amount to enough demand to bring prices down to what we are used to seeing elsewhere around the world.

Still, my jaw drops every time I inquire about a flight.  It’s actually more expensive to travel around Africa than it is to travel to Africa.  We originally though to go to Tanzania after our internship, then opted to stay local after seeing the $2000+ price tag to get from West Africa to Dar es Salaam and back.

Yesterday I found out that the inaugural Delta flight into Monrovia – the bargain $650 one-way 2-hour flight I scored- has been canceled.  TSA in the US hasn’t yet given security clearance.  I looked into booking what was option B, a one-way ticket on Virgin Nigeria via Lagos for $1000.  The price had risen to $3500.  Delta offered to get me to Monrovia – via Amsterdam.  There are several local carriers I’m looking into.  I’ve been told their planes are sketchy, to say the least.  You can’t book tickets online, and so far I haven’t been able to get an answer when I call.   I’ve been at it for two days now, still to no avail.  If this were in the US, or even India, it would have been resolved in under an hour.  I’ve got a feeling this is my first taste of doing business in Africa.

Preparing for Liberia

As the start of my internship draws near, I’ve been reading more and more about Liberia. I’m pretty sure that it will impact me more than any other place I’ve ever been, and probably any other place I’ll ever go. A few Harvard professors from the Kennedy School visited last winter, and even they said they’d never seen anything like it. These are people who have spent a career studying development.

Liberia is, literally, one of the poorest countries on the planet - next to Malawi, Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, and Burundi (according to Wolfram Alpha). It’s GDP jumped from $150 per capita in 2007 to $300 per capita in 2008 to almost $500 today. 85% of the population is unemployed. There are no markets, our professors reported; the only thing people buy is matches, salt, and kerosene. They quite literally live off the land.

There are the difficult to fathom infrastructure facts. No electricity. Next to no running water. Only 500 miles of paved road in the country. But it’s not just the lack of economic development that makes Liberia different from anywhere else I’ve ever known. This is a country with some serious scars.

I remember being in Cambodia several years ago and thinking to myself “everyone I see over 30 years old most likely has a horrible story to tell.” In Liberia, it will be every adult, every teenager. During the fifteen-year civil war, an estimated three out of every four women were raped. One of every three Liberians forced to flee their homes. One of every 17, killed. Perhaps saddest of all, tens of thousands of former child soldiers, some having been as young as seven or eight, who were given guns and drugged up, who raped and pillaged their way across the country, wielding guns as tall as they were.

It is upon this economic and psychological destruction that Liberia rebuilds. As much as I’d like to believe I’ll have some small positive impact on Liberia this summer, I have no doubt it will leave a much more profound mark on me.