The emperors new clothes

Apparently there is going to be a New Monrovia. In the middle of a swamp. When actually viewing the footage of the excursion, I was reminded of the fable about "The emperor without clothes". The very fact that you needed to wear knee high rain boots to be on the expedition in the middle of the dry season said it all. To see all these guys in suits, ties and loafers ushering along our leader in this environment. Either someone owns this wasteland and is looking to make a killing or someone just thought it was a perfect photo opportunity for some "Pro-poor" propaganda. My question remains, "How will this ever benefit Liberia?"

Banana republic

If only we could once again become a banana republic. That would be a great step up from what we have become. The problem is that a banana republic produces and exports bananas for foreign exchange. We will never get this far. We do not produce anything that is worthwile to export, so we have to import everything. We import everything that we wear, eat, drink, communicate with. Ladies and gentlemen, we import eggs, orange juice, rice, meat, chicken, fish, beer. The list goes on and on. If you can buy it, it is imported. All these items are imported by buying them abroad with the US Dollar. You cannot take Liberian dollars abroad to change into other currencies. Anybody who is importing stuff to sell here in Liberia has to pay for it with US dollars. If they cannot get US dollars, they cannot replenish their stock. If they cannot buy more goods to sell, they will evetually have to close their businesses. This constant demand from importers to aquire US Dollars is what is driving up the demand for the US Dollar. The more something is in demand, the higher the price of it. This simple economics, people. The Liberian dollar will continue to depreciate as long as this continues. There is nothing anyone in goverment can do about this. Not imediately anyway. In order to curb the increasing demand for the US Dollar, we have to change our ways. You heard that? We have to change our ways. We have to encourage local farmers to produce what we eat. We have to buy local products. If we make it profitable for farmers to produce say eggs or tomatoes, they can concentrate and scale up production. This will take care of all the US Dollars being spent to import food. Even more ideally, these farmers might produce more than needed, which could be exported. We also have to find ways to produce goods that could be exported. We need to attract foreign investors to open factories here. We have to find ways to add value to local produce in a way that the quality is of international standard. We have to lift our eyes above the pettiness that usually consumes us. We have to rise above the fact that everyone wants a job in government. We have to find things that we are good at, and exploit them. We have to stop being traders and become innovators. Until next time.