ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF : AFRICA'S FIRST FEMALE ELECTED HEAD OF STATE
Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is the 24th president of Liberia and the first female elected head of state in Africa. She served from 2006 to 2018. Born in Monrovia, she was educated at the College of West Africa and pursued further studies in the United States at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado Boulder, and Harvard University. Sirleaf previously served as Minister of Finance and worked at the World Bank before becoming president of Liberia. Her remarkable achievements include winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 for advocating for women's involvement in peacekeeping. Recognized for her outstanding leadership, she has been honoured with various awards and honorary doctorates, including an honourary doctorate from McMaster University in 2023. Sirleaf made history by becoming the first woman elected as the chair of the Economic Community of West African States. She is building The Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center, the premier institution dedicated to advancing women’s aspirations for development in Africa.
How did it feel to be the first woman elected president in Africa, leading in a sphere traditionally dominated by men?
My journey was a long one. I didn't catapult into the presidency. I had already worked in different environments. I worked at home in Lberia, in positions where I was promoted to the peak of being a finance minister, which gives you a lot of opportunity to get to meet men who hold the same position in other countries. I had already held management positions in the international system.
And so, for me, becoming president wasn’t strange, as I had already earned the stripes as an activist and paid the price for it. It was a comfortable position because I had prepared myself when I started as a technocrat. I was trying to be a good manager, but quickly I knew I had to become a politician if I was going to be able to manage the expectations and manage all that was required in a country that had already been through decades of civil war. It was an exciting period, sometimes, even a learning period.
You were in the US, and you decided to move back and serve your country. What are some of the things that compelled you to decide it was time to go back and serve?
Because I've spent a long time in public service in various government positions, I always knew that our endowment, basically, our natural resources, provided the means whereby our potential to develop rapidly and to be able to provide the basic services to all of the people was always there. And over the years, our country was not poor, just poorly managed. And that if we could, if I could be a part, not myself alone, but with a group of people, with the same values, that we could make a difference and that we could rebuild even though we've gone through such serious periods of devastation. That's what we tried to do when I became president. And I think we tried; had we not been defeated a little bit by Ebola, we might have achieved some of the goals we had set.
