The imperial forest
Gregg Mitman’s 'Empire of Rubber' is less a historical reading of Liberia than a history of America and racial capitalism through the lens of a US corporate giant.
Liberia
The decline of Liberia in black internationalism
Historically, Liberia ignited the imagination of black people across the globe. Then it stopped. What happened, and can it be reversed?
When Americans took a global health crisis seriously
Recalling its Ebola hysteria would help the US better confront COVID-19.
This is my country
The Liberian academic and writer talks about citizenship, belonging, and what unites her fragmented nation.
The ruins of a mining economy
The physical and psychic ruins of colonial mining practice in a small town in Liberia.
What’s new? Making money off poor school children again
The latest trick is to transfer tax-payer funded aid aimed at Africa and the Middle East into the pockets of corporations and individuals.
The tyranny of good intentions
Scandals like the one at More Than Me—the US charity that failed to protect school girls in its care from rape by staff—are common in even the most elite aid organizations.
A terrible failure to protect school girls in Liberia
The privatizing and deregulating education in Liberia as much as white saviorism should take the blame for the sexual violence under an NGO's watch.
George Weah’s biggest goal
Weah is poised to become Liberia's next president. What will a Weah administration look like, and how will he govern?
What’s bad for America’s children
Liberians should not be guinea pigs in an experiment to transform public education into a market opportunity for foreign capital.
The best hope for Liberian children
Why is Liberia’s Government rushing to sell its public schools to for-profits from the United States?
African military partnerships in the age of the ‘enemy disease’
Military-to-military relationships have become the dominant mode of U.S. engagement with the African continent, overwhelming cast as institutional partnerships.
History, memory, and the nation
A website archive makes the case that Liberia needs a history that will be called 'history after the settlers.'
Setting Liberia’s political pot onto a full boil
Takun J stirs the Liberian streets with calls for justice and accountability.
Vamba Sherif’s ‘Bound to Secrecy’ is masterful storytelling
In 2012, The Economist Magazine’s style blog, Prospero, featured an essay titled “War and Peace in Monrovia: Where is Liberia’s Tolstoy?”. The essay was written by a journalist who visited Liberia for research on a magazine feature about an ex-warlord running for president. While in Freetown, during what he explains was an unexpected amount of […]
Punished for being African
In the past year, Robtel Neajai Pailey has seen her Liberian passport scrutinized more intently than ever before.
The worst habits of American journalism
An open letter addressed to Jeff Fager, Executive Producer of the American TV news program, 60 Minutes, over its reporting of Africa and Africans.
The shoulders that carried Ebola’s weight
Making sure we give credit where it’s due to those on the frontline during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
What Liberia Teaches About the Failures of Aid
While health professionals are crucial frontline responders, the Ebola crisis is indeed too important to be left to medical personnel.
Ebola: Where we are; where we should be
Is it coincidental that nation-states just emerging from brutal civil wars cannot cope with Ebola because of their broken institutions?