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A Country Bountiful in Hope

By Kris Vander Stelt, Partners Worldwide staff

This February, I spent a week in Liberia visiting business owners and entrepreneurs, connecting with the leaders of our business affiliate LEAD, Inc., and attending the business conference, “Africa’s Marketplace Revolution.”

My visit to Liberia showed me a country full of untapped resources. As we traveled I saw beautiful green fields, a wealth of natural resources, seasonal rain favorable for farming, and a warm welcoming culture—these are just some of the qualities evident just about everywhere you go.

Yet, it’s also a country filled with poverty. 

So, what’s the problem? Six years ago, Liberia emerged from two extended and devastating civil wars. In a country with a population size comparable to metro Detroit, over 250,000 people were killed. Thousands more fled as refugees. Homes, schools, and churches were wiped out. Businesses of every size left the country, but especially production companies. Even for those that still stood, virtually all infrastructure was decimated.
Today, the majority of Liberia’s commerce is based on imported products, mostly sold by micro business vendors and small corner stores. With very little local production, business people have little choice but to sell the same imported products that their competitors sell.

I realize that I’m simplifying a complex theory, but in my experience, little to no local production means flat local business growth, which means little or no job creation, which, in the end, means perpetuated poverty.

But I also saw people working to change the situation around them. Actually, what I saw was hope, and it wasn’t hard to see where that hope was coming from.

Through the work of LEAD, Inc., over the last five years more than 3,000 business owners have been trained to tap into the country’s untapped potential. In a country where the average person earns $0.62 a day, members of LEAD have together saved over $300,000 USD, which has revolved as $600,000 in loans they then use to strengthen their businesses. Some of the micro finance and small businesses are in a long-term mentoring relationship with other Liberians. For medium sized businesses, especially in value-added production, owners look to their mentors in North America or other parts of West Africa for advice. Each one goes through business training before being qualified to apply for a loan. The result? Ninety-two percent of business owners have paid their loans back. This is hard work, but the fruit of that labor is hope.

I also watched this hope cross cultures at the conference hosted by Partners Worldwide and LEAD, Inc. For two days, nearly 300 entrepreneurs from over ten different countries learned together and encouraged each other to keep fulfilling their call to business as ministry. I saw light bulbs turn on and the entrepreneurial sparks fly. It was both humbling and exciting at the same time, and inspired me again to continue working toward the vision of Partners Worldwide. Ending poverty in Liberia through business is possible.

Across cultures and geographical boundaries, business owners share hope. And it’s this kind of hard-working hope that can end poverty. By encouraging one another to be stewards of our bountiful resources, Partners Worldwide is walking alongside entrepreneurs to end poverty in Liberia and around the world.

Liberia Quick Facts
GDP per capita: $226 USD or $0.62 earned a day. (The U.S. holds a GDP per capita of just over $47,000.) 
Liberian government spending for 2010: $371 million (Equal to Grand Rapids city government spending in 2010.)
83.01% of imported goods come from Southeast Asia.

Read a story about one of the LEAD entrepreneurs.

See more photos from the trip to Liberia and the Africa Marketplace Revolution conference.