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VISIT OF PRESIDENT CARTER IN 1978 AP Archive: SYND 4 4 1978 US PRESIDENT CARTER VISITS MONROVIA BEFORE LEAVING AFRICA TO RETURN HOME Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJ8-1i17qg Peter Burgess COMMENTARY I was still working at Continental Seafoods (CSF) in 1978 when President Carter visited Monrovia, Liberia. CSF had its largest overseas operation at the time in Liberia and was well connected with the Liberian political establishment including President Tolbert. I did not realize that President Carter's visit lasted only a few hours. Some years later I was the team leader on a World Bank consulting assignment in Liberia. One of my team members was a Liberian woman named Margaret Kandekai-Renner who was one of the daughters of Reverend Kandekai who officiated at a Church Service in Monrovia attended by President Carter and the First Lady. A lot happened in Liberia in the few years after President Carter's visit starting off with the violent assassination of President Tolbert by Sargent Doe. CSF had sold its Liberia operations to a company in Siera Leone and little bit before the Doe coup, so we were not directly at risk. Many of the people we knew and worked with, were at risk and some were executed. About a year aft the Doe coup, I approached the IFC )the International Finance Corporation, a subsidiary unit of the World Bank) to address the future of the Mesurado Group of Companies. Mesurado was a private company orignially owned by President William Tolbert and his brother Stephen Tolbert (who was also Minister of Finance) before he died in a plane crash under quesionable circumstances. His wife. now Carmena Tolbert-Doe, then became the owner of his 50% in the Mesurado Group. After the Doe Coup, the Stephen Tolbert shares were appropriated by the Government of Liberia. Effectively the Government also expropriated Carmena's 50% as well. I had a small team go to Liberia to assess the Mesurado situation and it was a complete mess. The company had been looted from top to bottom, and anything movable had gone. Doe's government tried to get me to propose to the IFC a refinancing of Mesurado but without any benefit to Carmena ... which I rejected. I had to recommend to the IFC that they did nothing to refinance Mesurado ... but the IFC was furious. They wanted a 'project' and they were banking on our Mesurado project in Liberia as the one. I thought doing anything with Liberia and the Doe regime was insane, and basically said so. This did not go down well ... but I was vindicated a couple of years later when the World Bank stopped all financing for Liberia because of the behavior of the Doe regime. During the time when CSF was operating successfully in Liberia, the young Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson was in the Ministry of Finance in Liberia and was our CSF working contact in the Ministry. She was not treated well by the Doe regime after the coup but did escape from Liberia. I don't know how. Our paths later crossed when she became head of the Africa Division of UNDP in New York. Of course, she later elected to be President of Liberia with a huge job of rebuilding the country. Her Vice President was ____________ Bokai Peter Burgess | ||
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SYND 4 4 1978 US PRESIDENT CARTER VISITS MONROVIA BEFORE LEAVING AFRICA TO RETURN HOME
AP Archive 4.72M subscribers ... 59 likes Jul 24, 2015 (3 Apr 1978) US President Jimmy Carter in Monrovia during his short visit to Liberia. president william tolbert.
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