-Regional Peace and Security, Peaceful Transfer of Power, Regional Collaboration, MRU, ECOWAS, Trade,Tourism
By Alusine Sesay
Liberia Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sara Beysolow Nyanti
Exactly one –year after he was elected into office in November 2023,President Joseph Nyuma Boakai of the Republic of Liberia and a team of ministers on Monday arrived in Sierra Leone on a two-day working visit. As sister countries, Liberia and Sierra Leone share similar experience of brutal civil conflict that devastated the two countries. The wars badly affected the two countries in diverse ways, including the economy, education, governance and development. Despite all the odds the two countries remain resilient with democracy restored. During their visit to Sierra Leone, Concord Times caught up with the Liberia Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sara Beysolow Nyanti.
CT : Can you tell us why the Liberian Government is here in Sierra Leone?
Minister: We are here as part of President Boakai’s delegation, to pay his first working visit to Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is a country where our President went to school. Our President speaks the local languages: he speaks the Krio, he speaks the Mende. He went to school in Kenema. And he is very-very fond of Sierra Leone. And so this trip here is his first working visit where President Julius Maada Bio asked him to come and spend a couple of days here, to be at home.
We came to honour President Bio’s invitation, but also to do some work. And so we are here meeting with different ministries, and we came looking at Sierra Leone’s own experiences, so we can learn but also share our own experiences. And we are looking at key areas like agriculture, we’ve talked about food security a lot. We spoke about things we can do together in relation to technology, information – so many different areas we discussed. The working visit is a two-day working visit, today and tomorrow. And we will leave on the 21st.
CT: So we’ve been having security issues within the West African Sub-region, but Liberia and Sierra Leone and other countries within the Sub-region have maintained a peaceful atmosphere. Probably, the two countries are examples in terms of peace. The security nature in the West Africa region currently is shaky, wherein we are having military regimes in the other countries. How can both countries strengthen ECOWAS to reinstate civilian governments in those countries?
Minister: Firstly for us, from the Liberian perspective, we believe that charity begins at home. And so first and foremost for us at the Mano River Union, we believe very strongly that revitalizing, revamping and reinvigorating the Mano River Union will lead to a stronger MRU, a stronger ECOWAS and a stronger Africa. So, we are working with Sierra Leone, Cote D’ivoire and Guinea for us to come back together as a stronger family. We have taken many steps towards that. Liberia has invited all of the foreign ministers to Monrovia earlier this year, along with defence ministers and finance ministers. We also discussed how we vitalize the MRU. Subsequently, Liberia has played a key role in bringing all of us together to sign a roadmap with Morocco for the MRU, so that they help in building a new secretariat.
Sierra Leone has been very gracious. Sierra Leone has shown leadership in hosting the MRU. But also Sierra Leone has given land for the new secretariat. And we want to make sure that we build on what Sierra Leone has done to mobilise resources together. Through the roadmap we signed with Morocco, which Liberia initiated, we can move forward and have the Secretariat, then access the resources from Morocco and start to build the MRU Secretariat. That is all towards the need for peace and security in the home. When I say the home, mean countries in the MRU are a family.
Peace and security in the MRU region will lead to Peace and Security in the ECOWAS Region.
Guinea has participated in the meetings. We have signed MOU – Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia. Cote D’ivoire just informed us this week that they are ready to sign as well.
CT: So, are you working with the Guinean regime?
Minister: Yes, we signed an MOU on security. All three countries have signed – Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone, on information sharing, intelligence sharing, joint patrol and now Cote D’ivoire is maybe signing into that MOU as well.
CT: In terms of peaceful transfer of power, like I said, the uniqueness of your country, wherein a regime served for one term and then didn’t survive a second term. And you transferred power peacefully. What can Sierra Leone learn from that?
Minister: Peaceful transition has to be intentional. You must want it. If President Buakai didn’t want a peaceful transition, we would not have had a peaceful transition.
If President Weah didn’t want a peaceful transition, he wouldn’t have conceded. He conceded. But then, all the processes after concession, there were many different points where we would have had serious challenges, but we overcame them because we were intentional that there would be no chaos.
You must be intentional about peace. Because if you’ve had war like our countries have heard, you must be intentional about peace. You must decide that some things are not worth it for chaos in your country. Because we all can see: it is easy to tear down, but it is difficult to build. So intentionality around transition, for me, is very important. So we had a situation where there was one term and then there was a loss, and there was a peaceful transition because Liberians chose peace.
What Sierra Leone can learn is that there are some things more important than fighting. Peace is more important than fighting. Is OK to let go, and live another day than to go back to where we have come from.
CT: So like you said, you’ve been here and met with some government ministers. What are some of the areas of collaboration between Sierra Leone and Liberia?
Minister: Agriculture, Agriculture, Agriculture! Because our two Presidents want to feed their people. They want us to be food secure; they want us to be food self-sufficient. And so agriculture has been the main discussion point. We discussed the Feed Salone program. We discussed the land that we have in Sierra Leone and Liberia, the water that we have and the human beings we have. There is no reason why we should not feed ourselves.
So, we discussed how we can learn from each other. But one of the things we also discussed in the context of the Mano River Union is that we should have a common Market place. Meaning, there should be no barriers to trade. If my market I set up for palm oil can be successful, let it be successful not only for the 5.4 million Liberians or the 7.8, whatever in Sierra Leone, but for the combination of almost 14 million. Your market should be looking at 14 million, or you look at four countries. Your market should be looking at almost 16 million in the Mano River Union. Cote D’ivoire has almost 30 million people. Imagine, Guinea has about 14 million. When we put all the countries together, we will make one common market place.
Imagine the economic growth in the Sub-region. So those are the things we talked about today. Our President had very good conversations about that. We are optimistic about that. What he said is that which ECOWAS has been talking about for a very long time. In the MRU, we can do it. We can make one common market place among the four countries. If the four countries don’t do it, the two can do it – Sierra Leone and Liberia. We can come along and bring other countries.
So, we had very good conversations. We talked about misinformation. How do you manage social and artificial intelligence, all these things, in the wake of governance. And how people can use those tools to undermine governance. We talked about all of that, so very rich conversation about technology, private sector, trade and investment, education. We had many conversations that we hope will lead to a stronger collaboration between the two countries. One thing we discussed, and we thank President Bio for that, was regional funding, regional projects. Besides the MRU rollback we signed with MORACO, President Bio introduced the idea for agriculture, infrastructure, and Millennium Compact challenge. Why can we do a compact for a multi country approach to agriculture and infrastructure? So many good ideas came up and we are looking to take them forward.
CT: What about Tourism?
Minister: We didn’t discuss tourism lengthily, but we had a follow up meeting with the two Tourism Ministers. The Deputy Minister who covers Tourism in Sierra Leone will be meeting with our own Minister of information, culture and Tourism because Sierra has made steps beyond what we have done. We want to learn from Sierra Leone as it relates to tourism.
As a Minister of Foreign Affairs, how will you strengthen relations between Sierra Leone and Liberia?
One of the things I didn’t speak about before which is strongly applicable to your earlier question is around the UN Security Council. First of all, the two foreign ministries – Sierra Leone and Liberia are much close. Sorry about your Minister’s accident, but we work too closely together. And the fact is that both countries have come from war, we’ve had peacekeepers; we’ve had peacekeeping missions and we are now the ones that are sitting on the table. Right now Sierra Leone is at the Security Council speaking, not as a recipient country, but as a country with a vast amount of experience. Liberia plans to follow Sierra Leone at the Security Council. We are bidding for the seat at the Security Council. So I know that the experiences that Sierra Leone has had, we will work on it and build strong on it for the Security Council.
CT : So on your visit to Sierra Leone, what was new?
Minister: So, the conversation for agriculture and infrastructure, MCC Compact, and the possibility of that. The other thing that was new is the opportunities we had around information. We didn’t think about information and communication as part of the major areas, but we found it’s a major area. Technology, interconnectivity as well – the fiber optics . We have one cable. How about we have another cable that can serve multi-purposes. So we had discussions that were new.
