The Road to National Renewal: A Liberian Scenario

Jun 25, 2009

The Road to National Renewal: A Liberian Scenario

Categories: Uncategorized

Written By: Stephenj

By: Stephen Johnson Photo by: Stephen Johnson

The road to National Recovery requires a Multi-Dimensional Approach to the developmental needs of the destitute and impoverished mass of our people. The wanton destruction and blatant human rights violations occasioned by the civil war has made every need of the Liberian people a priority meaning that an attempt to tackle one leaving the other would creates serious economic paralysis in the other. In this light, national government must embark on a triangular styled agenda that incorporates those crucial needs of our people (health, education, and the restoration of light and pipe borne water etc..). This New government should not lose track of the greater segment of our economy since they are the most vulnerable class in our society like any other third world country-the youth constitutes nearly 70% of our population. They need to build equity of their lives since a continuous being out of either academic or vocational institutions has grossly compromised most of their potentials and skills. They have been debased and pauperized by previous regimes which to a larger extent rendered them remorseless simply because they were exposed to the dehumanizing pogrom and brutality of the war. They now live in an arena of extreme-chronic dependency surviving only on transitory income. With this, Government’s national renewal policies must involve the youth largely so as to avoid political misfits and warmongers from using them as bait for the launching of insurrection. National Recovery also requires the setting of a system that would deal with the extremely well orchestrated machinery of corruption that is so entrenched in our society through the setting up of a system that fosters accountability and check and balance, Thanks to GEMAP thus far. This Government must also address the issue of unemployment through the creation of more jobs rather than downsizing in the short term. Downsizing can be achieved through the establishment of a vibrant private sector that automatically attracts people thus resulting to a sharp fall in the number of employees within government. Finally, if this new Government is to succeed, it must follow with keen interest the domestic needs and not lose its grip on the implementation of foreign policy tools as these policies must compliment each other. We need this as a masterpiece and panacea to our Herculean problems.

Jonah Soe Kotee Says:
June 26th, 2009 at 3:04 am

By Jonah Soe Kotee

Information and Communications Technologies -ICTs, including the Internet, play a very imperative function in the poverty reduction of a developing country; like Liberia. These technologies spawn revolutionize our markets, hush-hush and public sectors and our economy. They are improving our socio-economic and political activities in helping to reduce poverty, reduce debaucheries, educate and improve the minds of our people to assertively interact with local and international partners.

Information and communications Technologies (ICT) helps reduce poverty and contribute to national development in enabling networking prospectives that would reduce transaction costs, change the structures of the market by catch the attention of many investors and humanizing the skills of the local marketeers to be able to find clienteles and sell their merchandises to other regional bazaars. ICT development can also improve the global incorporation of our public services and foundations, markets, develop man power, and benefitingly accelerate the budding morals of human and cerebral capital; ICT development can supplementarily manage mammoth knowledge and can serve to empower people at community, and national levels which hold up poverty reduction.
The introduction, advancement and usage of Internet Communication Technologies generally occurred in output, growth and poverty reduction. Liberalization and opening of ICT segments, and designing comprehensive ICT regulatory policies to include the poorer community is chief to our national government of Liberia. Premeditated government intervention and support are also both generally indispensable. Poverty reduction and ICT development in Liberia should be an unequivocal constituent of our national strategies for enlargement and development. Education and technical skills are either qualifications or strong investment areas for Liberia poverty reduction strategy, which are mostly cases of major economic/social reform and reorganization. Both a national ICT-knowledge economy fixture plan and thorough ICT infrastructure outlay are essential, and there are precious imminent to the growth of Liberia economy and recovery.
The dispersal of ICT to poorer communities will help government settle in a universal enhancement key to poverty reduction – education, health and social services delivery, broader government transparency and accountability, and helping empower citizens and build social organization around rights and gender equality.
In conclusion, effectual convention includes e-commerce and market information services, translation of some web pages in local vernaculars, education, health-education, gender empowerment, social and political empowerment, and amalgamation of these in multi-purpose neighborhood give admission to investments. Poor communities in most of the world are progressively more aware of the potential of ICT development and, with some help, enthusiastic to adopt ICTs and help other communities do so. Obviously, poverty will not be stamped out by ICT development – and for many poor populations, more basic needs may take primacy. But likewise, poverty will not be eradicated without these technologies, and failure to capitalize on their latent for poverty reduction; in this PRSP/MDG epoch, would be absurd. The positive dynamic often created by ICT development and the oath of their beneficiaries and sustaining groups, appear decidedly valuable to large-scale poverty reduction objectives, and it is hard to see poverty reduction subsequent if a large part of human race is excluded from the knowledge shared by everyone else. What is done today for ICT4P will also be critical for new-fangled technology revolutions, notably biotechnology, whose essence is linked inextricably with informatics, and whose and supervision and benefits will be highly exhaustive in acquaintance, networking and prevalent ICT literacy.

Jonah Soe Kotee Says:
June 26th, 2009 at 3:06 am

ICT development and poverty reduction strategy in Liberia

Darren Wilkins Says:
June 26th, 2009 at 7:58 am

I couldn’t agree with you any more. I believe that the problems of poverty and illiteracy have to be dealt with by addressing those areas you mentioned. Health, education, and basic infrastructural facilities must be prioritized and addressed immediately.

I also believe firmly, that in addressing the above mentioned areas, the government must ensure that its strategies are in conformity with modern economic development approaches. If hospitals are to be built, the must be built to conform to modern standards; if schools are to be built, the must conform to modern standards not standards of the those of the past. This is why I advocate the injection of information technology into every aspect of the Liberia economic recovery initiative. Infrastructural development must be ICT-oriented because technology is what characterizes modern economic development. The bottom line is that the injection of technology must be concommitant to every developmental initiative because technology is our “ticket” to modernization and sustainable economic growth.

Jonah Kotee Says:
June 29th, 2009 at 2:56 am

I truely agreed with your argument flaged in your feedback; the article highlighted ICT development as a tool for poverty reduction. It did not totally belt poverty reduction to ICT but rather an enhancement to the process of poverty reduction, education, health, basic social services, reduction of corruption.

It recognized the importance of ICT in the development process: creation of jobs, attracting investors, building the capacity of our local marketeers, building and interactive and competitive communication channel and an automated system that will help reduce corruption. We both seem to be on the same path but viewing the subject matter from diffirent standpoint.

thanks for your feedback.

Jonah Kotee Says:
June 30th, 2009 at 3:49 am

I early posted an article braining some imperatives of ICT development in the poverty reduction strategy of a developing country like Liberia. But ICT development in Liberia brings also
brings along with it negative consequences which inadvertently induce technological vices that affect both the
environment and our people. To ascertain these backlashes of ICT, I carefully explaine the following points:
Lost of jobs and devaluation of professions – According to recent report by the British Broadcasting
System (BBC), Information Dissemination via the internet has led many print Medias, including Newspapers
Agencies lost millions of dollars in the United States. As many people now in the United States and other
developed countries preferred the internet over the newspapers, many writes, including journalists have lost
their jobs in recent times. The trend of development in IT has opened the possibility of lessening the cost of
acquiring information (from newspapers to the internet) but, has greatly affected people who chose writing for
living. Articles, journals and books are auctions or free published on many website thereby discouraging
future generation from engaging in writing as a career. Furthermore, it has not only imposed hardship on
writers, but also discourages future generation from following such path. Liberia cannot be isolated from these negatives consequences; we now have many journalists then ever before, the internet community and end users have dramatically increased though the penetration rate still main low. Journalist profession now in Liberia is something more than sacrifices the commitment to the process of unveiling ills.
Disintegration of labor force – the dynamic nature of IT in itself has compelled many professionals to
forcibly change their pattern of doing things. In some cases, some professions become absolutely obsolete or
void. Especially in societies where mechanical ways of doing things is dominant, IT greatly affect people in
getting them from mechanical to modern ways of doing things. The disintegration of labor is force has led to an
increase in unemployment where people look up to the internet for everything rather then depending solely on
professional in those areas of discipline. .
Serve as catalyst to criminals- Though IT stimulates growth and development; it also serves as a catalyst to
criminals and their activities. In modern IT, criminals called Hackers used software such as viruses,
spywares, malwares, and adwares to destroy and steal information from computer systems. In developed
countries nowadays, peoples used hacker’s software to rob banks and other financial installations. Just recently we have witnessed the transfer of 1 million United States Dollars by criminals into private accounts using all means of the internet, and many other real instances in Liberia.
Environmental effects- Nowadays, because of the vital nature of Information Technology, it has been
Integrated/incorporated into all professions; for example in a manufacturing company that produces chemical
products, the environment maybe polluted of this byproduct.
Cultural clash- the development in the internet has specifically disintegrated the culture of the developing
countries leaving many negatives vices like violent behavior, pornographic activities. It has also broken down
the chain of command or bureaucracy in societies of developing nations. In short the internet has thrown our
culture apart; behavior in handing communication has changed, and behavior in social interaction has changed
giving way to the Internet-culture of social interactions.
In conclusion, whilst the development and dependence of the internet on the societies of developing nations
cannot be failed to notice, we must also recognize those negative consequences that come with the
development of the internet. Some of these negative costs are cultural clash-disintegration of our culture,
environmental effects, the internet is being used as catalyst for criminal, disintegration of our labor force there
by creating unemployment, devaluation of the small percentage of skilled labor force present in developing
countries in the mist of brained drained.