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“We dodged bullets during the war, now Ebola is going to kill us?” my aunt asked me in distress one evening in mid-July, as we sat commiserating at my house on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia’s capital.
Back then, Ebola seemed like a looming threat in the way that armed conflict had 15 years earlier. But by the end of the month, the Liberian government had declared a state of emergency and, days later, the World Health Organisation designated the Ebola outbreak in west Africa an international health emergency. Ebola has now killed more than 1,000 people, with the number of deaths in Liberia surpassing those in Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Yet before the highly infectious disease permeated Liberia’s borders from neighbouring Guinea in March, the country was plagued by a crisis of citizenship. Relations between the Liberian state and its citizens were already volatile.
Before Ebola hit, a group of disaffected citizens clashed with riot police at the Mittal Steel concession area in Nimba, north-central Liberia, in early July as they protested that an iron ore concession agreement had not benefitted local people. The government branded the assailants “thugs” and “unlawful”, making appeals to parent company ArcelorMittal before a formal investigation of the grievances.
This was the beginning of the bubbling cauldron. Ebola simply tipped the pot over.
When looters invaded a treatment centre on 17 August, declaring that Ebola was not real and that the government was using it as a ruse to shore up donor funding, this revealed a crisis of citizenship.
When Liberians decide to hide suspected Ebola patients in their homes because they do not trust the healthcare system, this reveals a crisis of citizenship.
When healthcare workers avoid going to work because their colleagues have died without the proper protective gear or training to safeguard them from infection, this reveals a crisis of citizenship.
Those with money have the wherewithal to leave Liberia while others remain barricaded in their homes, shielding themselves from a silent killer with no cure. This also reveals a crisis of citizenship.
These actions are not those of illiterate, unreasonable people, but indicative of the desperation of poor people who have seen the state fail them repeatedly.
People in my country were angry before Ebola, and there was great cause for their ire. Liberia’s reintegration into the global capitalist system has placed profits above people and GDP growth above human development.
On the surface, Liberia’s postwar economic recovery is laudable – steady growth rates of 5.3%, 6.1%, 7.9% and 8.3% in 2009-12, respectively; $1.3bn (£783m) in foreign direct investment between 2006 and 2010 in traditional sectors such as forestry, rubber and mining; and increases in export revenue from $175m in 2006 to $295.2m in 2011. But these developments have not rendered fundamental changes in the lives of most Liberians, 64% of whom still live in abject poverty.
Liberia ranked 175th among 187 countries in the 2014 human development index – admittedly an improvement from its 182nd ranking in 2011. Nevertheless, most people lack access to electricity, health facilities, access roads, quality education, finance and secure land tenure. According to the 2010 labour force survey, 78% of Liberia’s workforce are engaged in “vulnerable employment” without a steady income, and 68% are employed in the informal sector.
Liberia is still reliant on donor aid – which accounts for more than half of overall spending on education and health – and exports of unprocessed raw materials and minerals. In the last fiscal year, there were several reported cases of budget shortfalls. The current draft budget, which should have come into effect on 1 July, has yet to be passed by the legislature. Inflation has skyrocketed. In April, the exchange rate was 79 Liberian dollars to every US dollar; by July, it was almost 90.
The lack of quality healthcare in Liberia is not from lack of financing, as most people have argued. It is from the mismanagement of funds. Contrary to what has been reported, Liberia is not poor; it is poorly managed.
Liberia must take responsibility for containing the Ebola outbreak, and any in the future. We must think and plan ahead.
We must devise a crisis response plan in emergency situations, such as an infectious disease outbreak, and create a contingency fund for this. We can do this by slashing by 10% the salaries of exorbitantly paid members of the executive and legislative branches of government, and placing those funds in an escrow account.
Liberia must strengthen its healthcare infrastructure by increasing the percentage of the national budget allotted to health, which will enable the provision of insurance packages for healthcare workers, train more doctors and nurses, and expand health coverage to rural areas. The goodwill of Liberians abroad can also be leveraged.
Liberian citizens must use the legislative elections postponed to next year and the presidential elections scheduled for 2017 to vote for leaders who have a track record in delivering public goods and supporting pro-poor development.
Just as armed conflicts ended in Liberia, Ebola too will be overcome. But when the war on Ebola ends, Liberia and its people, domestically and transnationally, must begin an earnest conversation about how to solve the crisis of citizenship.
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