Liberia has been influenced by the Ebola crisis since 2014, but the economy is now recovering quickly. Still, significant challenges lie ahead: Agriculture, an important sector employing approximately half of the labor force, still has a weak growth trajectory.
... See More + Many rural people are not well connected to markets and live below the poverty line. To use limited resources effectively, strategic planning and prioritization of public investment are essential. Particularly, the Ebola crisis revealed the vulnerability of the country’s transport connectivity and health systems. Spatial Analysis of Liberia’s Transport Connectivity and Potential Growth analyzes the country’s transport connectivity, identifying the existing bottlenecks and possible economic potentials. By taking advantage of the country’s first-ever geo-referenced road network data, the analysis casts light on various aspects of connectivity, such as rural accessibility, market access, access to port and health facilities, and multi-modal connectivity, including cabotage. It is shown that transport connectivity is crucial to increase agricultural production, stimulate agglomeration economies, and support people’s access to healthcare services. Significant resources are likely to be required to meet the existing gap. Spatial Analysis of Liberia’s Transport Connectivity and Potential Growth estimates the financial needs by development objective and discusses important policy issues, including the possibility of public and private partnerships to finance transport infrastructure.
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Much of Liberia’s infrastructure to generate, transmit, and distribute electric power was destroyed during 15 years of civil conflict. At the time the project was being prepared in 2009, most of the population surveyed for the project lived on less than US$2 per capita per day.
... See More + Households not connected to the electricity grid were estimated to have devoted nearly 15 percent of their monthly disposable income to energy for lighting and other applications—and as much as 50 percent considering all energy expenditures, including fuel for cooking. Reestablishing and expanding access to modern energy services is critical to facilitate social integration in the country and support the government’s efforts in post-conflict reconciliation and reconstruction. A rapid expansion of the power network and a widespread program to connect more households in Monrovia aims to help achieve maximum improvements in electrification. But Liberia had its own challenges: at the project start, Liberia had the highest power tariffs in Africa and was the only country in the world without a public distribution network. Moreover, during implementation, the Ebola pandemic struck.
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Transport connectivity is among the most important factors in increasing firm productivity and accelerating economic development. The literature generally supports the idea of agglomeration economies, although there is little evidence of their effectiveness in Africa.
... See More + There are often empirical challenges, such as spatial externalities and endogeneity of infrastructure development. Using firm registry data in Liberia, this study used the instrumental variable spatial autoregressive model to examine the effects of transport connectivity on firms' decisions on where to locate. The study found significant spatial autocorrelation and possible endogeneity related to transport infrastructure, and that firms are more likely to be located where market accessibility is better. The data indicated strong agglomeration economies, indicating that the primary city, Monrovia, is likely to continue to grow and attract more people and firms, and that secondary cities can also grow with greater transport connectivity between populated areas, such as district centers.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8411 APR 18, 2018
Health care access is an important policy concern, especially in rural areas. It is especially challenging in developing countries, where rural residents are poorer and less likely to be insured than those living in urban areas.
... See More + Using the case of Liberia, this paper examines the effects of transport connectivity on health care access. The Ebola crisis in 2014 and 2015 clearly revealed the vulnerability of the country's transport and health systems to unexpected external shocks. Paying particular attention to the possible challenge of endogeneity associated with infrastructure investment, the study found that transport connectivity, especially greater road density, can increase access to health care, but there was no significant effect of road quality. This may be because of significantly skewed underlying data. The vast majority of roads in Liberia are in poor condition. The study also found that the statistical effect of road density varies depending on distance from a health facility. The effect is particularly significant within a 30- to 50-kilometer radius. Not only rural accessibility, but also broader transport connectivity needs to be developed to increase health care access.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8413 APR 18, 2018
Using surveys and administrative data from post-war Liberia, the hypothesis that peacekeeping deployments build peace "from the bottom up" through contributions to local security and local economic and social vitality was tested.
... See More + The hypothesis reflects official thinking about how peacekeeping works via "peacebuilding." A quasi-experiment was created by applying coarsened exact matching to administrative data used in mission planning, identifying sets of communities that were similarly likely to receive peacekeeping bases. The analysis finds nothing to support claims that deployments increase local security and finds only modest effects on economic or social vitality. Nongovernmental organizations tend to work in areas where deployments are not present, contrary to the hypothesis. Thus, it is less likely that peacekeepers build peace from the bottom up, leaving mechanisms such as signaling and deterrence at the level of leaders as worthy of more attention. For policy, peacekeeping missions should reevaluate their methods for providing local security.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS8389 MAR 29, 2018
The key objectives of the Liberia Country Forest Note are to (a) identify opportunities and shape a more programmatic approach to the World Bank's engagement (that is, further analytical support, policy actions, and investments) and (b) guide coordination with other development partners in the sector.
... See More + The gaps and opportunities identified in the CFN recognize the unique challenges of the forest sector in a post-conflict country and the need for programmatic engagement by leveraging appropriate financing instruments consistent with the national macroeconomic framework. The CFN goes beyond the focus of the last three decades—on extracting maximum commercial benefits from the forests—and emphasizes the potential for livelihoods and employment in the forest sector, cognizant of the Government’s goals of sustainable management of forests and their enhanced contribution to Liberia’s economy. Gaps and opportunities, as well as key actions, are structured along the Forest Action Plan focus areas (with some adjustments) of (a) sustainable forest management (SFM); (b) sustainable forest value chains; and (c) cross-cutting areas (land use, climate change, and governance and institutions).
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The Enterprise Surveys (ES) focus on many aspects of the business environment. These factors can be accommodating or constraining for firms and play an important role in whether an economy’s private sector will thrive or not.
... See More + Questions contained in the ES aim at covering most of the topics mentioned above. The topics include infrastructure, trade, finance, regulations, taxes and business licensing, corruption, crime and informality, access to finance, innovation, labor, and perceptions about obstacles to doing business. This document summarizes the results of the Enterprise Survey for Liberia. Business owners and top managers in 151 firms were interviewed between July and September 2017. The report provides a description of the sample breakdown across the three survey design categories: business sector, firm size, and location.
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Doing Business 2018 is the 15th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Liberia. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies; for 2018 Liberia ranks 172. Doing Business measures aspects of regulation affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking. Data in Doing Business 2018 are current as of June 1, 2017. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.
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The Country Opinion Survey in Liberia assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Liberia perceive the WBG.
... See More + It provides the WBG with systematic feedback from national and local governments, multilateral/bilateral agencies, media, academia, the private sector, and civil society in Liberia on 1) their views regarding the general environment in Liberia; 2) their overall attitudes toward the WBG in Liberia; 3) overall impressions of the WBG’s effectiveness and results, knowledge work and activities, and communication and information sharing in Liberia; and 4) their perceptions of the WBG’s future role in Liberia.
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SABER-Tertiary Education is a diagnostic tool to assess how education systems perform and to identify priorities for reforms at the national level.
... See More + It is part of the World Bank’s Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER), which aims to benchmark education systems at the country level. This report proceeds as follows. First, the authors will describe the context of the tertiary education system in Liberia. The authors will then proceed with a summary of the considerations when scoring the six policy dimensions. Finally, the authors will conclude with a few general observations about tertiary education in Liberia.
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Five weeks prior to the 2011 general election in Liberia, women in randomly selected villages were allocated radios and organized into groups to listen regularly to radio programs on the electoral process broadcast by the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL).
... See More + The field experiment was designed to ascertain the direct effects of women's access to politically-relevant information through radio broadcasting on their political behaviors and attitudes in a post-war context. Results point to positive significant effects of access to United Nations Mission in Liberia Radio on female political participation both at a national and a local level. Communities that received the intervention also exhibited smaller gender gaps across the majority of outcome indicators. The results suggest that UNMIL Radio effects likely occurred through increased political efficacy of women voters in the lead up to the elections. The study concludes that women's exposure to politically-relevant information through mass-broadcasting, even if brief, can boost their political efficacy and participation in public life.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7942 JAN 17, 2017
This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Liberia. To allow useful comparison, it also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator.
... See More + Doing Business 2017 is the 14th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business; for 2016 Liberia ranks 174. Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, and labor market regulation. Doing Business 2017 presents the data for the labor market regulation indicators in an annex. The report does not present rankings of economies on labor market regulation indicators or include the topic in the aggregate distance to frontier score or ranking on the ease of doing business. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2016 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January-December 2015).
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This report presents findings from the baseline assessment of International Rescue Committee's (IRC) Girl Empower (GE) program in Nimba County, Liberia.
... See More + GE seeks to help 13 to 14 year-old girls make healthy life choices and decrease their risk of sexual abuse. The program centers on weekly meetings between girls and trained local mentors, during which the girls learn about life skills and financial literacy. GE also holds monthly discussion groups for participants' caregivers, and trains local health and psychosocial care providers on how to improve and expand services for survivors of gender-based violence. This baseline report is part of a cluster-randomized controlled trial, which aims to assess the program's impact 24 months after baseline. 21 percent of the baseline sample of 13-14 year-old females reported having previously had sex. Within this group, 29 percent indicated that their first sexual act was non-consensual. Among all GE girls, 37 percent reported having experienced sexual violence of some type, such as being physically forced to have sex, non-physically pressured (coerced/persuaded) to have sex, someone unsuccessfully attempting to have sex with them, and being touched in a sexual way. The levels of nonconsensual first sex and any experience of nonconsensual sex are at the high end of the range reported by the UNICEF Violence against Children Surveys (VACS) in Swaziland, Tanzania, Kenya and Zimbabwe. As the VACS reporting is for (a variety of) age ranges, each of which is higher than that in this study, the levels of sexual violence reported here are very high in comparison.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7797 AUG 16, 2016
The labor force in Liberia is quite young. Youth aged 15 to 34 constitute over a third of thepopulation in Liberia and are somewhat concentrated in urban areas, according to the 2008census.
... See More + These youth represent both a demographic dividend and a concern. The educational attainment of Liberian youth is steadily improving but remains low on average.Youth recognize that their lack of skills and experience are impediments to employment.The objective of this report is to assess youth skills development in Liberia.Given the composition of Liberia’s economy and the concentration of the labor force outside formal employment, this report has a particular focus on skill development in vocational trades and the informal sector. This report comprises three analyses. Section Two constructs a profile of Liberian youth from existing administrative data are studied to enable a more detailed understanding of the current skill levels among working youth. Section Three first assesses skills development providers based on new survey data summarizes the results of original analysis carried out on data collected on a sample of 139 skill providers’ training offerings, capacity, target beneficiaries, and other criteria. Next section three goes on to present young trainees’ perceptions of skills development opportunities and limits, based on 354 interviews with recent trainees. This report contributes to the Government of Liberia’s Agenda for Transformation (AfT) and the World Bank’s Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) 2013-2017. Both recognize that inadequate skills and vulnerable employment are key constrictions on rapid, inclusive and sustainable growth.This report provides practical recommendations that align with pillars of the National Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Policy 2015-2020. This report makes recommendations specific to three pillars: promoting productivity in the agricultural sector through TVET, promoting productivity in the informal sector through TVET, and financing TVET.
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The paper shows that self-control, time preferences, and values are malleable in adults, and that investments in these skills and preferences reduce crime and violence.
... See More + The authors recruited criminally-engaged Liberian men and randomized half to eight weeks of group cognitive behavioral therapy, fostering self-regulation, patience, and noncriminal values. They also randomized $200 grants. Cash alone and therapy alone dramatically reduced crime and violence, but effects dissipated within a year. When cash followed therapy, however, crime and violence decreased by as much as 50 percent for at least a year. They hypothesize that cash reinforced therapy's lessons by prolonging practice and self-investment.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7648 APR 20, 2016
This paper aims to provide a very distilled summary of the concepts shaping the discourse around state-building in fragile, conflict-affected situations, and to explore some of the operational implications for international development practitioners working in these settings, drawing on experience from two post-conflict countries.
... See More + The paper arises out of a collaboration between Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (UNDP) and the World Bank’s Fragile and Conflict-Affected Countries Group to strengthen their analytical work and guidance to country offices in the area of state building, and to extend interagency cooperation at headquarters and field level. This paper, and the operational guidance it proposes, is a product of the missions to Sierra Leone and Liberia, and its principal audience is country office staff in fragile and conflict-affected settings. The material in this paper is organised around four themes:(i) Current concepts and theory on state-building; (ii) Our practical experience with applying a state-building lens to specific aspects of programming in Sierra Leone and Liberia; (iii) Some operational considerations on approaching statebuilding in fragile, conflict-affected settings; and (iv) Proposals for what an overworked country office can do to support state-building. This paper sits alongside a detailed report on, Donor Support for Capacity Development in Post-Conflict States: Reflections from Two Case Studies in West Africa, which was also developed as part of the UNDP-World Bank collaboration and field missions.
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This report presents findings of a case study on Liberia2.The first section offers a landscape analysis of Liberia, looking at the regulatory and operating environment, existing ICT use in the WASH sector and the current state of ICT policy.
... See More + The second section then looks specifically at the case study of AkvoFLOW. The study is based on consultations with key water sector stakeholders in Liberia, along with literature on ICT for development and the sampled applications. The stakeholders that were consulted during the preparation of this report are presented in Annex A.
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This economy profile for Doing Business 2016 presents the 11 Doing Business indicators for Liberia. To allow for useful comparison, the profile also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator.
... See More + Doing Business 2016 is the 13th edition in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business; for 2015 Liberia ranks 179. A high ease of doing business ranking means the regulatory environment is more conducive to the starting and operation of a local firm. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe and over time. Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency and labor market regulation. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2015 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period from January to December 2014).
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This country data report summarizes the data from the worldwide governance indicators (WGI) project for Liberia. The WGI report six aggregate governance indicators for over 200 countries and territories over the period 1996-2014, covering: (i) voice and accountability, (ii) political stability and absence of violence and terrorism, (iii) government effectiveness, (iv) regulatory quality, (v) rule of law, and (vi) control of corruption.
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A field experiment in rural Liberia is used to study democratic participation in fragile states. Fragile states are marked by political fragmentation, local patronage systems, and voter vulnerability.
... See More + To understand the effects of such conditions on democratic expression through elections, the experiment introduced new forms of interaction between rural citizens and third-party actors: (i) civic education and town hall workshops directed by non-governmental organizations in communities over nine months and (ii) security committees that brought rural community representatives into monthly exchange with United Nations peacekeepers. Civic education workshops increased enthusiasm for electoral participation, produced a coordinated shift from parochial to national candidates, and increased willingness to report on manipulation. A program combining the two interactions had similar effects. The security committees had negligible effects. Barriers to political information and voter coordination appear to be important but resolvable problems for elections in fragile states.
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Policy Research Working Paper WPS7370 JUL 15, 2015
