The Liberia I saw and the uneasy road ahead

As Liberians wait with bated breath for the final results of the presidential election runoff, my mind took me back to when I first visited that country.

It was on September 15, 2014 when I accompanied then President John Dramani Mahama to Monrovia on a mission bordering on the Ebola crisis.

Mr Mahama who was the ECOWAS Chairman at the time was in Liberia and the two other Ebola-ravaged countries of Sierra Leone and Guinea to hold discussions with his colleague heads of state on sub-regional and international interventions to contain the Ebola viral disease which had killed thousands in those countries.

That was the first time I came close to Ebola - seeing what we call in Ghanaian parlance "fiili fiili", and appreciating the devastation caused by the epidemic.

The Ebola outbreak, described as the worst public health emergency in modern times, was bringing the three countries to their knees and global attention had been on how to stop the spread.

I was on the trip as a member of the presidential press corps covering the activities for the Graphic Communications Group Limited.

In response to the Ebola scare, I made my mind up not to touch anybody in the three countries since the disease spread through physical contact.

Journalists covering the visit and some few other officials left the Air Force Base ahead of the former President aboard a Ghana Air Force aircraft for our first destination, Monrovia.

Our arrival at the Roberts International Airport, about 56km outside of Monrovia gave me the first sign of a deserted nation, - there was no life at the airport.

Commercial flights to the airport had stopped for almost six months and only two cargo planes, one of them belonging to the United Nations sat on the tarmac. The two cargo aircraft had brought in medical supplies to Monrovia.

We were given hand gloves to wear as we waited for the arrival of President Mahama.

On his arrival, something striking happened. The welcoming party including President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf did not shake hands with Mr Mahama as is usual.

That was not to spite the Ghanaian leader in any way. Liberia had introduced the "Ebola Handshakes", a new form of handshake to avoid body contact and our former President was given a dose of it.

President Sirleaf just lifted up the right hand while Mr Mahama responded in like manner.

Clearly, the strides made to revive the Liberian economy were cut back by the Ebola epidemic.

In 2016, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said of Liberia, "After a decade of strong performance, growth stalled in 2014–15. The real GDP growth rate dropped from 8.7 percent in 2013 to 0.7 percent in 2014 and zero percent in 2015 as the mining and rubber sectors were hit by the Ebola outbreak and the fall in commodity prices.”

While in Liberia, I saw a country that had not fully recovered from the bloody civil war. The scars of the 14 years war that killed an estimated 250,000 and displaced hundreds of thousands of people were evident.

Most of the country's infrastructure destroyed during the war had not been fixed. I noticed terribly bad roads. I was told by a Liberian journalist that water, health and education infrastructure was nothing to write home about across the country.

The World Bank said in a 2016 report that poverty remained pervasive in Liberia, with 84 per cent of the population living on less than $1.25 per day.

However, the IIMF has predicted some measure of economic revival as a result of projected reversal of commodity price shock that hit the Liberian economy just when the country started to recover from the Ebola outbreak.

Nonetheless, the next Liberia President will be confronted with serious challenges in turning the country around.

He would have to dig deep to solve the problems of job creation, education, roads, healthcare and standard of living for the poor.

Again, the new President will have to handle the withdrawal of the 15,000 United Nations peacekeeping mission that is due to end in March 2018.

The road ahead of the next Liberian leader does not look an easy one and would therefore need hard-work and commitment to give Liberians hope for a better life.