For the first time in more than 25 years, Mt Coffee is generating clean, renewable hydropower with the completion of the first of four generating units. The first hydropower turbine and generator unit, with an installed capacity of 22 megawatts (MW), was officially dedicated and commissioned on Thursday, December 15, 2016, at the project site in Harrisburg by the President of the Republic of Liberia, Madame Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. Other dignitaries attending the program were the Foreign Affairs Minister of Norway, the Commissioner for Africa of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, and the Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs of the U.S. Government. When the project is completed, Mt. Coffee Hydropower Plant will have a total installed capacity of 88 MW (four generating units of 22 MW each).

With the completion of the first unit (which is now going through various testing stages) the project is now over 80% completed with the target for overall project completion set for August 2017. This means that by this time next year, all four turbines will be installed and connected by high-voltage transmission lines to both the LEC Bushrod Substation and Paynesville Substation. The December 15, 2016 milestone is hailed as an achievement because it signifies that all the major systems of the hydropower plant, dam, spillway, substation, and one transmission line have been completed, enabling the turning on of power for the first time in so many years.

The challenge the Liberia Electricity Corporation has set for itself over the next eight months is to increase distribution lines and customer connections in Monrovia and its environs so that the Mt. Coffee plant’s full potential can be realized. Currently, the peak power demanded by LEC’s existing customer base is just 18 MW, which is less than the potential of one generating unit of the Mt. Coffee plant. LEC is planning to connect not only additional residential customers throughout Monrovia but also large commercial and industrial users to rapidly increase the demand.

The transmission line that has been built between the Mt. Coffee plant and the Bushrod Substation, and the transmission line that is currently under construction between Mt. Coffee and the Paynesville Substation, each have a rated voltage of 66 kilovolts, which is the same as LEC`s other high-voltage transmission lines that form a ring around Monrovia. //

Rehabilitation of the Mt. Coffee Hydropower Plant was proposed as an important part of the national reconstruction efforts led by H.E. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in 2011. //

According to statistics, only about 7% of Liberians have access to electricity today, and the price of electricity is still among the highest in the world due, until recently, to LECs total reliance on high-speed modular diesel generation. LEC has made remarkable strides in increasing its generation capacity during 2016, including installation of an additional capacity of 38 MW of heavy fuel oil generation (LECs first 10 MW of HFO generation was commissioned in late 2015 by President Sirleaf).

Now that LEC has begun operating its thermal plants on heavy fuel oil, and now that the first turbine at Mt. Coffee is sending hydro-powered current into the LEC system, LECs generating costs are expected to be reduced. It is anticipated that LEC will be able to announce a reduced tariff in the new year due to these improvements in LECs generating sources. //

The budget for the Mt. Coffee project is just under a U.S. Dollar equivalent of $357 million, which includes the main construction contracts for the generating equipment, hydraulic steelworks, dam and civil works, road works, substations at Mt. Coffee and in Monrovia, 50 kilometers of high-voltage transmission lines, the workers’ camp, and engineering and construction supervision; environmental and social safeguards activities; and multi-year training of Liberians both in country and overseas for the operation and maintenance of the Mt. Coffee Hydropower Plant.

Monrovia – When former President Ellen Sirleaf Johnson completed her second successive term of office last January, paving the way for her successor, George Manneh Weah to assume the mantle of authority as Liberia’s new head of state, it marked the f

When Richard Fahey returned to Liberia in 2009 to observe and discuss land disputes in the North Eastern part of the country, he was shocked to find that the country had gone backwards from when he was a volunteer in the Peace Corps in the 1960s

Monrovia International Airport also known as Roberts International (IATA: ROB, ICAO: GLRB) is the international airport of Monrovia, capital of Liberia, and the only international airport of the country.

Monrovia - President George Weah has criticized Liberian Economist Samuel P. Jackson for condemning his government in a communication, over the economic challenges being experienced by Liberians.Pres. Weah speaking Tuesday, July 23, at the dedication

click the proper Liberia county as soon as its name comes up. The faster, the better!

Two hundred years after the first Africans were transported to America against their will, their descendants sailed back to the land of their ancestors. Soon, thousands of freeborn Blacks and former slaves settled on Africa's west coast, in the land that would become Liberia, named for the liberty they so dearly sought. Liberia's growth from a "colony" with a coastline barely 600 miles long to a modern state was not without challenges, but nothing prepared Liberians for the country's devastating civil war that began on Christmas Eve, 1989, and lasted seven long years.

The untold story of America's African progeny is presented in Liberia: America's Stepchild. This dramatic documentary follows the parallel stories of America's relationship with the African republic of Liberia -- founded and backed by the American Colonization Society (ACS) and the U.S. government as a home for freeborn Blacks and former slaves -- and the settlers' relationship with the indigenous people. As seen through the eyes of Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright, the film also explores the causes of the turmoil that has ravaged Liberia since 1980.

"Today people generally think of Liberia as a disaster, but it was not always so," says producer Nancee Oku Bright. "Liberia was a founding member of the United Nations and one of the key initiators of the Organization of African Unity. It was the only Black republic in the sea of colonial Africa, and it made the colonizers very uncomfortable and the Africans very proud.

Overview of Liberia's history, ca. AD1200 - AD2000

The single currency was first planned to be introduced in 2003 but the launch has been postponed several times; in 2005, 2010 and 2014.

It is possible, although ambitious, that some countries will meet the current criteria for the 2020 deadline - the primary four being:

• A budget deficit of not more than 3%
• An average annual inflation rate of less than 10%
• Central Bank financing of budget deficits should be no more than 10% of the previous year's tax revenue
• Gross external reserves worth at least three months of imports must be available

These criteria, along with two other secondary ones, are due to be assessed by Ecowas by the end of 2019.

One of the problems is inconsistency: countries could, for example, meet the criteria next year, and then fall behind the following year.

In 2016, only one country, Liberia, met all the six conditions, and no single criterion was met by all the countries.

Economist Martial Belinga, author of Liberate Africa From Monetary Slavery, says 2020 is a symbolic goal.

If the goal is to boost trade, some analysts are sceptical that a single currency is key.

"We struggle in Nigeria alone to get produce from the north to Lagos, and to other southern parts where it can be consumed," said Sanyade Okoli, head of Alpha African Advisory.

"If goods can't move freely, how can we even talk about a single currency? she asked. "We need to address poor infrastructure, bureaucracy - the lower-hanging fruits first".

For Mr Belinga, the real impediment to trade in the region is not the lack of a single currency but that countries don't have much to trade.

"West African countries must transform their economies, with diversification and added value industries," he says.

"That's the real solution to face external shocks and volatility."

Currently, most countries rely on commodities whose prices are regulated on international markets.

Maps of Liberia

2018 Gerson L'Chaim Prize

Dr. Rick Sacra

2018 Laureate and Ebola survivor Dr. Rick Sacra of Liberia is training doctors and strengthening ELWA mission hospital.

EBOLA SURVIVOR AND MEDICAL MISSIONARY TO LIBERIA WINS 3RD ANNUAL $500,000 GERSON L"CHAIM PRIZE FOR OUTSTANDING CHRISTIAN MEDICAL MISSIONARY SERVICE

Dr. Rick Sacra voluntarily returned to Liberia in midst of deadly epidemic

When civil war ended in 2003, few Liberians trusted the government to protect them. //

Democracy Dies in Darkness

Monkey CageAnalysis

In Liberia, the U.N. mission helped restore confidence in the rule of law

When civil war ended in 2003, few Liberians trusted the government to protect them.

Women in the town of Mweso, Congo, walk past a convoy from the U.N. peacekeeping mission on April 10. (Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images)

By Robert A. Blair 

April 30, 2019 at 6:00 AM EDT

The second Liberian civil war began 20 years ago this month. All told, the conflicts that ravaged Liberia from the beginning of the first civil war in 1989 to the end of the second in 2003 resulted in the deaths of some 250,000 men, women and children, the displacement of more than 1 million civilians and the destruction of much of the country’s infrastructure.

The United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL) deployed in 2003 to help the country rebuild, and stayed until its mandate ended last year. By most accounts UNMIL was a success, shepherding in over a decade of peace and three consecutive democratic elections. What do we know now about the effects of international intervention to keep peace and restore the rule of law in Liberia and other war-wracked nations?

Yale 360: Liberia has most of west Africa's remaining trees, but can its history of conflict and corruption be overcome? Fred Pearce finds out //

Nearly two-thirds of West Africa's remaining rainforests are in the small but troubled nation of Liberia. That is a small miracle. A decade ago, Liberia's forests were being stripped bare by warlords to fund a vicious 14-year civil war that left 150,000 dead. In 2003, the United Nations belatedly imposed an embargo on Liberian "logs of war." Revenues crashed and, coincidentally or not, the war swiftly came to an end.

METAR for GLRB ROB Robertsfield Monrovia