The World Bank just released the 2007 Africa Development Indicators report. The report shows, among other things, how much development assistance per capita African countries receive. Liberia, with only 3.3 million people, has one of the highest rates of per capita development assistance on the continent. This should be no surprise to anyone who has spent time in Monrovia traffic, surrounded by more NGO SUVs that Liberian-owned vehicles. Liberia receives $71.9 in development assitance per person. The only countries getting more are the Republic of Congo ($362.3), Zambia ($81), and the really tiny countries like Cape Verde. Surprisingly, the Democratic Republic of Congo receives only $31.8 per person.

Some other Liberia stats from the report:

• GNI per capita: $135
• Life expectancy at birth: 42.5
• More than 2 in 10 children die before the age of 5
• Adult (older than 15) literacy rate, 58.3% for men, 45.7% for women (A promising sign is that youth literacy–ages 15-24–is at 67.4%. The rate is higher for girls than for boys.)
• Percent of children immunized for measles: 94%
• In most African countries, the amount of forest area decreased by 1% between 1990 and 2000. In Liberia forest area decreased by 6.2%. This is probably because of the ease of selling timber for weapons during the war. Guus Kouwenhoven can tell you more about it.
• Top three exports: ships, boats, and other vessels. (Around the world, more ships fly the Liberian flag (about 2,000) than any other flag except Panama. Yet only two merchant ships are owned by Liberians. This is explained by low taxes, or something like that. I’m not an expert on this. A friend recently pointed out that Ellen Margrethe Løj, the newly-appointed head of UNMIL, has ties to the shipping industry. Since 1998 Løj has been on the supervisory board of Scandlines AG and Scandlines, a Danish shipping company. Coincidence? Who knows. Does anyone have more information on this?)
• In 2004 Liberia had 0.0 physicians for every once 1,000 people. (Obviously this doesn’t mean there’s aren’t any physicians in the country, but the rate is way too low. Other countries, including Guinea, Chad, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Mauritius, had the same rate. Talk about brain drain.)
• In 2006 49.2% of Liberians over the age of 65 were working.
• The average woman has 6.8 children.

A pdf of the report is available here. A BBC article summarizing the report is available here.