Succeeding, Part 9 of 10

This is the ninth part of a profile I wrote of my Liberian friend Jonathan Saah. I have been posting one part each day over the past two weeks. The profile will wrap up tomorrow.

My time in Liberia has made me skeptical about the impact of certain types of development aid. Because Liberia has a female president who speaks the democratic, capitalist rhetoric that wealthy donors want to hear, Liberia is flush with aid money. It has one of the highest levels of aid money per capita of any country in the world. Yet the impact often is hard to see. Moreover, donors are vulnerable to the same corruption they exhort developing countries to purge themselves of. (The hypocrisy can reach absurdity: Jonathan and I once were listening to a radio advertisement by the UN asking Liberians to drive safely, when a United Nations Children’s Fund SUV cut us off.)

But seeing how Jonathan managed his $2,000 loan, I have become the latest cheerleader for small business loans. His relationship with this lawyer allowed for a level of accountability that is lacking in major development projects throughout the country. And it was a win-win-win situation. The lawyer’s loan was repaid, Jonathan made a profit, and Jonathan’s three employees means that three new jobs were created.

Jonathan realizes that the role Liberians are playing in their own reconstruction is understated: “I don’t think people outside of Liberia really understand what is going on here. The role of the international community is being overemphasized. I had a friend who just called me a few days ago because she heard there is oil in Liberia, that there are jobs. I told her no. We have the second largest UN peacekeeping mission but nothing is happening. The only good thing is that there is no gunfire.”