Speech Delivered at the AME Zion University Economics Student Association's Program

Stephen Johnson/Harvard Kennedy School. 

Distinguished academicians, Dear students, Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a great pleasure for me to be with you here at the AMEZUC and being able to address such a distinguished audience. Whenever I visit academic institutions I see myself more of an academician than just someone in statecraft. 

Let me say thank you very much to the leadership and members of the Economics Students Association for this invite. I too, some years back, was a member of an Economics Students Association. Through those years, we had busied ourselves with understanding the concepts of supply and demand. We were reading the various schools of thoughts and juxtaposing them against the Keynesians and Classicalists point of view.

Liberia ranks -0.74 on worldwide governance indicator (on a scale of -2.5 to 2.5) in the latest World Development Report but well on course to achieving middle income status in 2030 in accordance with PRSP-II projection. According to the World Bank, countries with per capita income of US$1,035 to US$12,616 are classified as middle income countries. Liberia's current per capita income is US$370 (or US$600 at PPP). This means, holding all factors constant, Liberia should attain an average GNI per capita growth rate of 6.65% or above from now to 2030 (see the rule of 70 or compound growth algebra for easy calculation) in order to reach middle income status. According to the report, Liberia's GNI per capita is currently at 7.9%.

In the years, we need to have more intellectual interaction, because we have many challenges in front of us, therefore, I also want to express my thanks to the organizers and also to the students especially the economics students for their presence here and their organizing contribution to this association. We are living in such an accelerated flow of economic times, we cannot be static. We cannot have prejudices in our minds; we cannot have stereotypes, if we want to understand this new global transformation. There is a change in the paradigm of economic order. There are developed countries and the others should reach to these countries, which were the paradigms before. But now there is a shift of economic paradigm, economic power is shifting from transatlantic to other regions. At the same time there is a question of new economic order in the sense of consumerism against economic justice.

If our people are dying because of hunger, while a few are consuming more food than the total Liberian people are consuming in one year, is this order sustainable? How do we address the issues of imbalance between lifestyles and economic power and consumption of different regions within our country? How can we develop ways the distribution of economic wealth among our people? These are the fundamental questions we ought to ask ourselves. And so, as economics students, we have to look for new solutions in helping those who do not have even the basic needs for their daily life. We need to ensure that the national interest and human responsibility to respective sectors within our geography should be balanced.

Finally, there are big challenges in the global transformation of world economics. There are challenges for us as Liberians especially in these troubling economic times that are at hand. There are challenges about job creation and employment, education and health as well as infrastructure.  But at the end of the day, it is us who will decide what the future will be. All of us, either academicians or statesmen or students or intellectuals, we have the responsibility today and at this moment should begin the process of creative thinking for the betterment of our nations and by extension all humanity. Liberia is all we have so let us work tirelessly as we strive to remove our people for the airtight cages of poverty and underdevelopment.

You too can make a difference!

Thank you very much.