Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

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Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (April 2010)

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born October 29, 1938 in Monrovia ) is a Liberian economist and politician. She was the 24th President of Liberia from January 16, 2006 to January 22, 2018 and the first woman to be elected head of state in Africa . In 2011 she received the Nobel Peace Prize .

Life

Sirleaf graduated from high school in 1955, which qualifies her to study. She is widowed and has four sons and six grandchildren.

Unlike most members of the Liberian upper class, she has no Afro-American ancestry. Her father belonged to the Gola people . Her maternal grandfather came from Germany . “My mother's father was a German dealer in Greenville in the Sinoe province . He married a country market woman there, my grandmother, ”she said in January 2006 in an interview with the British BBC . Her grandfather had to leave the country when Liberia declared war on the German Reich during the First World War. Her maternal grandmother came from the Kru people .

Sirleaf is an active member of the United Methodist Church . She was invited with George W. Bush to address the United Methodist Church's 2008 general conference as the Methodist head of state. In 2009 her autobiography My Life for Liberia was published. The first woman president of Africa tells .

For her nonviolent struggle for the security of women and women's rights, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 together with her compatriot Leymah Gbowee and the Yemeni Tawakkul Karman .

On March 19, 2012, Sirleaf defended the prosecution of homosexuals in Liberia in an interview with The Guardian .

Sirleaf's name appeared in the Paradise Papers' documents in 2017 . She was the director of Songhai Financial Holdings Ltd. from April 2001 to September 2012 . to Bermuda , a subsidiary of the investment company Databank Brokerage Ltd . The Ghanaian finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta co-founded Databank Brokerage Ltd and was co-director with Sirelaf Johnson of Songhai Financial Holdings .

Professional career

Sirleaf studied from 1961 in the USA, where she received a degree in accounting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a degree in economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder . From 1969 to 1971 she studied economics and public administration at Harvard University . She completed this course as a Master of Public Administration .

From 1972 to 1973 she was Secretary of State for Finance under President William Tolbert . After his overthrow and murder in 1980, she went into exile in Kenya , where she was Vice President of Citibank for Africa from 1982 to 1985 .

In 1985 she applied for a seat in the Senate. Her rejection of Samuel Doe's 1980 regime resulted in her imprisonment and sentencing to ten years in prison. After a short time she was released and went into exile again . From 1986 to 1992 she was Vice President of Equator Bank in Washington, DC , and then until 1997 Head of the United Nations Development Program for Africa . She also worked for the World Bank and a number of other institutions and wrote several books on African economic policy .

During the Liberian Civil War , she initially supported Charles Taylor against Doe, but later spoke out against him. In the 1997 presidential election, she ran unsuccessfully against Taylor. She received 9.58% of the vote, Taylor 75.33%. In 1999 she was one of the seven people appointed by the Organization for African Unity to investigate the genocide in Rwanda .

  • 1972–1973: State Secretary of Finance of the Liberian Government
  • 1979–1980: Minister of Finance of the Liberian Government
  • 1982–1985: Vice-President of the Africa Regional Office of Citibank, Nairobi
  • 1986–1992: Vice President and Board Member of Equator Bank , Washington (DC)
  • 1992–1997: Director of the UN Development Program, Regional Bureau for Africa
  • 1997: Party leader of the Unity Party
  • 2004–2005: President of the Commission on Good Governance (Liberia)
  • 2005: Party leader of the Unity Party; Candidate for the office of President

Sirleaf was also:

  • Founding member of the International Institute for Women in Political Leadership
  • Member of the Advisory Board of Modern Africa Growth and Investment Company
  • Member of the Finance Committee of Modern Africa Fund Managers
  • President of the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment
  • President of the Kormah Development and Investment Corporation
  • Senior Loan Officer of the World Bank
  • Vice-President of Citibank
  • between 2016 and 2017 chairwoman of the West African Economic Community

Presidential elections 2005 and 2011

After Taylor's forced resignation in October 2003, she returned to Liberia and supported Gyude Bryant's interim government . In the 2005 presidential election, she was the candidate for the Unity Party , which she had led. Also with the support of exiled Liberians (for example the journalist Joseph Bartuah ) she reached the second place in the first ballot on October 11, 2005 with 175,520 votes or 19.8% after the former soccer player George Weah , who won 28.3% of the Votes reached. On November 8, 2005 Sirleaf won the runoff election with 57.9% of the vote against Weah, who complained about irregularities in the counting. Their victory was confirmed on November 23, 2005, despite the pending complaint by the electoral commission. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was introduced to office on January 16, 2006, replacing Gyude Bryant.

In the November 2011 election , Sirleaf was re-elected with 90.2% of the vote after the opposition boycotted the runoff election.

Publications (selection)

  • The Outlook for Commercial Bank Lending to Sub-Saharan Africa (1992)
  • From Disaster to Development (1991)
  • This Child Will Be Great. Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President (2009)
  • My life for Liberia. The first woman president of Africa tells. Krüger Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009. ISBN 978-3-8105-1940-5
  • Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Inaugural Address of Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia Monrovia, Liberia January 16, 2006 . In: The African Presidential Archives and Research Center (Ed.): State of Afrika Report 2007 . 2007, Liberia, p. 72–79 (English, full text as digitized version [PDF; 6.6 MB ]).
  • Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Annual Message by Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, to the Third Session of the Fifty-Second National Legislature Monrovia, Liberia January 28, 2008 . In: The African Presidential Archives and Research Center (Ed.): State of Afrika Report 2008 . 2009, Liberia, p. 76–95 (English, full text as digitized version [PDF; 5.8 MB ]).
  • Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Annual Message by Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of the Republic of Liberia, to the Fourth Session on the Fifty-Second National Legislature (Monrovia, Liberia January 26, 2009) . In: The African Presidential Archives and Research Center (Ed.): State of Afrika Report 2009 . 2009, Liberia, p. 50–79 (English, full text as digitized version [PDF; 6.3 MB ]).

Awards

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkul Karman at the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize

See also

literature

  • Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: My Life for Liberia: Told the First Woman President of Africa . In: Autobiography . Krüger-Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 2009, ISBN 978-3-8105-1940-5 (Original title: This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa's First Woman President .).

Web links

Commons : Ellen Johnson Sirleaf  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ a b c The Nobel Peace Prize 2011: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Leymah Gbowee, Tawakkul Karman at nobelprize.org, October 7, 2011 (accessed October 7, 2011).
  2. ↑ United Methodist Church Press Center, July 6, 2006
  3. ^ Nobel peace prize winner defends law criminalizing homosexuality in Liberia . In: Guardian . March 19, 2012. Retrieved January 17, 2013.
  4. ↑ Liberia's President: Nobel Prize Winner Defends Anti-Gay Laws. In: Spiegel Online . March 19, 2012, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Panama to Paradise, Sirleaf to Saraki, African Leaders Are Always Fingered . In: The Nerve Africa . November 7, 2017 ( thenerveafrica.com [accessed November 18, 2017]).
  6. ↑ Afua Hirsch : Can Ellen Johnson Sirleaf save Liberia? In: The Observer . July 22, 2017, ISSN  0029-7712 ( theguardian.com [accessed November 18, 2017]).
  7. ^ Liberia's Sirleaf, Mahama's brother named in Paradise Papers - Inside Business Online . In: Inside Business Online . November 7, 2017 ( insidebusinessonline.com [accessed November 18, 2017]).
  8. ^ Elections in Liberia (2005). In: African Elections Database. Retrieved December 29, 2010 .
  9. ↑ Tamasin Ford: Sirleaf victory in Liberia marred by boycott and violence . The Guardian , Nov. 11, 2011.
  10. ^ Roosevelt Institute, List of Prize Winners ( March 25, 2015 memento in the Internet Archive ), accessed December 14, 2012.
  11. ↑ bp / ma / cb: Humanitarian award for President Bush. November 13, 2008, accessed January 8, 2017 .
  12. ↑ http://www.orderofmalta.int/nachrichten/71547/offizialen-besuch-der-prasidentin-von-liberia-beim-souveranen-malteserorden/?lang=de ( Memento from April 13, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  13. ↑ List of South African Order Holders 2018 thesouthafrican.com (English), accessed on 23 August 2018
personal data
SURNAME Sirleaf, Ellen Johnson
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Liberian economist and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1938
PLACE OF BIRTH Monrovia