Liberia’s Deputy Minister for Administration at the Ministry of Information Culture and Tourism, Mr. Johnny S. Tarkpah joined dozens of African leaders at this year’s Open Government Partnership (OGP) Africa and Middle East Region conference in Kenya.
Monrovia, March 27, 2025: Mr. Tarkpah who chairs the Steering Committee of OGP in Liberia and the Point of Contac for OGP in the West African country is listed as one of the panelists and speakers at the conference which is being hosted by Kenyan President William Ruto.
The conference brings together speakers from around the African continent to share ideas on various thematic issues and is being held under the theme “Rebuilding Trust through Open Government”.
On Thursday, March 26, Mr. Tarkpah gave the opening remarks for the session on Tackling Corruption through Data: Lessons from Open Contracting, EGP, and Beneficial Ownership as one of the panellists for the session.
He stressed the need for Inter-agency collaboration among government actors on how to manage beneficial owner and public contracting by the Liberia registry and the PPCA.
Mr. Tarkpah used the opportunity to recommend that the integrated financial management information system or IFMIS be used to synchronise procurement processes as a way of minimising corruption.
In his remark, Mr. Tarkpah mentioned that before attending the OGP 2025 Regional Conference, Liberia became compliant and launched its 5th national action plan on Feb 26, 2025.
“We are now on the implementation stage with 8 government ministries and agencies making commitments to the Plan that runs for two years, from 2025 to 2027,” he said.
On the sidelines, Mr. Tarkpah was invited by AFD, the French Development Association and they expressed their willingness to work with Liberia on a number of reforms on good governance and accountability. The discussions are expected to take some high-level dimension in the coming months.
The French have been working with French speaking countries up to this point, but they now see a need to extend to Liberia.
Meanwhile, the session highlighted the lessons learned while implementing technologies namely OCDS, E-Government Procurement systems, Beneficial ownership, and the emerging Artificial Intelligence in generating data and evidence to tackle and track anti-corruption efforts.
The session also showcased different OC and BO data use cases from Kenya, Nigeria, Malawi, and Uganda at National and subnational levels.
Panellists in this session emphasized the role of local ownership and awareness of initiatives among CSOs in effective and inclusive OGP implementation.
Liberia joined the OGP in 2011 as a founding member and has since remained a member
The main aim of the OGP among other things, is to curb public sector corruption, enhance good governance and allow civil society to have a voice in National decision-making process
The Liberian delegation comprises representatives from the Government of Liberia headed by Deputy Minister Tarkpah) and civil society groups- Accountability LAB and Fly.
