Two Liberias; left – an elite gated neighborhood, right – informal, lower-income settlements,
Shortly after landing in Monrovia, I went to a resto-bar in an area called Sinkor. Little did I know, I was stepping into a world accessible only to a few.
By Khushali Haji
Far from being a club-goer, I found it nerve-wracking to make small talk with strangers. I pushed myself; this was a chance to make acquaintances in a country I’d barely heard of before this opportunity. Neither my U.S. nor Indian education covered nations founded by freed slaves sent to Africa.
The night progressed. I was introduced to people of various backgrounds, mostly light-skinned and seemingly successful. The ones with my shared nationality were all businessmen.
In the late hours of the night, one tipsy businessman said, “You know, people come here to make their first million.”
“Why?” I asked.
“You can buy out anyone here,” he replied with a shrug.
The exact years of the first Lebanese and Indian arrivals in Liberia are not well-documented.
Major wave of immigration from these communities came after the 1940s, drawn by President Tubman’s Open Door Policy to invest in resource rich Liberia. Historical waves of migration — from Lebanese fleeing civil war to Indians expelled from Uganda and escaping colonial restrictions in the homeland — cemented their presence. Over the next two decades, Liberia experienced significant economic growth and investment in the export of raw minerals and resources.
“But that economic growth process did not equate to economic development,” said Moses Yahmia, a Liberian human rights and political activist. “And then we started to ask the question, why?”
Cars stuck in the main road to Nimba County, parts of which are yet to be developed.
Photo Credit: Khushali Haji
Today, the economy remains dominated by non-African immigrant communities, particularly Indians and Lebanese, whose population is estimated at 4,000 each by their respective embassies. With businesses spanning real estate, retail, car imports, petroleum, healthcare, and hotels, these communities have retained privilege through various governments, despite Liberia’s long history of civil wars and coups. Based on interviews with multiple economists and entrepreneurs, together they control 60–70% of the country’s economy.
Despite this investment, Liberia’s GDP per capita remains among the world’s lowest, with more than half of the population earning less than $1.90 a day. Additionally, 94% of Liberia’s annual GDP is tied to imports, indicating a high reliance on foreign goods and services, even for products like rice and milk. The imported goods have inflated prices far beyond what most Liberians can afford. “We are spectators in our own economy.” said Dominic Nimely, chairman of the Patriotic Entrepreneurs of Liberia (PATEL). “Government after government, the same things. We are tired.”
Women working as hired help on a farm in Gbarnga, with their children to watch over them.
Photo Credit: Khushali Haji
Liberian entrepreneurs face many challenges in setting up their businesses. According to interviewees, after losing their entire savings in the war, they lacked collateral to offer banks for initial loans. Those who qualified faced high interest rates of 18–25%, unaffordable for most startups, especially given that loan repayments often started within the same month. Additionally, banks had a prevalent lack of trust in Liberian entrepreneurs.
“As soon as Liberians got the money, they would instead spend it on cars, women, traveling to the U.S.,” said David Farhat, Liberia’s former minister of finance. “And a lack of enforcement meant there were no legal consequences. ”
This distrust was mutual, according to Liberian entrepreneurs interviewed. The war left Liberian bank accounts depleted, and there were no means of keeping banks accountable for the lost savings. Even if Liberians did accumulate savings, suspicion of banks remained pervasive.
The majority of bank loans were ultimately granted to foreigners like the Indians and Lebanese. Luther Jeke of iCampus Liberia, a program to train Liberian entrepreneurs, and a former employee at the International Bank Liberia Limited, said that in the 2000s around 90% of the bank’s credit, around $50-70 million USD, went to foreigner-owned businesses. This then fed into the stereotype that Liberians had no skill-set for business.
“But for so many years, Liberians just had no exposure to business practices,” he said. “Getting business training, financial literacy, how to save, how to invest, all of it.”
The Indians and Lebanese not only had a better relationship with banks, but they also had support within themselves. Interviewees spoke of a parallel banking system amongst the community that gave credit to foreigner owned start-ups and largely excluded Liberians. With access to both community credit and bank loans, foreign businessmen could start with a few thousand dollars and quickly scale their ventures to hundreds of millions.
“A typical Indian or Lebanese comes here with a suitcase, broke,” said Lawrence Yealue, director of Liberia’s Accountability Lab, a transparency watchdog and civic empowerment organization. “In the next two years, this guy is a millionaire!”
Workers in a rubber factory owned by an Indian businessman in Bong County.
Photo Credit: Khushali Haji
Much of these profits flowed back to Lebanon and India. Foreign business people I interviewed cited political instability and corruption as reasons for not keeping their savings in Liberia. Additionally, these businessmen lacked citizenship ties to Liberia; by law, non-Black descendants could not become citizens, even if they had been born and lived in Liberia their entire lives.
“This way, the political elite could keep political power to themselves,” explained Samuel Jackson, a Liberian economist. “Otherwise, they feared foreigners would dominate politics too.”
Without access to credit or external connections, goods sold by Librarians would inevitably be more expensive because of having to pay a higher interest rate. Consequently, consumers gravitated toward the lower-priced goods offered by foreign merchants.
The five Liberian entrepreneurs I spoke with all shared stories of the challenges faced to secure credit for their startups. Whether crowdfunding through social media for a barber shop or trying to circumvent exorbitant under-the-table fees asked by the national bank for a fintech start-up, all of them had to find creative, alternate solutions and rely on family and friends for credit. Two of the entrepreneurs even gave up their businesses because they couldn’t afford the “fees” demanded by the banks for loans.
“People think Liberian owned businesses are not serious,” said Nimely. “They don’t know the bureaucracy that we go through in our own countries.”
While laws like ‘Liberalization’ or the 2010 Investment Act were introduced to encourage local ownership, enforcement was lax. Foreign companies easily circumvented regulations, often partnering with elite Liberians who looked the other way for bribes.
“Corruption is a common practice in every little thing,” said the founder of a customs brokerage firm that acts as an intermediary between merchants and the government, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. “Especially in shipping. You need to slip money here and there to ensure things are on time.”
Larger foreign businesses navigate these challenges more easily, thanks to established government connections and memorandums of understanding, while smaller Liberian entrepreneurs lacked such leverage.
“They stick to each other for business,” said Willimina Yalartai, a Liberian entrepreneur who started her own construction business a year ago. “And there is a wide margin between the two [foreign-owned businesses and Liberian ones]. If you are a Liberian company trying to make it now, it will be difficult because the market is already sold out 10 years ago.”
Business monopolies and entrepreneurial politics within the business communities are no secret. Be it rice, steel or rubber, executive orders and under-the-table bribes have enabled certain foreign businesses to establish monopolies in the market.
“In the future? ” said Jackson. “I see chaos. Future generations will look at it — trading, economy, real estate, mineral resources, and say, how did we lose all of this?”
Boys fishing in the river in Nimba County.
Photo Credit: Khushali Haji
This piece was a collaboration with New Narratives. Travel funding was provided by the Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at the City University of New York, where the author was a graduate student. The funder had no say in the story’s content.
