President Sirleaf Thanks African Development Bank for Strong Support to Liberia - Calls for New Approaches in Dealing With Fragile States and Mano River Union

Monrovia ? President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, on a visit to the temporary headquarters of the African Development Bank in Tunis, thanked the Bank for all that it has done to bring Liberia to the level of progress it has achieved, and she made a commitment to do all the things that Liberia ought to do to enable the country to achieve the Agenda for Transformation and to see Liberia's new vision come to fruition for the prosperity of the Liberian people.

President Sirleaf also discussed with the Board such topics as ADB support to fragile states, and its Mano River Union trade corridor program. The Liberian President is current Chair of the Mano River Union, whose members also include Sierra Leone, Guinea and la C?te d'Ivoire.

According to an Executive Mansion dispatch from Tunis, the Liberian President came to the Tunisian capital at the invitation of the ADB President, Mr. Donald Kaberuka, to address the Board of Executive Directors and the Deputies of the African Development Fund as the Bank Group met for the First Replenishment Meeting for ADF-13. Among those accompanying President Sirleaf to Tunis was her Legal Advisor, Cllr. Seward Cooper, who was Chief Counsel and later the first head of the Integrity and Anti-Corruption Division of the ADB.

The Board of Executive Directors comprises representatives of all the member countries of the Bank, both African and non-African countries, who approve the Bank's policies and operations. The Deputies of the African Development Fund are the representatives of those countries that contribute to the Fund. They are the concessional window of the Bank, which lends money to least-developed countries like Liberia.

Said the Liberian President to the Board of Executive Directors: "The special circumstances of fragile states need to be addressed. They are just not the same as countries that arenormal. The capacity is weak, the resources are scarce, the imperatives of urgency are more intense in fragile states because whatever you do is to ensure that you begin to consolidate those gains and deliver to people in a much more timely fashion to manage expectations to prevent any chance of slipping back into conflict."

Of the Mano River Union countries, she said: "All of our four countries - some 40 million people - can be considered fragile because we've all been part of a regional war, one way or the other, and today we have these alliances across borders....Today, the four countries are working hard to establish regional integration and cooperation as the only means whereby each can prosper."

Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201302230450.html

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