Boakai’s Trump Plea Unmasks Liberia Governance Deficit -Pundit Says Survey Request is Call for Further Impoverishment   

MONROVIA – 178 years old this month, Liberia does not know its own mineral or natural resource worth, at least that is the impression conveyed by President Joseph Boakai when he made a passionate plea to the world’s powerful leader, US President Donald Trump, at the White House in Washington D.C., the wide world looked on via the media. JNB’ apologists have been cheering for his presentation, saying he could not afford to ‘eat crab with shame’, as it is the fact that the Africa’s oldest republic does not know its own worth and needs America’s help. But a Ghanaian blogger has powerfully damned the ‘shameful request’, stating that it not only exposes leadership deficit in the country, and generally in Africa, but also confirms a scramble by some African countries for voluntary enslavement and pauperization by neo-colonialists. The Analyst reports.     

Liberia’s president, Joseph N. Nyuma, has since departed the United States of America where he and other four leaders were invited as special guests of President Donald Trump, and the cost of the trip – politically, economically and diplomatically – is being counted.

So far, Boakai’s ‘beautiful English’ storm has largely stolen the show, as both national and international news networks and analysts have been discussing the merit and demerits of Trumps’ description of Boakai’s supposed mastery of the English language and the inquiry of where Boakai “learned English from”—where he learned how to “speak English so beautifully”.

But seems not too many of the national and international discussants of the Boakai presentation before Trump’s imposing watching eyes have taken notice of what seems to be perhaps the most consequential or substantive backdrop of the encounter: the request by the Liberian head of state to ask host Trump to come to Liberia to conduct a mineral survey.

Guest Boakai said to host Trump: “We also go a long way with your diplomacy that has to do with economic development and commercial friendship. Liberia has a lot of minerals. One of the things we ask as good friends for a long time is the opportunity to do survey on our minerals.”

All but this survey-request comment, other can call it a plea, made by the Liberian leader is not going down well with the pan-African commentator Cyrus Harvey Annan.

In his podcast less than 24 hours after Boakai made the request at the White House, Annan hooted an outburst: “Ladies and gentlemen, the president of Liberia doesn’t know the implication of what he’s asking for. But believe me, by the time the US exploration companies are done exploring Liberia, they would also own all the rich lands across the country. That is what is going to happen and I promise you that, this is how Africa is losing every day.”

He continued: “At least in the worst case scenario when you decide to go the Americans or to any country for that matter go with a report or data in your hands for investment, you do not go to them and ask them to do a report for you and also mine for you. It’s either you pay an exploration company to do it for you and leave or you invest in the exploration equipment and the technical knowhow and you do it yourself. Ladies and gentlemen, that is how Africa should have gone.”

He said as a matter of fact that Liberia is indeed endowed with substantial volume of minerals deposits which are ideally advertised by Boakai to Trump.

Liberia, he said, has “commercial deposits of gold, iron ore, bauxite, and manganese and diamonds. They currently have foreign companies exploring their coast for offshore oil and gas deposits but that it is problematic with how “we go about solution to our problems”.

“This is the problem. So, we depend on foreign companies for data and attract investors with it. And that’s what the president of Liberia is asking for from president Trump and the US government. And in my heart, ladies and gentlemen, I know President Trump is salivating. He’s licking his lips and rubbing his hands and cannot wait to sign deals because this is the kind of door that makes companies billions. And America has so many of those companies in line.”

He further emphasized that for nearly 180 years, Liberia didn’t focus on building a country, but rather focused on going back to America, and in the next 20 years “we will be here again saying the same thing because we still did not understand the need for investing solutions from within. The idea of looking for investment is short term. The solution lies in setting yourself up to produce for yourself the manpower and the investment for consistent production.”

The problems We Have

The reason is this, the podcaster said, “Our solutions aren’t homebred. Our solutions are imported. It took China 30 to 40 years to maters the westerners and not need them for such projects. But we have gone for 60 years already [Liberia 178 years] and we still haven’t discovered the road to master them yet.”

Speaking of Africa generally, he said: This is the fundamental problem we have. The problem is we know we have a lot of minerals under our feet but we don’t know how much minerals we have. Right there and there is a problem. It is a problem because knowing what you have means nothing at this point. We know what we have already but what we can do about what we have that makes the difference. Knowing how much gold you have or knowing that you have gold in the land doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t make you rich in itself.

“It is a problem because we have not invested anything into knowing how much deposit we have and how to get it out for our own selves. So over the decades we invite foreign exploration companies to come in and explore the land and its resources and give us that data. From oil exploration to gold, cobalt, uranium, we haven’t invested in the technology and the technical knowhow to explore these minerals ourselves.”

He said the truth of the matter is this that exploration companies will never provide a country with a complete document.

“They will never do. The data they give the host country will be significantly different from the data they provide for themselves and their investors,” the political commentator said. “That is how it’s done. Africa has learnt nothing even till now. This is the kind of door you open to foreigners and complain later. This is what they have done in Ghana and captured the richest parts of our gold deposits.”

Adding, Mr. Annan contended that foreign companies would come in explorations companies, discovered the volume of deposits of gold and other minerals and sold that data to a mining company and then the mining company like Newmont reaches to Ghana and begins to buying the concessions.

The Chinese Experience

He recalled how the Chinese government established universities purposely for every single necessary aspect of their economy, for instant, having universities for robotics alone which works with companies for both theoretical and practical jobs, giving young people on the job experience, including having universities for explorations and mining alone.

If China wants to explore for resources in its country, it has the Chinese companies and the technical students available to initiate it. This is what predicts success.

“They have several universities for manufacturing and production,” he said further. They have built a system for themselves which now does not require any foreign entities to be operational. They have set up the educational system that produces the experts they need to every type of project.  How often do you see westerners on Chinese media working on any of these strategic enterprises? How are we ladies and gentlemen, been handling our businesses?

Liberia Universities Woes

The Ghanaian blogger contrasted Liberia’s education system with the Chinese’s. He said: “Liberia is a country that has only three public universities, all doing the same programs. The rest of their universities are privately owned. They don’t really specialize in anything. Meanwhile, this is a country that hasn’t been colonized like the rest of African countries. Since 1847, when the Americans brought free slaves and Caribbean to that country, they have always been free.

Inundating Liberia with Foreign Companies

The pan-African podcaster said Trump and the US companies are definitely going to rush in on the Liberia president’s invite, and every soon, long term deals would be signed and generations will come back later and ask but why.

“If we are honest to ourselves, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll see that to some extent it isn’t the American or Westerners who impose their companies or businesses on us,” Mr. Anna further warned. “It is the other way around. We go there and they give us all these clauses to protect themselves. And investor is not a Santa Clause but a capitalist. They will come in and make you dry. Learn to develop capacity in Africa. You are way too vulnerable and easy to be manipulated.”

The pundit went further to expose the lack of innovation and nationalism as some of the main causes of underdevelopment on the continent, noting that over the decades, successive African governments continue to invite foreign exploration companies to come in and explore the land, expend resources and provide inaccurate data that are different from the ones that are shared with investors.

He said: “From oil exploration to gold, cobalt, uranium, we haven’t invested in the technology and the technical knowhow to explore these minerals ourselves. This is the problem. So, we depend on foreign companies for data and attract investors with it. And that is what the president of Liberia is asking for from President Trump and the US Government. In his heart, I know President Trump is salivating. He’s licking his lips and rubbing his hands and cannot wait to sign deals because this is the kind of door that makes companies billions. And America has so many companies waiting in line.”

As for Jimmy B. Newton of New Georgia, President Boakai is no different from other Liberian leaders who will leave Liberia just as he met it.

“This administration came to power on the mandate to rescue the country from backwardness. I did not see or hear any tangible plans that our President showed the Americans. Gabon signed a US$500 million foreign direct investment deal during the Washington Summit because they came prepared with data,” Newton said.

President Boakai’s appeal to the Americans to assist Liberia conduct survey on its minerals comes against the background of his 2025 State of the Nation Address to the 55 Legislature where he informed the country that his government had received a mineral resource survey report from the Government of the People’s Republic of China.

“This report provides now insights into Liberia’s mineral resource potential and represents the most comprehensive scientific investigation conducted in over five decades. We extend our gratitude to the People’s Republic of China for funding this important project,” Boakai said at the time.

Immediately upon his return to Liberia from the US-Africa Summit, when journalists queried him about his comprehensive scientific investigation statement, the Liberian leader said he never said the report was comprehensive.

“I didn’t say comprehensive. The survey was done on two counties. While we asked the Chinese to continue, we also asked the Americans. We want to know what we have to plan for it. We don’t have the technology. We don’t know how long the Chinese will take, but our interest is to make sure that we know what we have,” President Boakai said.