Rebranding, Repositioning Liberia Thru Salient Economic Diplomacy -Minister Nyanti Stays the Course

MONROVIA – Without a scintilla of doubt, many foreign relations pundits continue to argue that Africa’s oldest republic standing in the diplomatic arena had received a bloody nose following the exit of Africa’s first female president Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf and the ushering in of the youthful but inexperienced Weah administration in 2017. Whether this is assertion is factual or not, The Analyst newspaper was among a horde of Liberian media institutions that witnessed the dazzling display of brilliance from the nation’s doyen of the Cabinet when she appeared on Tuesday, March 17 before the Liberian senate to provide a candid analysis of her stewardship at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) since she took over in February last year.  According to Foreign Minister Sara Beysolow  Nyanti, the quest to rebrand and reposition Liberia’s dwindled foreign relations hasn’t been without challenges, but her team at MoFA has been up the task in not only strengthening the foreign service, but over a relatively short time, worked to put in place mechanisms to improve the country’s passport service, among other pertinent issues.

Setting the stage for Minister’s Nyanti’s presentation during the joint hearing of the Liberian Senate of the Foreign Affairs, and Defense, Security and Intelligence Committees, Montserrado County Senator Abraham Darius Dillon informed Minister Nyanti and her team that the hearing was intended to cover a lot of issues relative to Liberia foreign relations, deployment of foreign service officials, and the challenges.

“This hearing also seeks to engage with the Ministry on Liberian students out of this country, particularly from Morocco and other areas. This hearing also seeks to engage with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as mandated by the Plenary of the Senate under the communication from Senator Edwin Snowe of Bomi County. There is an opportunity to engage ECOWAS as a country, to seek the possibility of hosting an ECOWAS institution in Liberia which will be a good thing for this country and could help with local employment of our citizens here. This hearing will seek for us to discuss and get some answers on the latest United States Government position to suggest to Liberia visa restrictions within the next 60 days if some measures are not put in place. This hearing will also seek to get answers from the Minister and her team on the issue of the sale of diplomatic passports. That issue was inherited, what’s the status, and way forward? We will also seek a full understanding of the Japanese Grant to Liberia. This hearing is being carried out live by the media for the sake of public interest,” Senator Dillon said.

Strengthening a weakened foreign service

According to the seasoned career diplomat who now manages Liberia’s foreign relations, her primary focus upon taking over the helm of leadership at MoFA was to work to strengthen the foreign service which she acknowledged the US Government had directly complained about to her. This is something she said that needed to be addressed urgently, despite the constraints of inherited budgetary allocations.

Minister Nyanti informed the Senate that this was an issue of priority because she had been approached by the US Government directly on several occasions to say that Liberia’s capacity in the US is very weak; and that there was a need for overhauling the entire Foreign Service in the United States.

“We used that as an entry point across the foreign service to look at all the needs. We have been working to ensure that we can have rotation within the Foreign Service to be able to meet the needs of the country’s representation and provide the human face so that people cannot be in a country for over 10 to 20 years. We’ve had that outlook and with that, we looked at strategically appointing ambassadors that will be relevant to different contexts and looking at the priorities in those places.

“We have been able to do that; we have been able to appoint ambassadors to strategic locations and we’ve been able to start to deploy. The constraints that we faced in relation to that had to do with resources. In trying to strengthen the foreign service, it requires significant resources to move people around, to have people sent out to the foreign service, to have people come back home. As you can recall, we have had significant pushes for us to strengthen the Foreign Service, but with the budget that we inherited, and the budget lines that we have, it is very difficult to do so. However, we have done thorough planning for the Foreign Service movement; we have had a list of people poised to be sent out to Foreign Service, people to be moved around. We are actively involved in dialogue with many of them. Some of them have been issued letters already, some have not. It’s an ongoing process, but it will take time. We cannot deploy at once because we do not have the resources to do so.

“In some of the embassies, we have people but were not on the function that existed. We have had some anomalies; we are addressing those. But I can also share with you some of the challenges that they face that we have not had the resources to address. One of them was just the living environment, the tools they needed to work, the conditions of the embassies needed painting, refurbishment, furniture, vehicles. It will require significant resources for us to be able to really meet the needs of the Foreign Service personnel.

“It is also important to note that, while we are looking at strengthening the Foreign Service, we are also looking at new areas to have representation for economic reasons. We need to look at services in Rwanda. We have over 3,000 students in Rwanda. Canada is a priority. Australia, Turkey and India, we are actively into that. Now, you would say you don’t have money for what you have already, but you are looking to open new embassies or consulates. But this is because of various demands and economic reasons as well. This is something we hope to engage you all in the Senate, if you can help us in this regard because we need to strengthen our presence.

“We did have an exercise where we’ve been running Foreign Service Institute classes. We’d like to beef up the capacity not necessarily about the person but updating them with great skill sets. We are looking to strengthen the FSI to enhance the capacity of the Foreign Service personnel,” Minister Nyanti informed the Senate.

Liberian students studying in Morocco

In providing an overview of the current situation of Liberian students studying in Morocco, Minister Nyanti informed the Senate that her Minister has been working closely with the Ministry of Education with regards to those students that are funded through scholarships and the issue of their stipends, noting that the Ministry of Education is on top of the issue.

“The Ministry of Education is on that. Up until Friday, the Minister of Education had a call with the students in Morocco. She has been able to take some steps, and I believe that she will be able to make some further clarification, but I can say the categories of students in Morocco, some have overstayed since 2013 and were not in school, some completed but are stuck there. She made efforts to disaggregate the different categories and is going outside of the norm to make sure that we repatriate our students who have completed to be brought back home, and to address some of the issues. We do serve on that Committee,” Minister Nyanti said.

Liberia & ECOWAS

As a founding member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Liberia’s role cannot be overemphasized, and no one is more aware of this fact than the current Liberian Minister of Foreign Affairs. Briefing the Senate on recent developments regarding Liberia’s quest to host one of the ECOWAS institutions, Minister Nyanti said the issue was raised during the last ECOWAS sitting when the Government of Liberia approached ECOWAS through the Chair Oumar Toure to indicate Liberia’s interest in hosting one of the ECOWAS institutions.

“Subsequently, I had a call with ECOWAS to say that we wanted to document this officially to a request. He asked us to wait until he had put in place a mechanism for member states to express their interests. A few weeks ago, he reached out with the expression of interest for countries to indicate. We want to thank Senator Snowe for his engagement with us in this regard. He has been actively discussing with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on how to go about this. We recently had a conversation about this. The two entities of the West Africa Health Organization and the Entity for Youth, we were looking at which countries are even paying for those, and we discussed that we still register Liberia’s interest in the health organization, but we will push for the youth entity,” Minister Nyanti said.

The purported US Yellow Visa Restriction List

Speaking to the Senators’ concerns over a purported US visa restriction list on which Liberia is flagged on a yellow tag, to be upgraded to tougher visa sanctions if certain actions are not taken in 60 days, Minister Nyanti was quick to clarify that although the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has contacted the US Government through its Embassy in Monrovia and was notifying of the nonexistence of such a list, the Liberian government is not taking the issue lying down.

“On the issue of the US visa, the information that we received in the news through social media was a surprise to us. We immediately contacted the US Government through the Ambassador to ascertain as to the validity. As of the weekend, the Ambassador indicated to me that he has no information in relation to this and would seek more clarification. Subsequently, we issued a demarche to the US Government that indicates that, officially, we had heard this from the report of the New York Times that is being put as draft. We don’t know if this is true or not, but should this be true, should it be valid, and then stipulate all the reasons why Liberia should not be on that list. We outlined all of the steps that had been taken by Liberia over the last one year. Succinctly, we asked the US Government to please look into it. That demarche has been issued. We look forward to hearing from the US in relation to that.

“There are a lot of speculations around why Liberia would be on that list, if it should be true. And I stress, “if it should be true”. Why do I stress that? I stress it because we have other lists circulating around here about deportation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs under my leadership went to Washington D.C. with Assistant Minister Konneh. We engaged with the key people in the administration, we engaged with the State Department, we engaged with ICE, and today, that declaration cannot be validated. So, I just want to caution us not to take that news report as a fact to run with. However, we are not taking it lightly because there could be truth to it, there could be discussions happening where we are part of the yellow list, and because of that we issued the demarche and gave all the information to the US Embassy.

“In the demarche we indicated to the US Government the work that we’ve been able to do. We started out by reminding the US Government that in February 2024, immediately upon assuming office, that I met with the US Government to address various concerns, and primary to that was for them to help us with the internal control system for processing and issuing diplomatic and privileged passports with enhanced security. We had meetings in relation to that. We followed up with a written community to that also. We also made the request for visa issuance for reciprocity of the free list.

“In March 2024, the government of Liberia established the Department of Passports, Visas and Diplomatic Intelligence and appointed a seasoned intelligence expert to head the department. And I want to use this opportunity to clarify to the public that Pearson is not the director of passport. He set up the entire department that covers the passports, visas, and diplomatic intelligence. The Director of Passport is under that department and that director’s role was headed by Joe Mendin up until his retirement. We now have an acting Paul Nyafuah who has put in significant reforms in relation to passports.

“The Diplomatic Intelligence Unit has been doing a lot of work on privileged passports. In March also, we requested the return of all privileged passports. If you can recall, a lot of work was done in relation to that. For those who didn’t comply, all those passport numbers were shared with Interpol, and we asked Interpol to please help us to address the situation.

“In November 2024, we constituted an investigative panel composed of members of the Immigration, the Liberia National Police, the National Security Agency and the Diplomatic Security Service with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the purpose of investigating cases of passport fraud. We are happy to say that the work done by Pearson and the team has led to 15 cases of fraud and impersonation being identified and handed over to the DSS within our Ministry.

“Also, we have conducted a full security audit of the passport issuance procedures. The gaps we have identified led to us restructuring, adding more personnel and changing the processes for visa issuance.

“In August 2024, I went to Washington DC and met key personnel there and we discussed the support we needed for diplomatic intelligence to strengthen our passport system. That led to a meeting in Liberia with this Government, including the CIA, the Regional Security Expert, where we discussed the support that we required from them. They wanted more clarification on the type of support.

“We have also been able to start the process for having Liberia compliant with the CAO-CECADE. We recently found out that we have been requested to be a part of that, but it was never done. That process will allow our passports to be verified at various ports of entry through an automated system. We started the process in November. By May this year, we should be fully compliant.

“We also found out that the government of Liberia was requested to send in emblems of our passport and visa stamps. The request was made by the US, Liberia never complied. We were notified about this February 2025. Immediately upon the request made to us, the same day we complied, and that has led us to have more security information.

“There is a passport that is circulating from Matthias, a German. Privileged passport does not confer citizenship. Depending on the functions someone provides to the government, they can be issued a diplomatic passport. The process we use to issue is a vetting by NSA. Matthias applied to continue being an Ambassador-at-large to the Liberian government which he had been for the previous government. That was not approved but was approved based on the Presidential Advisor on Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Wallace.

“Since we appointed him, we have had increased scholarships from Mauritius in the last months than in previous years. It is an actual function that is being carried out. He is a German citizen, and he’s entitled to a diplomatic passport. That passport was not sold to anybody,” Minister Nyanti said.

The Controversial Japanese Grant Rice Subsidy Program

Concluding her overview of the Senate’s inquiry, Minister Nyanti used the occasion to clarify on the Japanese Grant, which she said long existed before she took over the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“When we came to the Ministry leadership, we realized that the Secretariat was not being managed by anybody. We had an individual who worked with the secretariat but when it comes to accountability, there was nobody being held accountable. So, we wrote to the Japanese Government that the Secretariat should report to the Deputy Minister for International Cooperation. Steve Flahn Paye accepted and since then has been communicating directly with Minister Nyei, because the implementor cannot be responsible for oversight. There is a steering committee that is chaired by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that includes the Ministry of State, the Ministry of Finance, the PPCC and LACE. This steering committee should be making decisions. When we found out about the arrival of rice coming last year, the process was already done. We indicated that we subsequently needed to have an open bidding. The bid was issued. The Coordinator for the Secretariat then went about the process, went about selecting his own committee, implementing a process without oversight.  

“The company that won the bid was determined by the coordinator. We went back to look at it and found out that the process was not open. The Steering Committee met last week. The Steering Committee determined that the company that won the bid did so fair and square, but they agreed that they would share the service among the three who came within the final of the bid.

“The rice is on its way to Liberia and the three companies that bidded will be implementing the rice program. The Japanese did write to say they had concerns about the behavior of the coordinator for the program and requested a disciplinary action. Also, the Steering Committee also met and requested the Ministry to take disciplinary action because the coordinator acted on his own appointed committee. The rice program will go ahead according to plan and the proceeds will go towards development projects,” Minister Nyanti said.