Boss Lady - Madame President: The Extraordinary Journey of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf by Helene Cooper

Elected female heads of state are rare all over the world (the US is yet to produce one for example) and they are rarer still in Africa, where chauvinism is probably still entrenched to a greater extent than it is in many other parts of the world. For a woman to shatter this presidential glass ceiling in Africa is a remarkable feat but even more remarkable to see this happen in a post-conflict state like Liberia where extreme violence against women was a key aspect of the country’s dreadful civil war. The remarkable woman who achieved this feat was Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the subject of this engaging biography by Helene Cooper – a Liberian-born American journalist at the New York Times.

As someone with very limited knowledge of Liberian history, beyond the fact that Nigerian soldiers went as peacekeepers in the 90s, I appreciated the fact that the book provides the reader with a summary of Liberian history and the complex socio-political dynamics between the settler community of freed American slaves and the various indigenous tribes they met there. That the oppressed (the Americo-Liberian settlers – often referred to as “Congos”) became the oppressor (of the indigenous tribes) is an unfortunate and all too common aspect of human history. This complex history is also embodied in the person of Ms. Sirleaf, who although often assumed to be Americo-Liberian stock is actually not Americo-Liberian at all (the light skin is courtesy of a German grandparent). However, this has not stopped her from being regarded with suspicion by many through her career as being culturally Congo.

The book does a great job chronicling the efforts and sacrifices made by Ms. Johnson Sirleaf in advancing the cause of economic development in her country. We start from her time as a midlevel finance ministry official in 1960s Liberia to her time in the World Bank in the 70s and subsequent return to the country to serve as Finance Minister in the government of William Tolbert – the last of the long line of Americo-Liberian Whig Party presidents who was brutally murdered by coup-leader Samuel Doe in 1980, to her imprisonment and near-death experience under Doe’s brutal regime and her leaving a cushy job at Citibank to contest against Doe in a rigged election in 1985. She also kept up her advocacy and interest in Liberia while occupying a succession of senior jobs in multilateral organizations during the country’s civil war in the 90s. What I found most striking is how Liberia kept remaining in her consciousness and exercising her mind while she could easily have settled into a life of relative ease in her stints as an expat in Nairobi, suburban New York or Virginia as one of those lucky and connected enough to “make it out” and written off her country as a lost cause.

The book also gives us an insight into the steely resolve behind the grandmotherly mien that has graced the covers of various newspapers and magazines. We meet a woman who got married at 17 after her family fell on hard times following her father’s illness and had four sons before her mid-20s, only to leave all four sons behind and head to the US to attend college as a mature student – which she did while working at a cafeteria. We also see a woman with the courage to divorce an abusive husband and be separated from her sons all the while managing a career as a midlevel bureaucrat in Liberia’s chaotic Finance ministry. The book isn’t a hagiography though as the biographer honestly tackles some of the failings of Ms. Sirleaf, including her early support for the murderous Charles Taylor’s bid to seize power in the Civil War as well as her appointments of her sons to senior posts in government – an act that is at best tone deaf.

The book ends with Ms. Sirleaf’s time as president of the country and how she was tackling the massive development challenges posed by a country coming out of a vicious years-long civil war. If there is one thing that I took away from reading about her efforts in the presidency is that people matter as much as institutions in poor countries like most African countries. Reading about her effort to secure the write-off of $4.7 billion of the country’s debt (which they ordinarily shouldn’t qualify for), I was struck by the high-level contacts that went to work to get this done on her behalf as much as on the country’s behalf: from the head of the emerging markets desk at the New York Fed (who hosted a meeting of the hedge funds holding the distressed debt) to the Irish singer Bono, the US state department and much of the international finance and NGO community. She really did cash in on years of life in the development finance world for her country.

Overall, I found the book to be very engaging and an unvarnished view of the lows, highs and sometimes chilling compromises that come with a lifetime of trying to bring positive change to a poor and troubled country.