It seems the Liberian news story is getting more and more interesting by the minute so we could not have asked for a better time to host this event. I went into the green room just about a half hour ago to meet with the president just ahead of this and she said to me ‘let’s have some fun.’ So let’s have some fun. There is plenty to talk about. It is not hard to identify the many positives in this story.

Some of which the Ambassador has already touched on, let me add a few more: Growth of 8.3 percent last year. On track for 7 and a half percent this year. The country continues its ascent into Transparency International Perception Index. There has been talk of plans to introduce treasury bills and eventually buy bonds in the stock market.

The President has been applauded for efforts in battling corruption in her administration and has placed a premium in her words on the criteria of competence, integrity, commitment and loyalty and of course much of the Liberian story comes back to land, land tenure, effective land administration seen as the single most explosive issue in the country. Great strides are being made and it is an area, the president in her annual message to the national legislature in January called attention to. But there are also more worrying angle to the story that we must also address today.

How hard will the commodity slump or wobble hit economic development. Is the country too resource reliant. What are some of the most recent some might say, embarrassing results of the government-ordered audit; how detrimental will that be to Liberia’s image as an increasingly destination. What about the education system which the president has highlighted as needing overhaul.

And there is of course there is now this story of threats being made against the Liberian media prompting a blackout on coverage of the president. So a very busy agenda this afternoon. We are being broadcast live across all the Reuters platform. The President and I will talk for 35-40 minutes and then I do intend to open it up to Q and A after that.

Monrovia - The National Vision Conference convened in Gbarnga, Bong County and brought together more than 500 delegates from all counties, the Liberian Diaspora and observers from the International Community.

Observers say the Conference provided the space for Liberians to select a possible future. The Conference ended the design phase of the visioning process that was led by Finance and Acting Planning Minister Amara Konneh and the Chairman of the Governance Commission Dr. Amos Sawyer, which drew its legitimacy from the retrospective analysis, a growth diagnostic and extensive consultations in five geographic regions involving the 15 counties, in 156 administrative districts and in the Diaspora (Africa, Europe and North America).

According to the final outcome document, the Conference was held under the aegis of Her Excellency President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf with the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affair and the Governance Commission serving as sponsors. The Conference was organized by a 21-member National Conference Committee. A milestone in the journey of the Liberian people, the National Conference marks an end and initiates a beginning: an end to the process of a long-term perspective study on Liberia, and the beginning of the process of operationalization and implementation of the Vision.

Liberia aims to achieve middle-income status by 2030 through broad participation and inclusive growth. The Government’s growth strategy unveiled at a National Conference in Gbarnga last week aims to accelerate growth and development through consolidating peace, security rule of law and national reconciliation, the exploitation of natural resources, while maintaining sound macroeconomic policies, improving the business environment, and prudently allocating aid and commodity-based financing resources to expand infrastructure and formal sector employment.

However, Liberia’s experience with rapid growth in the 1960s and 1970s - that benefited a small percentage of the population, followed by economic collapse, widespread poverty and social unrest, and civil war - has made policymakers acutely aware that the quality of the growth process is at least as important as the rate of growth.

Now that peace has been established and growth is once again on an upward trend - with the reactivation of the iron ore and agriculture sectors, and prospects for oil, promising opportunities for significant growth in the medium to long term - the Government wants to ensure that Liberia’s growth over the next two decades will be sustainable and equitable.

A key objective of the new vision and growth strategy, the Agenda for Transformation, is to avoid the traps posed by dependence on primary resources while creating the basis for social inclusion, decentralization, national reconciliation; economic diversification and employment generation, and providing opportunities and training so that individuals across the country can partake in the growth process. FrontpageAfrica sought some inputs from Finance Minister Amara Konneh who recently shed light on the vision and the Agenda for Transformation through an in-depth interaction with one of the key architects behind the crafting of this new development instrument for Liberia.

The Senegalese judge, Justice El Hadji Malick Sow, served as an alternate judge for Trial Chamber II of the Special Court of Sierra Leone that tried the former Liberian president, Charles Taylor. For the five years that the trial lasted, Justice Sow sat on the bench with three other ‘main’ judges who presided over the trial in rotation. As alternate judge, Justice Sow’s job was to step in and act as a ‘main’ judge whenever any of the three main judges was unable to sit.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon in a short interview with FrontPageAfrica in New York on November 5, 2012 talks about the prospects for the future without UNMIL and also attempts by the Liberian legislature to criminalize same sex relationships.