New Liberian President Seeks to Rehabilitate Country’s Education System
Finding teachers still country’s main hurdle.
By Tracie Powell
Troubled by the difficulties of training teachers in Liberia, President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf says she hopes to attract them from U.S. colleges and universities.
Sirleaf envisions the Liberian Education Trust as a way to help repair a country devastated by two civil wars. The trust seeks to raise money so that the West African country can build 50 schools, train 500 teachers and offer 5,000 scholarships to students, principally girls. While efforts to restore the country’s infrastructure are well underway, Liberia still faces obstacles in finding teachers.
“Recruiting teachers remains a challenge,” Sirleaf told Diverse while on a trip to the United States. “The output from the universities has not produced enough teachers. We do have a teacher training college, but the institutions that were built specifically for this purpose were destroyed during the war.”
