By George K. Werner (former education minister)
(A continuation of the conversation begun yesterday on port reform)
Yesterday, I argued that Liberia should decentralize its ports — but not sign a flawed law. I cautioned that dissolving the National Port Authority without a clear transition could create confusion, overlapping mandates, legal exposure, and uncertainty for workers and concession partners. Reform, I wrote, must be disciplined, sequenced, and grounded in law.
Today, I want to go a step further.
Because even if we correct the legal flaws, we risk missing the deeper issue: the economic system that has grown around our ports — and the way it shapes who benefits and who does not. The debate is not only about institutional design. It is about how value moves in Liberia, and why places like Buchanan, Greenville, and Harper continue to host the work while others capture the prosperity.
Buchanan should not be poor. It sits on one of Liberia’s deepest ports, is connected to rail, and is surrounded by forests, fisheries, and fertile land. Yet daily reality tells a different story. The most recent census places Liberia’s population above five million, with Grand Bassa accounting for roughly 293,000 people. More than half of households nationwide still live in poverty, and youth unemployment and underemployment remain stubbornly high. This pattern is not an accident. It is structural.
For decades, Buchanan has functioned as a corridor rather than a partner in development. Iron ore leaves, but there is no steel plant. Rubber leaves, but there is no tire factory. Timber leaves, but there is no large processing hub. The same dynamic appeared when BHP Billiton arrived with promise — and then quietly exited. Expectations rose; durable local industry did not. Meanwhile, Buchanan hosts one of Liberia’s strategic ports, yet most port revenues are centralized in Monrovia.
The county bears the wear on infrastructure, congestion, and environmental strain, while limited fiscal return comes back to build schools, clinics, or local enterprise. Fisheries illustrate the same problem. Fees and licenses connected to fishing are largely captured centrally rather than cycling back into the communities that keep the sector alive. Value exits. Responsibility stays.
The everyday economy shows the imbalance plainly. Before dawn, fishermen go to sea and return with full boats. Women meet them with ice packed into old rice bags — their improvised cold chain because no modern storage exists. Within hours, the fish is taxi-loaded to Monrovia, where supermarkets and restaurants pay more. The fish leaves — and the value leaves with it. Buchanan becomes the site of labor, while somewhere else becomes the site of profit.
The cityscape reinforces the same reality. Roads once paved now crack. Historic settlement houses quietly deteriorate. Alleyways fill as unmanaged urban growth spreads. This is true across many post-war towns, but it feels sharper here — so close to Firestone, ArcelorMittal operations, the RIA corridor, and Monrovia itself. Opportunity passes through. It rarely stays.
Electricity deepens the trap. Only about one-third of Liberians have access to power, and coverage outside the capital is significantly lower. Generator-driven electricity remains among the most expensive in the world. That makes fish processing costly, small factories risky, welding and carpentry unreliable, and schools and clinics inconsistent. This is especially frustrating because Grand Bassa sits near the St. John and Farmington river corridors and has strong solar potential that remains under-developed. Where power is weak, economies remain weak.
How We Got Here: A History of Centralized Ports
Liberia’s ports did not become centralized by accident. They were designed that way.
Beginning in the 1960s, as shipping activity grew and foreign concessions expanded, national leaders concluded that port operations should no longer function as separate, locally driven entities tied to specific companies or cities. The assumption was that efficiency required a single authority to standardize fees, manage safety, and control maritime traffic. Over time, this logic produced the National Port Authority — one central institution overseeing Monrovia, Buchanan, Greenville, and Harper, and channeling revenues upward into national accounts.
On paper, it looked tidy: one system, one regulator, one flow of money.
In practice, it locked coastal cities into dependency.
Local governments lost meaningful influence over port planning, investment decisions, revenue use, and long-term priorities. Civil war later reinforced this model, as both international partners and national policymakers favored strong central control in the name of stability and coordination. By the time peace returned, centralization had become habit — and a political economy had formed around it.
That history created today’s reality: ports generate value in the counties, but financial power and decision-making accumulate in the capital. And systems that grow up around control rarely surrender it willingly.
The same structural logic shapes Greenville and Harper. Greenville sits beside forest concessions and an export-ready port — yet poverty remains entrenched. Harper, historically known as Cape Palmas, once moved rubber and logs in steady volumes through the Cavalla plantation belt. Ships once came and went frequently. Today, cargo still passes through, but prosperity struggles to take root in the city that hosts the operations.
These places do not lack assets. They lack systems that allow value to settle locally.
The Queen-Bee Economy
This is what I call Liberia’s queen-bee economy.
A queen-bee economy is one in which value is created across many regions, but consistently flows toward a single dominant center — while little circulates back to the communities that produce it. Counties host ports, concessions, environmental burden, and social pressure; the benefits concentrate elsewhere. Over time, the center swells, the periphery stagnates, and inequality becomes structural rather than temporary.
The resistance to reform does not arise because decentralization is wrong. It arises because central control has shaped careers, habits, revenue flows, and expectations. Institutions that were built around control are now defending control — even when decentralization would ultimately make the country stronger.
Why This Moment Matters
Decentralization could help rebalance the system — but only if it is disciplined and thoughtfully sequenced. The current legislative drafts move to dissolve the National Port Authority without fully defining the transition. They leave unanswered questions about pensions, liabilities, staff redeployment, contracts, and legal exposure. They risk overlapping authority between the proposed regulator and existing maritime bodies. That is not reform. It is institutional shock.
Liberia has undertaken major institutional transitions before — and succeeded when it insisted on planning. When the Ministry of Finance and Development Planning was created, lawmakers demanded a roadmap, protections for workers, transparent communication, and legal continuity. The objective was change without chaos. That should be our standard again.
A regulator should exist — but with clearly defined powers. A transition authority should be created before dissolutions occur. Workers and contractual partners must be protected. Revenue-sharing must allow host counties to retain part of the value they generate. And ports must become anchors of local value-addition, not merely exit points for raw materials.
Buchanan in Grand Bassa. Harper in Maryland. Greenville in Sinoe.
These places do not lack opportunity. They are constrained by an economic architecture in which production happens locally while prosperity accumulates centrally. The President was right to pause the bills. The task now is not to retreat from reform — but to refine it.
Decentralize wisely. Share revenue fairly. Sequence reform carefully. Because real reform does not simply rearrange institutions. It changes outcomes — with tangible benefits for places like Buchanan, Greenville, and Harper. And when reform does that, it doesn’t just change systems. It changes lives — and it lasts.
