Published: May 4, 2026
MONROVIA — Liberia has formally launched the concept note development phase of its second Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact, and the minister overseeing the process arrived with a message that left little room for the kind of slow, committee-heavy drift that has defined too many of the country’s development initiatives before.
“We have impatience for delay,” Finance and Development Planning Minister Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan told technocrats Friday. “Let’s sprint. We have no space for walking. It’s a 100-meter dash.”
The launch marks the transition from selection to execution, with a newly recruited Compact Development Team, led by National Coordinator Alieu Fuad Nyeu, now tasked with producing concept notes that will determine which interventions advance to full feasibility studies and, ultimately, to funded implementation. Ngafuan praised the competitive recruitment process that drew talent from both within Liberia and the diaspora, but made clear that hiring was only the first test.
“The fact that you’ve been hired tells a lot about your quality, your competence,” he said. “But another checkpoint you need to cross is the checkpoint of delivery.”
Energy sits at the center of the Compact, and the rationale is not complicated. Liberia’s electricity access rate, Ngafuan noted, hovers around 40 percent after recent improvements, compared with a global benchmark of closer to 90 percent in comparable economies. The government’s target is to reach at least 75 percent access within four years. The minister framed the goal in deliberately practical terms: cheaper, more reliable electricity means businesses expand, and expanding businesses hire people.
“To deal with our key challenge, we have to deal with this foundational problem — energy,” he said. “If we make it accessible and reduce the cost, businesses will expand, and when businesses are expanding, they are employing.”
Representing President Joseph Nyuma Boakai at the launch, Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Samuel A. Stevquoah described the Compact as more than a funding mechanism. The concept notes the Technical Working Groups produce, he said, are not bureaucratic formalities — they are the architecture of what gets built and what gets left behind.
“These are not just documents to be written and filed away,” Stevquoah said. “These are the ideas that will shape the future of this Compact. They are the bridge between identifying our challenges and delivering real solutions. The quality of your work will determine what moves forward. It will determine what gets funded. And ultimately, it will determine the kind of impact this Compact has on the lives of our people.”
He called for collaboration across government, the private sector and civil society, invoking a local proverb to make the point: “One hand cannot tie a bundle.”
The Technical Working Groups draw from a wide institutional base, including the Ministry of Mines and Energy, the Liberia Electricity Corporation, the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission, the Rural and Renewable Energy Agency, the National Investment Commission and the Ministry of Finance. The Liberia Chamber of Commerce and Accountability Lab are among the civil society and private sector actors participating.
Nyeu, for his part, was careful to frame the launch not as a celebration but as the start of a more demanding phase. “The launch today is more than a procedural milestone,” he said. “It is a statement of intent.”
For Ngafuan, the stakes are personal as much as institutional. He closed with an image of what success would look like in practice, not in economic indicators, but in something simpler.
“When you see the joy of people celebrating light,” he said, “you can sit in a corner and feel good that you’ve contributed to something meaningful.”
Liberia has been talking about fixing its energy problem for a long time. The MCC process now gives the country a structured, internationally-backed opportunity to address it. Whether the sprint Ngafuan is demanding actually happens, or, as these processes often do, slows into a walk, will become clear in the months ahead.
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