Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Becomes Africa’s First Elected Woman President

On 16 January 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated as president of Liberia before guests including US First Lady Laura Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and South African President Thabo Mbeki. Her swearing-in concluded an electoral cycle following the end of the Second Liberian Civil War, making her the first woman elected as head of state in Africa. The transition placed an economist trained at the University of Colorado and Harvard University in charge of an administration tasked with rebuilding civic institutions and infrastructure gutted by decades of violent conflict.

Sirleaf's emergence onto the national political stage followed a long and perilous career under autocratic regimes. In 1979 President William Tolbert appointed her minister of finance, months before the 1980 coup led by Samuel Doe, in which Tolbert was killed. Sirleaf briefly headed the Liberian Bank for Development and Investment under the new military government but resigned and fled into exile in Kenya, where she worked for Citicorp and the World Bank. Returning in 1985 to run for the Senate, she was arrested after criticizing the regime, convicted in a closed military trial, and sentenced to ten years in prison. Under pressure from the United States, Doe ordered her release. She won her Senate race later that year but refused to take office, protesting Doe's disputed claim of victory in the presidential vote.