Seeking a peace dividend in Liberia

MONROVIA, Liberia

Liberia’s slow but steady recovery from more than a decade of civil war has raised the prospect of developing a tourist industry in this nation with historic ties to the United States.

Moreover, a recent $38 million deal brokered by the World Bank, United States, Britain, Germany and Norway allowed Liberia to retire $1.2 billion of its debt, freeing up government resources that could be used to draw visitors from wealthy countries.

“Danger lovers and people who have to get information come to Liberia,” entrepreneur Menipakei Dumoe said.

Mr. Dumoe, 23, founded Wow Liberia Tours last year with the help of American investor Seanan Denizot, who manages marketing for the new company.

Catering mostly to expatriates and people in Liberia on official business, Mr. Dumoe and his staff arrange tours of the capital, Monrovia, and day trips outside the city to forests and beaches.

Along the way, tourists learn of Liberia’s tumultuous past and see the hidden beauty of a country that is often overshadowed by its many problems.

Liberia was established in the 1820s, when black Americans sailed to West Africa as part of an experiment arranged by abolitionists and slave owners in the United States.

But in recent decades, poverty, tribal rivalries and economic instability have produced a succession of civil wars that ended in 2003, when warlord Charles Taylor, then the nation’s president, was driven into exile. Mr. Taylor is being tried in The Hague on 11 counts of war crimes.

An estimated 200,000 Liberians died in civil wars that began in the late 1980s.

The election of Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in 2005, the first democratically elected female leader in Africa, plus the presence of nearly 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers, have brought a measure of stability.

The U.S. State Department warns visitors to “exercise caution” when traveling to Liberia “especially at night” and to be aware that U.N. peacekeepers won’t necessarily be able to protect visitors.

In other words, Liberia remains a dangerous place, mainly because of crime. Its near-term appeal is likely limited to adventure seekers.

But some investors are looking ahead.

Robert L. Johnson, the founder of the BET entertainment network in the United States is the main investor in an $8 million resort on the outskirts of Monrovia.

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