KEY POINTS
- Liberia’s finance minister called energy the single biggest constraint on the country’s economic growth.
- The government is targeting 70 to 75 percent electricity access within four years under the MCC compact.
- Liberia’s first MCC compact rehabilitated the Mount Coffee hydropower plant as its flagship energy project.
Liberia’s finance minister did not mince words. Without electricity, he told a room full of policymakers and technical experts, almost nothing else the government tries to do will work.
That framing set the tone at the official launch of the concept notes development process under Liberia’s second Millennium Challenge Corporation compact, held recently in Monrovia. Minister of Finance and Development Planning Augustine Kpehe Ngafuan called energy the country’s “foundational problem” and argued that decades of unreliable and expensive power have quietly strangled private sector growth and kept investment away.
“The biggest constraint or cost driver for most businesses is power,” he said. “Without reliable and affordable energy, we can’t make progress.”
A target that demands speed
Liberia’s electricity access rate has climbed to around 40 percent in recent years, a notable improvement. But Ngafuan outlined a far more ambitious destination: 70 to 75 percent access within four years.
He was blunt about the pressure that target creates. The administration is barely two years old, yet citizens already expect results at a pace that outstrips the natural timeline of infrastructure development. “This government is young, but the expectations are already at six-year levels,” he said.
To close that gap, Ngafuan urged the newly formed technical working group to abandon bureaucratic caution and move fast. “This is a 100-meter race. We have no space for walking.” The group includes representatives from the Liberia Electricity Corporation, the Rural and Renewable Energy Agency and the Liberia Electricity Regulatory Commission, alongside private sector and civil society stakeholders.
Turning concept notes into real infrastructure
Minister of State for Presidential Affairs Samuel Stevequoh reinforced the urgency, describing the MCC compact as more than a funding mechanism. “The compact is more than funding. It is about partnership, discipline, and results,” he said.
He stressed that the concept notes must be grounded in rigorous data and realistic assumptions. The quality of this work, he said, will determine which projects move forward and what impact they ultimately have on ordinary Liberians.
Ngafuan connected the electricity push directly to job creation. Affordable power, he argued, allows businesses to expand. Expansion means hiring. He recalled communities celebrating the arrival of electricity, people “dancing for light,” as a reminder of what public service, at its best, is actually supposed to deliver.
Liberia’s first MCC compact focused on rehabilitating the Mount Coffee hydropower plant. The second is being built around energy as the central economic lever, a bet that fixing the grid unlocks everything else.
