COMMUNIQUÉ: Government of Liberia - Development Partners Retreat (G-DPR) 2025

On 17 April 2025, the Government of Liberia, along with development partners, convened for the first-ever Government and Development Partners Retreat (G-DPR).

The high-level retreat was officially opened by His Excellency, Joseph Nyuma Boakai Sr.,president of the Republic. Other officials who graced the occasion included the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister of Finance and Development Planning, the UN Resident Coordinator, and the President of the University of Liberia.

The retreat was attended by ministers, deputy ministers, heads of institutions, international partners, Heads of UN agencies, members of the diplomatic corps, the private sector, the banking sector, civil society organizations, and leading members of academia.

The gathering discussed the implementation of the ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development (AAID), Liberia's National Development Plan. The discussions took place against the backdrop of current global financial challenges, with a focus on exploring innovative strategies to finance national development in a coordinated manner.

The retreat was convened with the following key objectives

1. Enhance Strategic Partnerships. Strengthen coordination and collaboration between the Government of Liberia and various development partners and actors, to establish a unified approach and mutual accountability in implementing the AAID;

2. Explore Innovative Financing Mechanisms. Identify and discuss alternative innovative inancing and funding strategies to drive development.

The Retreat acknowledged that, over the past 20 years, Liberia has been harnessing the benefits of democratic dividends with low development dividends. It recognized that, due to past conflicts, the Ebola and COVID-19 pandemics, compounded by recent changes in the international aid architecture, rising inflation, and climate change, the country continues to make gains in the face of significant challenges. The Retreat also identified issues such as limited production and export capacity, as well as low levels of human capital development. Liberia has demonstrated resilience in past crises, and this resilience requires a development cooperation mechanism to sustain. The Retreat acknowledged the relevance of developmentcooperation, partnership, and shared vision in development  implementation to ensure accountability, transparency, and effective aid coordination and delivery. The Retreat called for the country to adopt innovative approaches to transform its potential wealth into tangible benefits, ultimately aiming to improve living standards for its citizens. This includes uncovering new funding sources, such as domestic resource mobilization, engaging in the diaspora, attracting private sector investments, strengthening existing regional partnerships, and creatively developing strategic alliances with previously untapped actors.

The Retreat’s six sessions discussed Liberia’s development landscape, financing strategies, private sector engagement, and the way forward. A strong consensus emerged around the need for increased focus on human capital development, local content with value addition, gender equality, technological innovation in revenue collection, quality expenditure and improved tracking, sectoral program complementarity program and greater collaboration. Discussions highlighted the adversities and challenges to Liberia’s development, including escalating tariff wars, ongoing conflicts, receding financing flows, internal polarization, and the urgent need to enhance development cooperation and mutual accountability.

Strategic Recommendations:

1. To focus development intervention beyond the development challenges and include addressing their root causes.

2. Use the Retreat as an appropriate time to enhance strategic partnership for seamless implementation, forging alignment and mutual accountabilities.

3. Consider including digital economy as one key interventions.

4. Implement program-based budgeting to ensure alignment of the AAID with the State Budgets, enhancing expenditure quality and monitoring, and debt management practices.

5. Enhance domestic resource mobilization (DRM) mechanisms to benefit from innovative financing such as green financing (carbon credit, n credit, green and blue bonds)

6. Create a business-enabling environment through reliable legal frameworks and policy measures to foster resilience and economic diversification, crowding in the banking sector operations, as well as local and foreign private sector actors.

7. Implement solid market creation measures to increase local production and value chains, diversify exports and substitute imports, especially in the agribusiness, to take advantage of the regional economic integration, especially the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).

8. Develop regular interactive fora with private sector, civil society, diaspora, and other relevant actors to continuously rationalise socio-economic policies.

9. Expedite investment in human capital through education, from early years to technical and vocational training and tertiary to prepare a skilled workforce to take advantage of business opportunities in different value chains and create jobs.

10. Consolidate regulatory and rule of law mechanisms to fight impunity and corruption.

11. Strongly promote the implementation of AAID key development policies and interventions, streamlining children’s protection, human rights, and gender equality.

12. Harness digitization to fight corruption, enhance revenue collection, and promote entrepreneurship, especially start-up.

13. Strengthen coordination, communication, collaboration, and accountability systems to mitigate global and local adverse impacts, and rationalise resources, financial and human, to deliver development impact within the AAID structures.

This Retreat has set a strategic foundation for Liberia’s development journey, emphasizing unity, innovation, and accountability as key drivers toward realizing the aspirations of the Liberian people, hand in hand with traditional and new development partners. Importantly, this Retreat agreed to meet annually and has set the guidelines against which progress will be analyzed in the next G-DPR, to ensure continuity and follow through of the recommendations established herein. The full report (outcome document) with detailed thematic recommendations/resolutions will be made available in the coming days.