Sirleaf receives Mo Ibrahim prize, to pursue women empowerment

Liberia’s former leader, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, has spoken publicly for the first time about what she intends to use her time for as she settles into life after the presidency.

The former Nobel Prize laureate and Africa’s first democratically-elected woman president said she was going to continue with issues of women empowerment whiles advancing the cause of good governance across Africa.

“I will work with a small team of people to establish the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Centre for Women and Development, designed to support women as agents of change, makers of peace, and drivers of progress,” she said at a ceremony in the Rwandan capital, Kigali on Friday.

Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Sirleaf in her address to participants at the 2018 Ibrahim Governance Weekend stressed on a range of topics from global, continental and local prospects and challenges / Photo: Paul Kagame/Flickr


The event was the leadership ceremony of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation which awarded her the $5m Mo Ibrahim Prize.

Sirleaf in her address to participants at the 2018 Ibrahim Governance Weekend stressed on a range of topics from global, continental and local prospects and challenges.

She reiterated the successes and challenges that she experienced during her presidency and what lay ahead for the country she continually referred to as “a complex, post-conflict society, on a continent of uneven progress, during a time of global uncertainty.”

Present at the event were head of the award foundation, Mo Ibrahim, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and his Ivorian counterpart, Alassane Ouattara. Former Ethiopian Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn as well as members of the Foundation’s award committee were also present.

© AfricaNews

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