Liberia’s President Set to Visit Atlanta May 10-13

The president of the West African nation of Liberia is set to visit Atlanta later this week on the tail end of a U.S. visit.

Joseph N. Boakai, Sr., the former vice president who won the presidency by a razor-thin margin in November, will stop in the Georgia capital after visiting Dallas for the Corporate Council on Africa’s 2024 U.S. Africa Business Summit.

According to the conference’s billing, Mr. Boakai will join presidential counterparts from Malawi, Angola, Botswana and Cabo Verde, along with the vice president of Nigeria, deputy prime minister of Lesotho and chief minister of Sierra Leone at the event.

The council is a Washington-based trade association whose members account for much of the foreign investment on the African continent. In years past, Coca-Cola Co. has been among its foremost members, though the current membership list is not publicly available.

While Mr. Boakai’s agenda in Atlanta is still fluid, members of the Liberian diaspora are working to set up a time for the president to engage with the community and sit down with city and state leaders. The Georgia Africa Legislative Caucus is also involved.

Bior Bropleh, executive director of the Liberian Association of Metropolitan Atlanta, or LAMA, said the “thriving,” 25,000-strong community is looking forward to hosting the president.

“We look forward to showcasing the pivotal role that the diaspora is playing in the development of Liberia,” Mr. Bropleh told Global Atlanta.

The president’s entourage in Dallas will include the country’s ministers of foreign affairs, commerce, agriculture, mines and information and tourism, as well as the head of the National Investment Commission and the state telecom corporation. It’s unclear how many of those officials will also make the trip to Atlanta.

A release from the Liberian Executive Mansion puts the Atlanta dates at May 10-13 and says only that the president will “meet with investors, business leaders and friends of Liberia.”

It would not be the first time Liberian leader, who has family in Atlanta, has visited the city.

As vice president, Mr. Boakai came to Atlanta for a four-day visit in 2015, where he thanked global health institutions like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The Carter Center and the Morehouse School of Medicine for their help in containing an Ebola outbreak of 2013-14.

During a 2012 visit, he headlined a Liberian investment forum at the Robert Woodruff Library at the Atlanta University Center.

Former President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, under whom Mr. Boakai served as vice president, spoke in Atlanta during a World Affairs Council of Atlanta forum in 2018, just a few weeks after presiding over a peaceful transfer of power that won Liberia plaudits internationally.

Mr. Boakai narrowly lost the 2017 election runoff to George Weah, a former soccer star.

Liberia had a formal diplomatic presence in Georgia until January 2023, when the country’s honorary consulates around the U.S. were relieved of their duties with the hiring of an outside contractor for visa processing.

Cynthia Blandford, the former honorary consul in Georgia, was instrumental in setting up capacity-building agreements between Liberian institutions and both Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the Georgia Ports Authority.

Through the University Consortium for Liberia, she also helped foster university exchanges, including $5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to create a national curriculum to encourage the preservation of rainforests in Liberia. The University of Georgia was tapped to lead the initiative, which included many other university partners.

Ms. Blandford, who was involved in previous visits by Mr. Boakai to Atlanta, met up again with the president-elect during a Corporate Council on Africa roundtable in December.

According to a news release from the Liberian Embassy in Washington, Mr. Boakai will speak on agribusiness opportunities during the Dallas forum.