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Category: Liberia

Public Leadership Through Crisis 14: Lessons on Crisis Communication from Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

written by Matt Andrews Peter Harrington is an alumni of the Harvard Kennedy School, and a former fellow with the Building State Capability program (BSC). In 2014, Peter worked with the  Africa Governance Initiative helping Liberia’s government deal with its Ebola epidemic. He assisted in an area called ‘Social Mobilization’; an area of the organizational…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 14: Lessons on Crisis Communication from Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

Public Leadership Through Crisis 13: Tolbert Nyenswah on leading through Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

written by Matt Andrews Tolbert Nyenswah is a Senior Research Associate at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 2014 he was the head of the Liberian Incident  Management  System (IMS), leading the operational aspects of the government’s response to the Ebola epidemic. Following this, he led the establishment of Liberia’s First National…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 13: Tolbert Nyenswah on leading through Liberia’s Ebola epidemic

Public Leadership Through Crisis 11: Reorganizing to address the crisis

written by Matt Andrews I was on a call two days ago with a former student who is now deeply involved in his country’s Covid-19 crisis response. He said something like the following: “Our  government  is not set up to respond to this; there are multiple challenges coming at us all at once, requiring multiple…Continue Reading Public Leadership Through Crisis 11: Reorganizing to address the crisis

Coronavirus and behaviour: Why leaders need better ‘risk communication’

Guest blog written by Peter Harrington Last week I wrote a post on how the Coronavirus pandemic, like Ebola, needs to be understood as a complex adaptive problem which requires mass learning to solve. In this post I want to focus in on one area of that learning – the behaviour change required to stop transmission,…Continue Reading Coronavirus and behaviour: Why leaders need better ‘risk communication’

Seeing Pandemics as Complex Adaptive Problems

Guest blog written by Peter Harrington As the world grapples with the first truly global pandemic, a crucial struggle is emerging between different ways of seeing the current coronavirus outbreak. On the one hand, it is a virus that medical science can tell us how to combat. On the other hand, it is a complex…Continue Reading Seeing Pandemics as Complex Adaptive Problems

Using PDIA to tackle off-budget spending in Liberia

Guest blog by Alieu Fuad Nyei Like many other African countries, budget execution is a huge challenge in Liberia. Last fiscal year (July 2016 to June 2017), off-budget spending was over 15% of the approved budget while in-year budgetary transfers have been on the increase, significantly undermining the credibility of the approved budget. This huge…Continue Reading Using PDIA to tackle off-budget spending in Liberia

Getting things done: PFM reform in Africa

CABRI group photo posing with certificates with Matt Andrews and Tim McNaught

written by Tim McNaught We recently wrote about the closing workshop we held in December, in collaboration with CABRI, for the Building PFM Capabilities in Africa program. There is now a summary event page on the CABRI website with all of the presentations from the seven participating country teams. During the workshop, each team presented…Continue Reading Getting things done: PFM reform in Africa

Building PFM Capabilities in Africa

written by Tim McNaught For the past 30 years, governments across Africa have been implementing public financial management (PFM) reforms with mixed results. While budgets, laws and processes have improved, they are often not effectively implemented (Andrews 2010). Technical solutions, commonly copied from upper-income countries, do not always take into account the local context and can…Continue Reading Building PFM Capabilities in Africa

Bridging the Capacity Gap in Burundi

written by Salimah Samji The knee jerk reaction to building capacity is to organize more training workshops. These are taught by experts and held in fancy locations, with free-flowing food and refreshments. The attendees often do not include the front line workers who are ultimately responsible for implementation. In some cases attendees do learn new…Continue Reading Bridging the Capacity Gap in Burundi