President

Institutional context

The Republic of Liberia, founded in 1847, is among the oldest republics in Africa. Its presidency had been held exclusively by men through 2005, when Sirleaf's election made her the first woman to head an African state by direct popular election.

Career path

Sirleaf studied at Madison Business College and at Harvard's Kennedy School, where she earned a Master of Public Administration. She held senior economic posts including Liberian Minister of Finance (1979–1980), and worked at Citibank, the World Bank, and the United Nations Development Programme. She ran for the presidency in 1997, finishing second to Charles Taylor.

Appointment

She won the run-off in the November 2005 Liberian presidential election against George Weah and took office on 16 January 2006, after the country's transition from civil war and the departure of Taylor. She was re-elected in 2011. Constitutionally limited to two terms, she left office on 22 January 2018 and was succeeded by Weah.

Tenure

Twelve years across two terms. Her presidency oversaw post-conflict reconstruction, debt relief negotiations, and the 2014–2016 Ebola epidemic. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 jointly with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman.

Cluster context

Sirleaf is the only African head of state in the dataset. The Liberian first occurred a year after Vīķe-Freiberga in Latvia and a year before Merkel in Germany, in the slow-rise middle period of the curve. Her appointment is geographically distinct from the Western institutional cluster that came later.

Sources

• Government of Liberia — Office of the President
• Nobel Prize — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, 2011 Peace Prize