Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning former president of Liberia. Internationally known as “Africa’s Iron Lady,” she is the first female elected to head of state in Africa. She won the 2005 presidential election and was re-elected in 2011. She is recognized for promoting freedom, peace, justice, women’s empowerment, and democratic rule.
Johnson Sirleaf received her education at the College of West Africa, later completing it at Madison Business College and Harvard University in the United States. After she returned to Liberia in 1972, she served as Assistant Minister of Finance under President William Tolbert and then as Finance Minister in Samuel K. Doe’s military dictatorship. After clashing with both heads of state and criticizing the military government, she was arrested and eventually exiled.
During Johnson Sirleaf’s 12 years of exile, Liberia erupted into civil war. She became a prominent economist for the World Bank, Citibank, and various other international financial institutions. From 1992 to 1997, she was Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa of the United Nations Development Program.
In 1997, she resigned from this role to run for President of Liberia. After controversial results surrounding the election and accusations of treason, Johnson Sirleaf again went into exile in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. It was not until the end of the Second Liberian Civil War in 2005 that she was elected President. Her historic inauguration took place on January 16, 2006.
Her immediate focus was rebuilding the country, and during her two terms, she sought debt relief and aid from the international community. She increased the national budget from $80 million in 2006 to more than $672 million in 2012. She received over $16 billion in foreign direct investment and $5 million in private aid and successfully had the UN trade sanctions against her country lifted.
In 2017, Johnson Sirleaf became the first woman to receive the Mo Ibrahim Prize for Achievement in African Leadership. In 2018, she founded the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development and in 2019 was appointed as the WHO Goodwill Ambassador for the healthcare workforce.