Monrovia – The call for a Liberian war and economic crimes court has reached new heights since President George Weah became head of state. Campaigners see the ex-football superstar as the best person to muster the political will for a court because he has no known connections to the war. This story first appeared on…
MONROVIA – Hubert Jäger, the German Ambassador to Liberia, joined the chorus of international community calling on Liberia to hold a war crimes court. This story first appeared on FrontPageAfricaOnline as part of a collaboration for the West Africa Justice Reporting Project. Speaking at the launch of the Alliance for Transitional Justice, a collaboration of…
Morris Town, Bomi County – Watta Kanneh, 68, struggles to draw water from a creek next to towering palm trees, where she and other villagers make palm oil in two blackened drums sitting over huge fire hearths. Kanneh still suffers from wounds she received 16 years ago during the 2003 killings that became known as…
Monrovia – Since the recent increase in calls for the establishment of a war and economic crimes court, many victims of Liberia’s 14-year brutal civil war are speaking out about their painful ordeals at the hands of warring factions. They are also joining call and urging major state actors to push for the establishment of…
New Narratives, a non-governmental organization that has been driving improvement in Liberia’s media sector for 9 years, is excited to announce a major new reporting project in Liberia and Sierra Leone – The West Africa Justice Reporting Project. WAJRP is running from 2018-2020 and will feature training, mentoring and capacity building for Liberian journalists and…
NN’s Mae Azango and Prue Clarke write on the role of good journalism in breaking the taboo around female genital cutting in Liberia that led to its eventual ban for the Columbia Journalism Review. PRESIDENT ELLEN JOHNSON SIRLEAF left office in January with a tremendous, if overdue, parting gift for the girls of Liberia….
Alpha Daffae Senkpeni is a multimedia journalist with over a decade experience. He is the Sub-Editor of FrontPage Africa newspaper based in Monrovia. He also coordinates a network of journalists in the country. He has been a New Narratives fellow since 2017. Amongst several of his beats, he has a special interest in health, rule…
Lennart Dodoo is the News Desk Chief of FrontPage Africa Newspaper and online news magazine. He began his journalism with the Daily Observer Newspaper where he served as a judicial correspondent. Lennart has been a New Narratives fellow since 2017. In 2010 Lennart moved on to the INSIGHT Newspaper where he reported mostly on crimes…
New Narratives reporters covered the trial of Mohammed Jabateh, convicted of immigration fraud in a Philadelphia court in October 2017. Reporters Tetee Gebro, Jackson Kanneh, James Harding Giahyue provided extensive reporting in Liberia and in the court and Liberian community in Philadelphia. Court art was also done by NN visual artist Chase Walker. Please see…
The Tearing Down of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf MONROVIA, Liberia — Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf will leave office in January as one of the most celebrated African leaders of recent memory — outside of Liberia, that is. The first woman elected to lead a government in Africa, she has presided over a period of peace…
The price of oil has fallen sharply around the world in the last year. That’s forced major companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil, that were pouring millions into Liberia, to hold back and watch the global trend in the oil market. Despite their initial investment in the country, Chevron has pulled out for now and…
Monrovia – The plunge in oil prices on the world market has dealt a devastating blow to Liberia’s oil industry dashing hopes that oil may have been the savior for Liberia’s struggling economy. But at the same time those low prices have been an expected boost to ordinary Liberians thanks to the sharply lower price…
First off, a confession: even as the oil industry in Liberia made a lot of news in our country in the years from 2010, as a practicing journalist I knew very little about it. Like most of my peers, all I ever knew reporting on the sector came at the mercy of the National Oil…
The Thomson Reuters Foundation is working with New Narratives, a non-governmental organization that has been driving improvements in Liberia’s media sector for seven years, to run a program that supports Liberian media to cover the country’s extractives industry. Support for the project comes from GIZ. The program has a focus on mining, which is an…
Monrovia – Liberia’s oil industry is holding its breath waiting for the outcome of ExxonMobil exploration efforts by the end of the year. With global oil prices low, and little interest by big oil companies in Liberia’s yet unproven oil reserves, Exxon’s drilling operation may represent Liberia’s last chance of discovering oil for some time….
Monrovia – In this last of a three-part series on the survival of the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) amid financial turmoil and the global oil crisis, we ask whether the Petroleum (Exploration and Production) Law could save Liberia’s oil and gas sector from further decay. The recent passage of the Petroleum (Exploration and…
With a global reliance on fossil fuel for energy, climate change is increasingly becoming a threat to human existence. Across the world catastrophic weather patterns are killing people and devastating agricultural activities. In our own region, one of the biggest inland water sources – Lake Chad – has almost disappeared. Drought and floods have…
Monrovia – In this second of a three-part series on the survival of the National Oil Company of Liberia (NOCAL) amid financial turmoil and the oil crisis we look closely at how the company is operating in these difficult times. NOCAL is cash-strapped and is no longer leading the promising Liberian oil and gas sector…
Monrovia – In this first part of three-part series on we look at what is currently happening in the Liberian oil basin one year on from the collapse of the National Oil Company of Liberia. What is the status of the different oil contracts between Liberia and oil companies and what does the future hold…
Monrovia – On June 19 this year, two men—Varnie Sarjue and Jusue Vannie – spent the night in the office of GMT Fishery in the Bong Mines Bridge community outside Monrovia. Both men were guarding the company’s properties, and on that fateful night Sarjue brought with him his girlfriend, Garmeh Howard. They put on a…
Liberia’s third post conflict democratic elections are expected to be held in 2017 to usher in another government when the mandate of the current government’s second and final term expires. This will mark the country’s first democratic transition in more than forty years. Already, the United Nations Mission in Liberia or UNMIL has turned over the…
