Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is once more in the international spotlight as women around the world celebrate this year’s Women’s History Month coinciding with International Women’s Day celebrations around the world.
Mrs. Sirleaf is currently crisscrossing the US capital holding meetings, but her legacy continues as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations Amb. Linda Thomas Greenfield remembers her.
In a special video Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield spotlighted Mrs. Sirleaf for her achievement and as an inspiration to women around the world.
In her 1minute 37 seconds video Amb. Greenfield described Mrs. Sirleaf as a trailblazer and mentioned one of her speeches which she says continues to resonate with her today.
Amb. Thomas-Greenfield: “This year Women’s History Month, I let to spotlight Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, former President of Liberia. Ellen was a true trailblazer-being the first female President on the entire continent of Africa. Ellen once gave a speech that resonates with me all the time. Ellen said if your dreams are not big enough to scare you, they are not big enough. And this is what I tell all the young women I meet and it is what leads me in my everyday life. If my dreams are not big enough to scare me, they are not big enough.”
“And Ellen Johnson Sirleaf lives that every single day, haven’t seen that at the time in Liberia when Liberia was coming out of a 14-year war and the people in the country choose her to lead the country to peace,” she concluded.
Meanwhile, as Mrs. Sirleaf crisscrosses the US capital, she held talks with US Vice President Kamala Harris and IMF boss Christalina Georgieva.
In her tweeter post, Ms. Georgieva said of her meeting with Mrs. Sirleaf: “We discussed the vital role of Women’s Leadership in addressing global challenges and how the IMF can further collaborate to empower women economically and promote their roles in leadership positions.”
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Mrs. Sirleaf has continued to work as an international icon. The Nobel laureate has remained on the international stage inspiring young women across the globe to aspire to leadership through programs and training organized by the Ellen Johnson Sirleaf Presidential Center for Women and Development and its flagship program Amujae.
The EJS Center was founded in 2018 to be a catalyst for change across Africa by helping unleash its most abundant untapped power—its women. It officially launched on International Women’s Day, 8 March 2020.
Through a unique blend of programming, advocacy, research, and exhibitions, the Center advances women’s public leadership and social development. As the first democratically elected woman president in Africa, Nobel Peace Prize winner Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is passionate about supporting the next generation of women in public leadership.
That is the fact, most leaders want to cling on to power when their term is over, especially in Africa. We will see it. It will stop.
Women in power in Africa is not to capitalize on. Actually, Liberians expected this change. Liberian women in leadership positions were ever since projected by our founding fathers. (Read the history when the settlers settled at the Cape of Mesurado). Even in the emergence of AFF, without women. Matilda Newport ignited the start with her pipe. Ruth Perry as a first lady as an interim leader in the midst of the conflict. Elen Sirleaf as the ex-first woman President of Liberia who contributed to the fight. At this point of our history in Africa where coups and ballot fingering have tried to submerge the principles of Leadership, it is the people who themselves have decided that if you put yourself in power unconstitutionally, and become a tyrant, for whatever reason, you tell us when you need to leave, otherwise we will join as nations and move you out. For example, Africa’s financial ECOWAS and other nations, organizations with sanctions. We have had problems with leaders, Men and Women, who still cling on to minute portions of power after they have served their terms. To have a protectorate and establish a legacy one must give up full power to the elected. You do not keep some power in your lap as a woman who has served and on your side as a man and still expect fame and recognition. Let me finally say to Linda Greenfield that her tie to Liberia is also historical because she carries the ancestry name wish relates to our constitutional foundation. You do not have a side when it comes to Liberia on the West Coast of Africa. Take also my statement that “anything you do in this world, have a reason for doing it and your success will surely show.”