NEC/USAID sign MOU

The National Elections Commission (NEC) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at building the administrative and organizational capacity of the Commission to enable it conduct free and fair elections with greater efficiency and autonomy.

The MOU is a critical element of USAID’s Liberia Country Development Cooperation Strategy and acknowledges that sustaining Liberia’s recent record of conducting free and fair elections is a critical link to the overall goal of strengthening the credibility and legitimacy of the state, improving accountability of governance, and building the foundations for Liberian-led growth and development.

In pursuit of these goals, the USAID is funding the Liberian Administrative and Systems Strengthening (LASS) Project being implemented by IBI International to promote sustainable and relevant institutional changes in response to the specific needs of the Commission.

Under the terms of the MOU, LASS will provide NEC staff with the essential tools and trainings so that they are better prepared to perform critical administrative functions. The overall objective of the USAID-LASS project is to strengthen the Commission’score administrative and management functions to plan, budget and administer future electoral activities in compliance with regulations of the Government of Liberia.

The project will build the capacity of the NEC in the areas of human resource management, procurement, financial management, asset management, information and communications technology (ICT) and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E).

The MOU was signed Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at the headquarters of the NEC in Monrovia. NEC Chairman Cllr. Jerome G. Korkoya signed on behalf of the Commission while the Country Director of USAID, Dr. Anthony Chan, signed on behalf of his organization.