The Liberia We Must Build
Moving Beyond Political Propaganda to Facts-Based Development and National Consciousness
by Augustus Jonathan Flomo

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Liberia has changed leaders, governments, and political promises—but why have the lives of ordinary citizens changed so little? In 1966, the landmark study Growth Without Development by Robert W. Clower, George Dalton, Mitchell Harwitz, and A. A. Walters exposed the contradiction of rapid economic growth alongside widespread underdevelopment, a contradiction that Liberia, sixty years later, has yet to overcome. Too often, thoughtful Liberians evaluate identical government actions differently depending on which party or president is responsible, but such selective judgment prevents the country from confronting its urgent challenges. Out of a deep love for Liberia and its future, Augustus Jonathan Flomo writes The Liberia We Must Build to compare the Weah and Boakai administrations while examining what each inherited, placing their performance within Liberia’s broader history of economic growth without development, abundant natural resources without sufficient benefits for citizens, and democratic aspirations without sustained institutional implementation. He updates that national reckoning through rigorous, evidence-based analysis of recent governance and calls on Liberians to judge every administration by the same standards, verify claims before assigning praise or blame, and measure national progress by the lived realities of ordinary citizens across all fifteen counties. This book challenges Liberians to move beyond partisan propaganda, confront the evidence, and build a nation where leadership, institutions, accountability, and economic growth deliver measurable improvements for every citizen.

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Augustus Jonathan Flomo is a distinguished Liberian professional with over two decades of senior leadership experience spanning economic development, financial management, entrepreneurship. As a humanitarian, he believes in service as a way of promoting development & change and public policy advisory. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Gusceman, Inc., a diversified development enterprise, and Africa Market for Trade (AMT), a platform dedicated to unlocking trade, investment, and business opportunities across the African continent. Throughout his career, Flomo has worked at the intersection of private sector development and public policy, advising institutions on economic strategy, financial governance, capacity building, and inclusive growth. He has engaged extensively with development finance institutions, government ministries, civil society organizations, and the Liberian diaspora, bringing a practitioner’s rigor and a patriot’s passion to every engagement. Flomo holds strong convictions about the transformative power of honest, evidence-based national dialogue. He believes that Liberia’s greatest untapped resource is not its minerals, its forests, or its coastline, but the collective intelligence, energy, and commitment of its people, freed from the constraints of political propaganda and guided instead by facts, data, and shared purpose. As a son of Liberia who has witnessed firsthand the country’s extraordinary resilience and its equally extraordinary failures of governance, Flomo brings a perspective that is both deeply personal and rigorously analytical. This book is the distillation of years of observation, research, and a passionate belief that Liberia’s best chapter has not yet been written. He calls on every Liberian in the villages and in the diaspora, in government and in the private sector, young and old, to become an active architect of the nation rather than a passive spectator of its politics. • Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Gusceman, Inc. • Founder, Africa Market for Trade (AMT) • Senior Executive in Economic Development, Financial Management & Entrepreneurship • Email: aflomo2@gmail.com

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Augustus Jonathan Flomo

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