P amela S cully . Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

This volume in the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series provides a comprehensive account for a general audience of the life of the first woman to be elected head of state of an African country, Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (b. 1938). Sirleaf was democratically elected to two terms in office and served from 2006–18. She has published her own autobiography (This Child Will Be Great: Memoir of a Remarkable Life by Africa’s First Woman President [2010]), and there are other evaluations of her policies and her political career, but this text is a useful and concise summary of her life story. Scully argues that Sirleaf is above all a technocrat, committed to neoliberal development agendas and the use of foreign capital and expertise to jumpstart Liberia’s economy after fourteen years of devastating internal conflict. While her two terms in office saw great success in reducing the foreign debt burden

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