Ellen Johnson Sirleaf: Africa's first elected woman president
Jailed under military rule, she went on to lead Liberia for 12 years, win a Nobel Peace Prize and chair ECOWAS.
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Monrovia — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who turned 88 this week, became the first woman elected head of state in Africa when Liberians chose her as president in 2005. She took office in January 2006 and served two terms, to 2018.
From Monrovia to Harvard
Born in Monrovia on 29 October 1938, to a Gola father and a Kru-German mother, she studied at the College of West Africa and later in the United States, at Madison Business College, the University of Colorado Boulder and Harvard, where she trained as an economist.
She returned home to serve as deputy finance minister in 1973–74 and became finance minister in 1979. After Samuel Doe seized power in a 1980 coup, she fled to the United States and worked for Citibank and Equator Bank, with spells at the World Bank.
Prison, exile and return
In 1985 she stood for the Senate and openly criticised the military government. She was arrested and sentenced to ten years in prison, though she was later released. In 1997 she came second in the presidential election won by Charles Taylor.
After the civil wars she won the 2005 election and was re-elected in 2011. That year she shared the Nobel Peace Prize, recognised for her work to bring women into peacebuilding. In 2016 she became the first woman to chair the Economic Community of West African States.
This December, Liberia takes the chair of the UN Security Council, a country rebuilt in part on the peace she helped to secure.
Background: Wikipedia.
