2006 — Africa's First Elected Woman President

On January 16, 2006, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was sworn in as president of Liberia in Monrovia, becoming Africa's first democratically elected woman head of state. She had defeated football star George Weah in the 2005 runoff with nearly sixty percent of the vote, inheriting a country shattered by fourteen years of civil war.

Dignitaries including U.S. First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice watched as the United Nations hailed her historic mandate for lasting peace. The Harvard-trained economist rebuilt the economy, won a second term, and shared the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize. In 2018, she oversaw Liberia's first democratic handover in seventy years.