Last month, in a basement office in Monrovia, I watched a teacher with 15 years of experience fail a sixth-grade math test. She wasn’t an outlier—she represented the norm in a nation that ranks 155th out of 156 countries according to the 2023 World Bank Human Capital Index. After a decade of traversing Africa’s education landscape, from Ethiopia’s ambitious reforms to Rwanda’s digital revolution, I can confidently state that Liberia isn’t just failing at education. We’re actively manufacturing ignorance. //

The most dangerous thing in Liberia isn’t poverty—it’s the slow death of our potential. //

The truth is more damning: we’re not failing because we’re poor. We’re poor because we’ve institutionalized failure.