Liberians Leave U.S. to Build Businesses

MONROVIA, Liberia -- Ciata Victor gave up a high-paying tech job, a spacious condo and a first-world life in Maryland to return home to an African capital that barely has electricity or running water. After 26 years of watching from afar as her native Liberia was ravaged by coups and war, Victor says she's home to stay. And she's started a business _ running a seven-computer Internet cafe using a generator and a borrowed satellite hookup.

"There's some now who say they will not come to Liberia until Liberia gets running water and electricity. I just wanted peace," Victor said.

As this West African country works to rebuild, moneyed Liberians who spent decades abroad are starting to come home. It's a trickle that the year-old government hopes will swell, supplying investment and a much-needed educated class in a nation where few went to school during 14 years of fighting and instability.

Now 45, Victor was 19 when she moved to the U.S. to attend college in 1980, the year Liberia's government was overthrown in a coup. Nine years later, Charles Taylor launched a rebellion that threw the region into a conflict from which it only emerged with his ouster in 2003. Taylor has been charged with war crimes by neighboring Sierra Leone and is awaiting trial.

In 2005, a Harvard-educated former U.N. and World Bank official became the first female elected president in Africa. Many Liberians said the installation of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf heralded a new era for the country's 3 million citizens _ including those who hadn't been back in years.

Victor said Sirleaf's speech to the U.S. Congress in March prompted a trial visit.

"I visited in May, and I felt pretty safe. So I went back (to the U.S.), gave my job 30 days notice, sold my condo, packed a container _ and on July 31, I came home," she said.

Most Liberians with means fled during the war. Liberia's historically close ties to the United States _ it was created in 1847 to resettle freed slaves _ meant many ended up in U.S. cities.

Sirleaf started calling on Liberian expatriates to come home during her election campaign and many returned to take posts in the government. But Liberia's biggest sign of hope may be entrepreneurs like Victor who start businesses with their own money.

There is already foreign investment in Liberia _ Firestone operates a rubber plantation, Mittal Steel is redeveloping iron ore mines and foreign governments have promised aid. And the U.N. has brought in 15,000 peacekeepers and other expatriate workers.

Henrique Caine, who is trying to start a construction equipment rental company in Monrovia, said the foreign presence was part of what spurred him to return.

"I look on the news and I see a lot of white folks from Europe and America in Liberia and I say 'Well, it can't be that bad. So it's time for us to start going home,'" he said.