WHY LIBERIA MUST EMBRACE PORT AUTONOMY - Unlocking National Growth through Decentralization
- cyrusgrayii
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Cyrus L. Gray, Jr. - Lomé
January 6, 2026
Sitting here at Lomé’s Hotel Onomo watching hundreds of vessels queue to enter and exit the autonomous Port of Lomé, I am tempted to ponder Liberia’s current disposition at a defining crossroads in its maritime and economic history. With the Port Decentralization and Modernization Bill now before the President, the country has an opportunity to correct decades of structural inefficiency in port governance and to reposition its seaports as engines of regional and national growth.
At the heart of this debate is a simple but powerful proposition: Liberia’s four seaports—Monrovia, Buchanan, Greenville, and Harper—must be made autonomous commercial entities, while the Liberia Maritime Authority assumes its proper role as an independent regulator. This reform is not radical. It is long overdue—and it is fully aligned with Liberia’s broader decentralization agenda under the Local Government Act and Revenue Sharing Law.
Centralized Control: A Structural Constraint on Growth
For decades, Liberia’s ports have operated under the centralized authority of the National Port Authority (NPA) in Monrovia. While this structure may have been justified in an earlier era, it has increasingly become a binding constraint on performance, investment, and innovation. Under the current system:
• Strategic decisions for ports hundreds of miles apart are made centrally in Monrovia.
• Local port managers lack authority to negotiate concessions, attract private capital, or tailor services to regional markets.
• Revenues generated in the counties are largely centralized, weakening incentives for local development.
• Ports function as administrative extensions of government rather than commercial gateways competing in a global maritime economy.
The result is a severe underutilization of Liberia’s most strategic asset: its long Atlantic coastline and multiple natural harbors.
The Lomé Lesson: What Autonomy Can Achieve
A powerful comparison can be drawn with the Autonomous Port of Lomé in Togo, one of West Africa’s most successful ports.
Key Comparative Indicators
Indicator Autonomous Port of Lomé (Togo) Port of Monrovia (Liberia)
Coastline length 35 miles 360 miles
Population 8.9 million 5.4 million
GDP (nominal) USD 9.5–10 bn USD 4.5–5.0 bn
Total throughput 30.64 million tons (2024) 4.15 million tons (2024)
Container traffic ~1.9 million TEU 126,527 TEU
Vessel calls ~1,554 ships/year 293 ships/year
Despite having one of the shortest coastlines in Africa, Lomé handles over seven times Liberia’s cargo, fifteen times its container volume, and five times its vessel calls. This disparity is not geographic—it is institutional. The success of Lomé rests on legal and financial autonomy; independent, professional governance; direct concessioning power; rapid commercial decision-making; aggressive attraction of private investment; and clear separation between operator and regulator. These are precisely the attributes Liberia’s ports
currently lack.
Port Autonomy and Liberia’s Decentralization Agenda
Making Liberia’s ports autonomous is not an isolated reform; it is a natural extension of the country’s new governance framework. It aligns with the Local Government Act in the following ways:
• Autonomous ports become regional economic institutions, not distant central departments.
• County participation in port governance strengthens accountability and ownership.
• Local authorities gain leverage to plan infrastructure, industrial zones, and trade corridors around ports.
It also aligns with the Revenue Sharing Law in that:
• Port-generated revenues can be shared transparently with host counties.
• Counties gain predictable income streams for roads, utilities, education, and health services.
• Revenue sharing becomes earned through performance, not dependent on transfers.
In short, port autonomy operationalizes decentralization in one of the most economically impactful sectors of the Liberian economy.
Port Autonomy and decentralization may also unlock Regional Growth, Port by Port.
Monrovia, as an autonomous port, can transition from a national bottleneck into a regional logistics hub—expanding container capacity, cold-chain logistics, ship services, and transshipment activity currently lost to competing ports. The current NPA leadership Team has the drive to accomplish this, but they must go beyond conventional thinking and focus on the growth opportunities availing to the Port of Monrovia.
Buchanan is ideally positioned to anchor bulk and mineral exports, including iron ore, cement, and timber. Autonomy would allow specialized terminals, direct mining-logistics partnerships, and stronger links to inland production zones.
With autonomy, Greenville could emerge as a center for forestry, fisheries, agro-processing exports, bulk
exports (Putu for example) from the northern counties, while supporting coastal shipping, future offshore oil facility, maritime search and rescue (SAR) offshoot and domestic cabotage—activities largely absent under centralized management.
Harper’s strategic location near Côte d’Ivoire positions it as a gateway for cross-border trade, palm oil, cocoa, fisheries, coastal tourism logistics, future offshore oil exploration support facility and potential commercial collaborator with the much bigger and overloaded Port of San Pedro in neighboring Cote D’Ivoire —opportunities that require local decision-making and targeted investments.
Beyond the Ports, a decentralized, autonomous port system would create multiple regional growth poles, lower national logistics costs, increase shipping connectivity and vessel calls, stimulate private investment across counties, generate thousands of direct and indirect jobs, expand Liberia’s GDP through trade-led growth. Most importantly, it would transform Liberia’s coastline from an underused boundary into a continuous economic corridor, akin to the Blue Economy landscape that is fast developing and championed as a new development model the world over.
This is a moment Liberia must not miss. Liberia has ten times the coastline of Togo, multiple natural deep-water port locations, a reform-minded legal framework, untapped regional and hinterland markets. What it lacks is not potential—but modern port governance. Granting autonomy to Monrovia, Buchanan, Greenville, Harper, and other future ports, while empowering the Liberia Maritime Authority as regulator, is not fragmentation. It is alignment with global best practice. Port autonomy is not a threat to national cohesion. It is a catalyst for inclusive growth—county by county, coast to coast.
About the Author:
Cyrus L. Gray, Jr. is a Maritime Expert and International Consultant with experience in port reform, maritime
governance, global health supply chain and trade-led development across Africa and emerging economies. He provided consultancy to the NPA in the APM Terminal Concession negotiations (2009) and has worked in several countries under
international maritime and aviation consultants including International Management Corporation (IMC) of Houston, Maritime Transport & Business Solutions (MTBS) of the Netherlands and Modalis Infrastructure Partners Inc., a strategic investment advisory and professional services firm based in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada that focuses on international transport infrastructure investment, development, privatization, operations, and business intelligence across a global network of professionals with deep experience across airports, seaports, and multimodal logistics operations. He was
USAID Supply Chain Advisor in Liberia. He is published author of the “Negro Nation,” and National Consultant for a Consortium of Civil Society Organizations – Center for Democratic Governance, NEYMOTE AND CENTAL – implementing the Republic of Ireland funded two year “Strengthening Political Governance in Liberia” project. He is a product of Cuttington University, the University of Houston’s College of Technology in Houston, Texas and the World Maritime University in Malmö, Sweden.
