Liberia is selling itself slice by slice nine years after a terrible civil conflict finally came to an end, offering valuable resources to the highest bidder even though that could kindle tension among a population that often feels it is being sold out. The chairman of the Liberia Land Commission, Othello Brandy, says that 57.5 percent of the nation’s territory has been alloted via concessions, for a total of 5.6 million hectares (13.8 million acres), of which a little more than one million hectares represented agricultural land. Alfred Brownell, a lawyer who founded the non-governmental organisation Green Advocates estimates that at least 120 foreign companies have signed concessions contracts in Liberia, a country the size of Portugal that was colonised by freed black slaves from the United States. “Over the last six years it has been an avalanche,” Brownell said, before explaining that Liberia, a western Africa country that suffered 15 years of war from 1989 to 2003, lacked the expertise to develop by itself.
