By Fiori Berhane (Add Fiori as a Friend!)

Liberia, a small country couched on the West African coast between Coite D'Ivoire and Sierra Leone and with a population of three million people, has welcomed Africa's first female president.

Following fourteen years of civil strife, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf has taken over from where Charles Taylor left off.  Taylor's legacy was marked by a civil war that spread throughout the region. Taylor himself financed the civil war in Sierra Leone that left countless amputees, scores of displaced peoples, the country's infrastructure in shambles, children orphaned, and the country's economy crippled by debt - the same debt that was used to fund Taylor's procurement of weapons.   Read More to see a gallery of exclusive photos!

Sirleaf, a Harvard trained economist and former World Bank loan officer- won the election in November 2005 by a narrow margin, and has had to maintain peace in a country that saw three quarters of its schools destroyed, where life expectancy is forty-two years, and much of its infrastructure completely devastated. Eighty percent of Liberia's population is illiterate, and Liberia is one of the few countries in the world in which children's literacy rate is lower than that of their parents.  Not only were many children pulled out of schools during the conflict, but were recruited by Taylor's militias as child soldiers. Sirleaf's greatest challenge is to reverse the losses- political, economic, and social- that Taylor's regime left, mainly that the majority of Liberia's population is under the age of eighteen and many of the young never attended school.

Sirleaf's short tenure has seen the return of six hundred thousand children to school, an amazing accomplishment in a situation where many children are returning to dilapidated buildings, lacking books, pencils, pens and other necessary supplies. Children in Crisis, an organization founded by Sarah Ferguson in 1994, has built eighteen schools in neighboring Sierra Leone.

Sarah visits with local women in Liberia, 2007

The Duchess wanted to replicate the success she had in Sierra Leone with her sister organization, the Forum for African Women Educationalists. She visited in July of 2007, witnessing schools where there were no roofs, and rough benches for desks. In the next eighteen months the organization has pledged to build more schools, with the vision that investing in the education of Liberia's youth will engender a more lasting peace.

Leaving Liberia the Duchess said: "The people of Liberia deserve to be listened to and I will be the loudspeaker for them on a public stage."

 Wikipedia: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Gallery of Liberian Photos