Dear Valentine: Be Mine. Oh, And About That Debt

This week demonstrators delivered more than 10,000 Valentine's Day cards to the US treasury department asking the United States to "have a heart" and cancel that long-beleaguered country's debts. Liberia is the country with the closest historical relationship to the United states, and even the normally Grinch-like International Monetary Fund is concerned with Liberia's debt burden. Africa Focus has several relevant stories here and you can see dcat's coverage of Liberia here. I believe that some form of debt relief or forgiveness is essential to African development. That relief can be coupled with sticks as well as carrots, but it is an issue that needs to continue to gain traction among policymakers.