As the sun went down on a recent public holiday, young Liberians poured on to the capital’s streets to mingle and flirt in the glow of yellow street lights.

“We are having fun tonight because of the street lights,” said a 17-year-old boy dressed in scruffy hip-hop clothes, with a deep machete scar across his left eye and cheek.

When Ellen Johnson Sirleaf rebuilt parts of Monrovia’s electricity grid, boys like these saw streetlights for the first time. “We could not come here before because it was too fearful,” said the boy. “There is no more fighting, no more chopping people, because of the street lights.”

In her modest office the Harvard-educated President, the first female head of state in Africa, smiles at a description of the scene. Since her predecessor, Charles Taylor, launched his army of drug-addled child soldiers on a bloody rampage in 1989, destroying the country, Liberia has been in literal and figurative darkness.

By restoring street lights the President sent a message to Liberia’s estimated three million people that she would not only rebuild the infrastructure but would rebuild their broken lives too. “We’ve brought back hope,” she said. “You can see the changes in their faces. For them now the future does have promise. And that to me is the greatest thing we’ve done.”

The President’s first year has prompted cautious optimism in the development world. Mrs Johnson Sirleaf and several experienced Cabinet ministers have slashed corruption, boosted near-empty government coffers and laid the groundwork for what could be one of the most dramatic turnarounds in recent African history.

But for all that enthusiasm, peace remains precarious. Liberia is decrepit; people live in slums and bombed ruins, plagued by disease and hunger and split along tribal lines. The economy with an estimated annual value of £65 million is smaller than some professional sportsmen’s contracts in the West. The most intractable problem is unemployment, stuck at 85 per cent. Even those with jobs — there are few employers outside government — earn no more than $1 a day. Dissent is growing. Even the best president may not be able to rescue Liberia.

Just back from her latest international trip, to China, the 68-year-old President looks weary. A grandmotherly figure in a sparsely furnished office, she projects a clear message: gone are the lavish accoutrements and phalanx of cronies siphoning off the country’s wealth. Mrs Johnson Sirleaf is here to drag her failed country into the modern world. She lists her achievements: a 25 per cent boost in government revenue; thousands of newly trained army and police recruits; foreign-funded road and other infrastructure projects.

Her attack on corruption has earned her many enemies. Government intelligence confirms reports that opponents are recruiting rebels in refugee camps in neighbouring states.

As long as peace is maintained it is the international donors who will determine the country’s fate, says Luigi Giovine, the World Bank’s director in Liberia. “The most important thing we can do for Liberia is create another 5,000 to 10,000 jobs,” Mr Giovine says. “That would provide livelihoods for 150,000 Liberians.”

Mrs Johnson Sirleaf has received vocal support from foreign leaders but that has not come with the sense of urgency she would like. “There’s a long road between commitment and cash,” she says. A World Bank donors’ conference to be held next month in Washington will seek hundreds of millions of dollars for reconstruction.

The lack of jobs has been her critics’ main complaint. At the cafeteria in the University of Liberia students drink cola and vent their frustrations. “We’re worried we’ll be fighting over some small government jobs for $1 a day,” Martin Cooler, 24, the student president, said.

“Expectations are high,” says Dallas Ambrose Mnah, host of Monrovia’s top radio talk show. “The people are not educated. During electioneering people made promises. People expected those things to happen straight away. Now it is time for people to get to understand things do not just happen.”

Leading lady

1971 Waits at tables to support her Master of Public Administration degree

1985 Sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for speaking out against the military leader Samuel Doe

1997 Turns against Charles Taylor's rebellion

2003 Serves as head of the Governance Reform Commission

Jan 2006 Inaugurated as Africa’s first elected woman head of state

Sources: BBC, Time magazine, The New York Times

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