When President Joseph Nyuma Boakai officially launched the Excellence in Learning in Liberia (EXCEL) Project, the ceremony marked more than the unveiling of a five-year education program. It symbolized a renewed national reckoning with one of Liberia’s most enduring postwar challenges: how to rebuild an education system battered by conflict, epidemics, chronic underinvestment, and weak learning outcomes–and how to finally make quality education the norm rather than the exception.
“This launch is more than the unveiling of a program,” President Boakai declared. “It is a clear statement of who we are as a nation and what we believe about the future of our children.”
The US$88.7 million EXCEL Project–financed by the World Bank and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), with technical alignment from UNICEF, the European Union, and other partners–represents the largest single education investment in the history of Liberia’s partnership with the World Bank Group. Its ambition reflects both the depth of the crisis and the urgency of reform.
Liberia’s education system has struggled to recover fully since the end of the civil conflict in 2003. Years of war destroyed school infrastructure, displaced teachers, disrupted learning, and eroded institutional capacity. Postwar rebuilding efforts were repeatedly set back by the Ebola epidemic, prolonged economic fragility, and later COVID-19, which at its peak left an estimated 1.4 million children out of school, according to UNICEF.
Even when children returned to classrooms, learning outcomes remained alarmingly low. National assessments have consistently shown that many learners complete primary school without basic literacy or numeracy skills. Overcrowded classrooms, undertrained teachers, shortages of textbooks, and weak school management have compounded the crisis, while sexual and gender-based violence in schools continues to undermine safety and retention, especially for girls.
These realities have led education experts to describe Liberia’s learning crisis not merely as an access problem, but as a foundational learning emergency.
Since taking office, the Boakai administration has placed education at the center of its ARREST Agenda for Inclusive Development, with human capital development identified as a critical pillar. The appointment of Dr. Jarso M. Jallah as Minister of Education two years ago marked a turning point toward evidence-based reform, system strengthening, and accountability.
Under Minister Jallah’s leadership, the Ministry of Education has prioritized restoring national data systems, conducting annual school censuses, improving teacher payroll integrity, and aligning donor support behind a single national reform agenda. These efforts laid the groundwork for EXCEL.
Education observers note that what distinguishes the current reform push is not the absence of challenges, but a clearer recognition that learning–not enrollment alone–must define success.
What EXCEL Seeks to Change
The EXCEL Project is structured around four core priorities, each designed to address long-standing bottlenecks in Liberia’s education system including Equitable Access and Infrastructure, School Financing and Performance Incentives, Safe and Inclusive Learning Environments and System Strengthening and Accountability.
The EXCEL project will finance the construction of 100 innovative, climate-resilient primary schools, targeting underserved communities across all 15 counties. This responds directly to disparities between urban and rural access and the vulnerability of schools to climate shocks.
New school capitation grant program will support renovations, rehabilitation, and performance-based incentives–an attempt to move beyond ad hoc funding toward predictable, results-oriented financing at the school level.
Recognizing that learning cannot thrive where children feel unsafe, the project includes strong measures to prevent school-based violence, particularly sexual and gender-based violence, while promoting inclusive environments for girls and vulnerable learners.
The project places heavy emphasis on Annual School Census exercises, National Primary Learning Assessments, and data-driven planning–tools long absent or inconsistently applied in Liberia’s education governance.
President Boakai said the project will directly benefit more than 350,000 children, improve training and support for over 15,000 teachers, and equip school leaders in every political district.
“This is how we intentionally build Liberia’s human capital, fairly and sustainably,” he said.
At the heart of EXCEL is a focus on foundational literacy and numeracy, particularly by Grade Three–a global benchmark increasingly seen as decisive for lifelong learning.
World Bank Country Manager Georgia Wallen described the launch as “a day of hope rooted in the vision of Liberia rising,” noting that children who fail to master basic reading and mathematics early are far more likely to drop out, remain unemployed, or be trapped in poverty.
“This is the largest investment in education in the history of the World Bank Group’s partnership with Liberia,” Wallen said, disclosing US$60 million in World Bank financing, complemented by a US$28.7 million GPE grant.
Her message was blunt: without strong foundations, later investments in secondary and tertiary education yield diminishing returns.
The Global Partnership for Education, which has supported Liberia with nearly US$100 million over the years, described EXCEL as a response to the root causes of weak learning outcomes. The project is expected to reach more than 2,300 public early childhood and primary schools, benefiting over 360,000 students, teachers, and education personnel.
Key interventions include evidence-based instruction in reading and mathematics, nationwide distribution of quality teaching and learning materials, training for over 12,000 teachers and school leaders, strengthened school management committees, climate-resilient infrastructure, and a strong gender equity focus, with nearly half of beneficiaries expected to be girls.
UNICEF Country Representative Andy Brooks, speaking as Co-Chair of the Local Education Group, emphasized that EXCEL reflects years of inclusive planning and coordination.
“COVID-19, Ebola, and years of conflict severely disrupted education in Liberia,” Brooks said, praising the government for moving “beyond policy commitments to concrete system-level action.”
He stressed that foundational learning is not a technical issue alone, but a national productivity and equity challenge, with implications for jobs, growth, and social stability.
Despite the scale of investment and political commitment, analysts caution that EXCEL’s success will depend on implementation discipline, sustained financing, and legislative support–particularly the timely ratification of project financing.
Teacher deployment, supervision capacity, procurement transparency, and coordination between central and county authorities remain weak points. Moreover, education reform in Liberia has historically struggled to survive political transitions.
President Boakai acknowledged these risks, urging collective ownership.
“Let us make excellence not the exception, but the standard for education in Liberia,” he said, calling on parents, educators, lawmakers, and communities to support the reform.
The launch of EXCEL represents a decisive moment in Liberia’s long education recovery journey. It reflects lessons learned from past reforms that focused too narrowly on access while neglecting learning quality, teacher support, and accountability.
If successfully implemented, EXCEL could help shift Liberia from crisis management to systemic improvement, ensuring that children do not just attend school, but learn, thrive, and contribute meaningfully to national development.
President Boakai couldn’t have put it any better, “When education fails in the classroom today, the nation fails tomorrow.”
And EXCEL is Liberia’s bet that this time, the classroom will succeed, according to the Ministry of Education.
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