Presidential Hopeful, Benoni Urey, Wants Liberia To open Up To Jewish Financing and Technological Innovations
May 12, 2015
By all account Jewish Americans have been listed as the wealthiest hedge funds billionaires in the world, and among some of the very few private investors that are generally willing to risk investing in human resources and Governments globally.
But except for South Africa and a few other scattered well-to-do countries on the African continent, Jewish Americans has kept billions of their wealth and investments away from Western Africa.
And, if you check the global financial system, you would agree that Western Africa is actually starving for it.
However, Liberia's Presidential hopeful, and the country's richest man, Benoni Urey is hoping to reverse this trend and personally engage the Jewish community in a bid to offer them lucrative and risk shielding investment opportunities in Liberia.
A man who is himself educated in Financing, and has spent years intermingling with the Jewish community in Los Angeles while studying at the USC, many thinks that Urey's understanding of Jewish investment culture and his historic relations with them during his university years would give him an advantage that was previous unavailable to many African leaders.
Unlike any other Liberian politician, Urey had lived extensively among the Jewish people and had still has strong moral connections to many Jewish organizations that may be more than willing to give his Presidential aspirations a helping hand.
Battered by years of a now long gone civil war, Liberia is facing a tough challenge attracting external financing and willing private investors.
And the current Liberian government is seemingly unable to convince private financiers to come into Liberia and set up shop.
But Urey is adamant that should he be given the reins of the Presidency in 2017, he would use his business clout to convince both Jewish and open investors to place their trust in Liberia.
He envisions that a network of skill training facilities and human resources investments would first need to be established as a preceding factor that can transfer Liberia into a product assembly centre in West Africa, via affordable labor.
Like the Philippines which earns billions of dollars in remittances from exported skills, Urey also wants to ask investors to use the same methodology in Liberia, since it has proven to be the most expedient method in eradicating poverty among a largely unemployed population.
In Urey's view, total reliance on old methods and the country's natural resources has not worked to benefit the poor, and only continues to lead to resentment and disloyalty for their Liberian identities.
He stressed that a wider scope of reduced risk investments and the Filipino method would better benefit Liberians, and would see a total positive transformation of the country's economic fortunes within two to three years.
Outside of that, Urey argued that Liberia is starving for technological innovations, and need funding from major billion dollar players such as Samsung, Amazon, and Microsoft to join him in creating one of the most viral technological training projects in Western Africa.
This, he suffice, would also create a new workforce that would make Liberia attractive to international call centers and hundreds of offshore technology service providers who are constantly searching for thousands of affordable labor in this category.
He is optimistic that a concerted large scale investment in human resources skill marketing, a sustained technical training program for the Liberian population, and a massive influx of government insured private investors would almost immediately put economic power into the hands of the Liberian people.
Many Liberians are somewhat open to Urey's views and thinks that the successes of his companies and progressive move over the years from rags to riches are testimonies that he can better manage and develop Liberia.
On the other hand, others feels that his work under former President Charles Taylor, and accusations that still lingers from that period may be a challenging factor that might either work for him or against him, depending on which side of the coin you looks at.
Either way, Urey sees himself as an agent of positive change, and so does his supporters.
But for the seemingly willing Jewish American community, it is still a little too early to make any pronouncements. After all, the next Liberian Presidential election (in 2017) is still a little way off from now.
Source: By Dennis Adonis - Jewish Journal
