ABSTRACT
This chapter evaluates the modality of Liberia Education Advancement Program (LEAP) governance as a set of institutional, structural and discursive relations through a critical political economy lens concerned with the ways in which the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ spheres are being reconfigured in educational governance. Since the 1920s, Liberia has pursued a policy agenda of privatisation and commercialisation of the country’s land and natural resources, focusing on creating an economic environment conducive to private foreign direct investment. The LEAP is an experimental, ‘first of its kind’ public-private partnership that outsources the management of primary schools to a number of diverse national and international private contractors. LEAP signifies a unique approach to financing educational ‘improvements’ in Liberia and beyond. LEAP is framed as a partnership for ‘educational advancement’, but by design it opens up business opportunities for private capital to experiment and manufacture new markets in a manner consistent with the country’s historical patterns of privatising the commons.
