Philadelphia, PA, USA | Friday, July 25, 2025: Madam President, Members of the Executive Committee; Chair and members of the Board of Directors; Friends of Liberia; Distinguished Guests; Fellow Liberians; Ladies and Gentlemen...

I bring you 26 Greetings from His Excellency Joseph Nyuma Boakai, Sr, President of the Republic of Liberia, who was particular in directing me to express his appreciation to you, and all Liberians in the diaspora,  for never wavering in your love, labor, and loyalty to the motherland. 

Madam President,  in my own name, I thank  you and your officials  for the invitation to celebrate our country’s 178th Independence with you, and for granting me the special honor to deliver the keynote. 

I have learned not to keep people who want to party and enjoy themselves waiting to hear a speech which they will never remember except that the speech was too long. So, let me limit myself to  making three points. If you remember nothing I will say here, I hope you will remember that I did not keep you away from boiling.  

Firstly, let me say what is obvious, which is that, at 178, Liberia is an old country. Historically, ours is the oldest independent Republic in Africa. However, as of this year, 50% of Liberians are under the age of 19 - make that 18.8 years of median age.  Yeah, year on year we have been very busy reproducing ourselves. 

Do you also know that two-thirds of Liberia’s population is under 25? And so, while we are an old country, we are actually a young nation. I know that some of you here, if not all of you, will find it difficult to remember what you did at 25. Forgive yourself. Mother nature catches up with all of us.

A youthful population means there is more ahead of us than there is behind us. More potentials. More possibilities. More energy. More creativity. More ingenuity. And time to make - or to put it better -  remake ourselves. Understanding this about ourselves will go a long way to helping us to not just move forward, but to move ahead because building or rebuilding our country will depend on how well we harness the energy of our youth into a development engine.  It cannot be said more clearly: Invest in making our young people productive, and the next 178 years will be regenerative, redemptive and truly reconciliatory. 

My second point builds on the first. Being an old country means we share a long history. It is fair to say that our history has been a checkered one. While we have aspired to live in peace and unity, over the course of our history, we have fought each other in bitter and bloody wars, and even today, continue to struggle with long-held vestiges of division mainly along lines of tribe, religion and gender. 

Sadly, we have not always been true to our declaration of independence, and we  have not always used the God-given richness of our country to benefit all Liberians. Our wars have left us with deep and tender scars  from which we are trying to be healed and to recover.

The inconvenient truth of our history is that  like all nations which know what is right, but chooses to do what is wrong and divisive; we, too, can fail and fall.

You see, my friends, we are not immune from the consequences of doing the wrong things, even though we are especially blessed with a resiliency that inspires us to rise when many do not give us a chance to be able to. Beating the odds is a hereditary gene of all Liberians, wherever we happen to find ourselves.

This, too, is why, on our Independence Day, we should not just celebrate how old we are, or how far we have travelled as a people. At home and all around the world, when we sing the national anthem and raise our flag, in celebration of our independence, let us do so with new meaning. Let us joyously celebrate how far we can imagine ourselves to still travel knowing the road ahead may be difficult, but we can and will overcome it. We can, and we will rebuild. We can and we will succeed.  We can and we will govern ourselves better. 

My fellow Liberians. We come from a land of hope. Hopefulness is our legacy. We are a nation of overcomers. We know that although our circumstances may not be the best, our hope never fades. By doing the right things - day by day -  and by working as hard as we possibly can, we will build a better tomorrow, if not for ourselves then for our children.

I know that I am preaching to the choir here  when I talk about Liberian resiliency and hopefulness because many of you know and are living this truth every day. It was that Liberian  hopefulness that brought some of you to this distant land, and it is that innate Liberian hopefulness that continues to drive  you every day - through the heat and the cold -  to make a better life for yourselves and for your children, in a place where many don’t even know how to pronounce your names correctly.

And so,  let me just remind us that it is within us to succeed. I therefore urge you not to give up on yourselves, and don’t you dare give up on our country. 

As for my final and third point, the theme selected for this celebration, “Empowerment through unity” speaks with rare clarity to what Liberia and Liberians need now more than ever. 

Empowerment, my friends, is not a gift to be freely given. It is not money others should donate to us. And yes, it is not a duty anyone owes to us. Empowerment is what we owe to  ourselves and to our country. Empowerment  begins with the self-belief that we matter, and that we are responsible for the future we desire to see.

This is what a former President of this country meant when he famously exalted his  countrymen and women saying, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you  can do for your  country.” This is the meaning of empowered citizenship - not what your country can give you, but as a citizen, what you can contribute to the advancement of your country. President John F. Kennedy  knew that  citizenship is already empowering - because it actually is. But the problem is whether or not we can act as our citizenship already empowers us to do. 

We can act not just to criticize a problem but to incentivize a solution; not just to put ourselves down but to lift each other up; and not just to see the worst in each of us but to enable the best in all of us.

Today, and moving forward, my friends: Stop falsely empowering others by asking them to empower you. Stop asking for what you already have, and no one can truly give you.  Act like empowered citizens of a country that needs all of its citizens feeling empowered, taking responsibility and doing their part to build a better, prosperous, just and democratic nation. 

Get up. 

Wake up. 

Be involved. 

Act with power. 

Let's build our beloved Liberia, together. 

Happy Independence Day.

God bless you. I thank you.