Challenges for Liberia's leader

To get a measure of the challenges facing the President-elect of Liberia, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who has just been declared the winner of Liberian elections, you need look no further than the official residence of the Head of State, currently occupied by the outgoing interim leader.

By international standards it is a modest, even rather scruffy ocean-front house behind high walls. If it were in, say, Nigeria or almost any other African state, you would think it belonged to a medium-level trader or a local politician.

In Monrovia, the only thing that obviously singles the place out as the official presidential residence is the presence at the gates of black-suited Liberian security men and United Nations peacekeepers.