New Delhi, Sep 16 (IANS) Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor has left for a six-day visit to the West African states of Liberia and Ghana, officials said here Wednesday.
Tharoor, who left New Delhi Tuesday night, will first reach Liberia. He would be the first Indian minister to visit Liberia in almost 40 years after then foreign minister Swaran Singh in 1971.

Liberia has a unique history among African countries, having been founded in 1847 by escaped slaves from the US. In 2005, it elected Africa’s first woman president in Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who took over office in 2006.

While bilateral visits have been rare, diplomatic relations go back a long way with both being members of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). In recent years, India is known in Liberia for sending the United Nations’ first female police contingent to maintain law and order, as well as provide security to President Sirleaf.

Tharoor will be meeting with the top leadership in Liberia, including the president and several cabinet ministers, a ministry statement said.

Accompanied by a 15-member business delegation, he will address an industry event to boost economic ties with the mineral-rich nation.

Indian private companies are interested in having a stake in Liberia’s mineral resources of iron ore, gold, diamonds and copper, as well as in its plantations of rubber, coffee and cocoa.

From Liberia, Tharoor will head to Ghana from Sep 19 to 21, primarily as a special representative of the Indian prime minister at the birth centenary celebrations of the West African country’s first president Kwame Nkrumah, who was one of the founders of NAM along with Jawaharlal Nehru.

India had been asked to send a high-level participant by Ghanaian President John Evans Atta Mills, who had sent a personal request through a special envoy to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.