In Summary:
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Popular lawyer and politician Cllr. Tiawon Gongloe claims that Liberia is the 10th poorest country in the world.
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We have verified this claim by consulting reputable sources, including the World Population Review
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We found that while Liberia is recognized as a low-income country and is ranked among the poorest, it does not appear among the top 10 poorest countries in the world
On August 19, Cllr. Tiawon Gongloe, political leader of the Liberian People’s Party, claimed during an appearance on OK FM that Liberia is the 10th poorest country in the world.
Cllr. Gongloe made the claim at (2:31:45) of the show while reacting to the Government of Liberia’s reported huge delegation to Japan for the 9th Tokyo International Conference on African Development Trade (TICAD) in Japan.
Claim
Said Cllr. Gongloe: “But you have to weigh the cost of the 10th poorest country spending its money that way compared to Botswana, not listed among the 10 poorest countries in the world.”
Rating Justification
To verify this claim, we contacted Cllr. Gongloe via WhatsApp requesting the source of his information. However, he did not respond to our inquiry up to the time of the publication of this report. We will update this report when he provides the source of the information.
We then reviewed the most recent global poverty rankings using data from multiple reputable sources, including World Population Review, Concern Worldwide, and FocusEconomics.
The world’s poorest countries are classified as low-income economies in the four-tiered World Bank ranking system.
This ranking, according to the World Bank, is based on each country’s gross national income (GNI) per capita, which is a measure of the country’s total income divided by its population.
According to 2025 data from World Population Review, the ten poorest countries in the world by GNI per capita are: Burundi, Afghanistan, Syria, Sierra Leone, the Central African Republic, Madagascar, Yemen, Mozambique, Niger, and Somalia. The World Population Review lists Liberia as the 14th poorest.
Similarly, Concern Worldwide, an international humanitarian organization, lists the world’s 10 poorest and vulnerable countries in 2025 as South Sudan, Somalia, the Central African Republic, Chad, Niger, Mali, Burundi, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, and Yemen.
This ranking focuses on the 2025 Human Development Index (HDI), published annually by the United Nations in its Human Development Report, taking into account the countries’ Gross National Income, Life expectancy at birth, and the UN’s HDI value.
Additionally, FocusEconomics, a global economic research firm, ranks Liberia as the 12th poorest country in the world, based on its GDP per capita and other key economic indicators.
Conclusion
Based on these findings, we conclude that Cllr. Gongloe’s claim that Liberia is the 10th poorest country in the world is incorrect.
While Liberia is recognized as a low-income country and is ranked among the poorest, it does not appear in the top ten according to recent data.