Ebola as Depopulation Control? CLG notes that there is an oil map for each country that has seen West African strain of Ebola break out. These oil maps are kind of a coincidence? They can almost be interchanged for Ebola outbreak maps. [MORE] Recently activists in West Africa told reporters that corporate entities have failed to meet their corporate social responsibilities, as  dwellers in local communities continue to suffer marginalization, forceful displacement, exploitation and denial of their livelihood. Civil societies in West Africa are embarrassed that ongoing trade in natural resources has in the past and up till now, continue to violate rights of local communities with impunity.

According to the director of the Network Movement for Justice and Development, Aminata Kelly-Lamin, “deprivation, environmental abuses and destruction of their properties, regional governments have also failed to protect their citizens against corporate abuses and to disseminate relevant information associated with impact of mining, oil, agriculture and forestry activities and the lack of access to information. ”[MORE]  At any rate, ebola is set to devastate the economies of the four countries affected. There is oil interest in Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria - all countries that have been hit by ebola.

More than 1,900 people have so far died from Ebola in the four affected west African countries, but many more will suffer the economic consequences. Governments reckon the worst of those effects are yet to be felt, but they are still busy trying to calculate what the outbreak is going to cost them. [MORE]

Ebola virus disease (EVD) or Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) is a disease of humans and other primates caused by an ebolavirus. Symptoms start two days to three weeks after contracting the virus, with a fever,sore throat, muscle pain and headaches. Typically, vomiting, diarrhea and rash follow, along with decreased functioning of the liver and kidneys. Around this time, affected people may begin to bleed both within the body and externally.[1]

The Ebola outbreak in Western Africa shows no signs of slowing and without a new medical inoculation to slow the infection rate will ultimately drift into Nigeria and the Niger delta, source of 2.6 million barrels a day of oil production. Not one of those barrels are produced in Nigeria without the help of Western oil companies and their technicians, but it is unclear whether the threat of an epidemic is enough to get Shell, Chevron, Exxon and other oil companies to begin to send their workers home and slow production in the area. [MORE]

Alison Turner, an analyst at City firm Panmure Gordon, admits ebola ‘poses a very real short term risk to mining companies operating in West Africa’.

She added in an in-depth research note on the subject that the efforts of other countries to stop the spread of ebola, such as restricting travel from affected nations, create a ‘major logistical challenge for companies operating in West Africa’.

Travelling restrictions imposed in the three countries most affected by the virus – Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone – have negatively impacted food production and importations, the FAO said, adding that these nations highly rely on external suppliers of food. 

In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia - the most reliant on food importations - the price of cassava shot up 150% within the first weeks of August.

Movement restrictions will affect the crop harvesting season, started in September, due to labour shortages, which will also hinder the production of cash crops like palm oil, cocoa and rubber. 

The reduction of cross-border markets has already exacerbated food prices, while the establishment of quarantine zones prompted dozens of people to buy large amount of foods, leading to shortages.

Bukar Tijani, FAO regional representative for Africa, said: "Access to food has become a pressing concern for many people in the three affected countries and their neighbours.

"Food insecurity is poised to intensify in the weeks and months to come. The situation will have long-lasting impacts on farmers' livelihoods and rural economies."

Vincent Martin, head of an FAO unit in Dakar, warned that "These latest price spikes are effectively putting food completely out of their [those in affected areas] reach."

He added that the food crisis could hinder attempts to contain the virus, which is spread via infected body fluids.

The UN World Food Programme and FAO have approved an emergency programme to deliver 65,000 tons of food to 1.3 million people affected by Ebola over a three-month period. [MORE]

Ebola is having a serious economic impact on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, three West African nations already at the bottom of global economic and social indicators. Aggravating both the financial and social consequences, these countries and their frightened neighbors are imposing concentric circles of quarantines, cutting off neighborhoods, regions and even whole nations.

International medical authorities have warned against such practices, arguing that they will worsen suffering and deprivation, and do little to stop the spread of the disease. But many African nations have gone ahead anyway, sealing borders, barring entry to residents of the affected countries and barring their airlines from flying to those countries. Senegal has even refused to allow humanitarian flights with urgently needed supplies and medical personnel to take off from Dakar, the West African hub for international aid agencies. South Africa and Kenya, two of the continent’s economic heavyweights, have restricted entry to people coming from the Ebola zone.

For the worst-hit countries, “isolating and stigmatizing them and making it difficult to transport supplies, personnel and other resources” can only make things worse, the World Health Organization’s regional director for Africa, Luis Gomes Sambo, said at a meeting in Ghana last week.

For three nations that have only recently emerged from decades of war and political upheaval, Ebola has dealt a hard blow.

“After a decade of conflict we were set to restore the economy to its prewar status,” Amara Konneh, Liberia’s finance minister, said in an interview. “This outbreak is dealing a serious blow to all of our efforts. This is the biggest crisis we have faced since the end of our civil war.”

With sections of Liberia and Sierra Leone under quarantine and the borders of Senegal and Guinea sealed, the movement of goods has slowed. National budgets are under strain, health care expenditures are rising, government revenues are dropping and agricultural production, especially in Sierra Leone, has been hurt. South Africa is barring entry to non-South Africans who have been in the affected countries, and Kenya and Senegal are practicing similar measures.

“With the main harvest now at risk and trade and movements of goods severely restricted, food insecurity is poised to intensify in the weeks and months to come,” the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s regional representative for Africa, Bukar Tijani, said in a statement on Tuesday.

This week the United Nations warned that the price of cassava, a staple starch, increased 150 percent in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, in the first week of August. In Sierra Leone, rice, fish, palm oil and other basics have all risen in price, according to the country’s finance ministry.

Fear of Ebola has added uncertainty, recalling the worst period of the civil wars in West Africa in the 1990s. “People are thinking, ‘This is going to be as bad as the war,’ ” said Rupert Day, who runs Tropical Farms, a British cocoa and coffee trading company in eastern Sierra Leone, at the heart of the Ebola zone.

Five months into the epidemic, World Bank officials said they were still working out its economic impact in light of a new World Health Organization estimate of 20,000 potential Ebola cases.

Yet the bank has already projected a drop in Guinea’s G.D.P. growth rate of at least 1 percent. In Liberia, health care expenditures will now account for 25 percent of the government’s annual budget because of Ebola, instead of 8 percent, said the country’s finance minister. ArcelorMittal, which runs a major iron ore mining operation in Liberia, has delayed an expansion because contractors have evacuated 645 employees. In Sierra Leone, where the country’s main agricultural region has been hardest hit, the finance ministry wrote this week of the “devastating impact of the disease” on the country’s economy, and predicted a 4 percent drop in growth.

The evidence is so far mostly anecdotal. But analysts, economists and officials agree: the shock is noticeable. “Very, very damaging,” said the president of the African Development Bank, Donald Kaberuka, in a statement last week, while the ratings agency Moody’s spoke of “significant economic and fiscal ramifications” from the epidemic across the region.

In Sierra Leone, where the finance ministry this week produced a detailed summary of Ebola’s economic implications, there will be fewer farmers to harvest cassava, cocoa and coffee in the country’s breadbasket. Villagers spoke of harvests being canceled this year because so many farmers had died, and the finance ministry predicted “the loss of a whole planting season.” It projected a one-third drop in agricultural output. [MORE]