African business leaders, meeting in Ethiopia, pledge nearly $30 million

Nigerial virologist Oyawale Tomori delivers scathing analysis of African response to Ebola

Oyawale Tomori, president of the Nigerian Academy of Science,

vetrinarian and virologist

Science Insider extensive interview with Dr. Tomori

Some excerpts:

Q: So African leaders should be held more accountable for what they spend money on?

A: GAVI [a public-private partnership that funds vaccines for low-income countries] just sanctioned Nigeria after a critical audit report. GAVI gave us money to do certain things, and we could not account for $2 million or $3 million of it. GAVI insisted that Nigeria must pay back that money, and the government agreed. But our government should not just agree to pay back the money, the government should find out who misused the money, get the money back from those persons and not from public coffers. And those people should be brought before the courts to answer for the deaths of the children who did not receive the vaccines that the GAVI money would have provided.

..........

Q: Do you think this unprecedented outbreak will change things?

A: I wish I could say with confidence that in 10 years’ time we will not be where we are now with Ebola. But the countries have totally lost control of what is going on. If you go to Sierra Leone or Liberia today, there must be at least 10 international groups there. At the end of this epidemic, everybody will pack their bags and leave. The African countries will be left not really knowing what has happened to them. Like someone hit them smack in the face, totally disoriented. There will be millions of scandals about how money was misspent and so on. We will focus on those and move on. Ten years from now, people will have forgotten that there was Ebola and we will be back to where we started.

Africans worst responders to Ebola crisis

This frank article continues here.
It is one thing to pledge help and another thing altogether to actually help.

I had an interesting conversation with a new aquaintance yesterday who I met when I argued with him on his blog.
He is American and went to Africa to invest in and manage small mines. He would not tell me where he is or what he is mining. I think that is typical and smart.
Anyway, he said there is much dishonesty and much stealing, and there is a lot of backlash from colonialism.

After the colonies became independent countries, this acquaintance said, the IMF came in and forced financial reforms as a condition of lending development money, but that the reforms only smoothed the money path from the elite bankers of the world into the pockets of each country's business and political elite, mainly, and as I have read here and there, the money that has been made with the investments in African has been kept pretty much inside the pockets of the elites. Some of them get to drive nice Toyotas.

So how can money be deployed now to help not only Ebola patients and families, but to ensure that it is used to create and maintain sustainable community-based health care systems that work for the people?

Orders for 1 million hazmat suits

Money goes here, just as was predicted by the Wall St. guy.

African Union rounds up African business leaders to support African doctors volunteering to fight Ebola

African Union chairwoman Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma

War against Ebola: The Africa Union to mobile Africa’s private sector

by Tadesse D.

The African Union is joining forces with Africa’s private sector, for the first time, to fight the Ebola epidemic in West Africa.

Towards this end, the AU has organized a forum to be held on November 8 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to mobilize significant resources from within Africa to join national and international efforts on the ground, as well as discuss reversing the economic decline of the countries and post-Ebola recovery.

High profile African businessmen, including Aliko Dangote Dangote of Group Nigeria, Strive Masiyiwa of Econet Zimbabwe and Patrice Motsepe of ARM South Africa have already confirmed their attendance.

Also confirmed are, Kola Karim, MD and CEO of Shoreline Energy International and Shoreline Power Company Limited, Jim Ovia, Founder of the Zenith Bank Group, Mohammed Dewji Group CEO of Mohammed Enterprises, Bob Collymore CEO of Safaricom, Sifiso Dabengwa Group CEO of MTN Africa, Ashish Thakar Founder and Managing Director of Mara Group, Sim Tshabalala Group CEO of the  Standard Bank Group and Yusuf Manji, Chairman and CEO of Quality Group to mention a few.

Recently, the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated that the spread of Ebola may be slowing in Liberia, one of the three West African countries – including Sierra Leone and Guinea – that have been most ravaged by the deadly virus.

Through its AU Support to the Outbreak of Ebola in West Africa (ASEOWA) mission, the AU has deployed over a hundred volunteer medical and health workers to the three affected countries. Among them are epidemiologists, medical doctors, clinicians, public health specialists and communications personnel. These teams have enhanced the capacity of existing national and international response mechanisms.

Following Dr. Dlamini Zuma’s call to all African Heads of State to contribute more health workers towards this efforts, over 2000 medical personnel have so far been pledged.  Contributions from the business people will support the deployment of these volunteers.

“There is much more work to be done, and we welcome the willingness already shown by big businesses on the Continent in helping to restore normality to the regions affected, where Ebola has had a major socio-economic impact. The pride of the African continent lies in our commitment to help other Africans. The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is unprecedented, and our co-ordinated responses to the crisis are therefore urgent. We need to continue to provide financial assistance to these regions, to be able to track and contain the disease, provide treatment to those who are sick, and restore normality to these communities.” says Dr. Dlamini Zuma.

This indicates that global efforts to combat the outbreak are making headway, thanks in no small measure to the AU Support Mission’s efforts to mobilise technical expertise, resources and political and financial support the fight against Ebola.