Executive Summary
The Ebola virus disease (EBOLA) outbreak in West Africa has the worst death toll since the disease was diagnosed in 1976. It also has far-reaching socioeconomic consequences.
Although the disease is still unfolding, several studies on those impacts have been conducted since the disease broke out in West Africa, including those by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Country Reports have been prepared by United Nations Country Teams (UNCT) under the leadership of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) country offices and the World Health Organization (WHO).
But fewer reports have focused on West Africa, and virtually none on the African continent. Moreover, most early prospects and projections on EBOLA’s socioeconomic impacts were based on patchy data and reflected uncertainty about the disease’s future epidemiological path. It is against this background that ECA began this study.
The overall objective is to assess the socioeconomic impacts on countries, the region, and Africa as a whole, both in terms of the real costs entailed and growth and development prospects, so as to devise policy recommendations to accompany mitigation efforts. The findings and conclusions of the study will be adjusted and updated until the crisis is over, culminating in a fully fledged evaluation of the impacts once the outbreak is contained.