Ebola's catastrophic consequences on Sierra Leone’s small-scale mining sector
Wed Nov 05 08:38:00 GMT 2014 'Ebola is having catastrophic economic consequences for Sierra Leone, where the disease is running rampant', writes Roy Maconachie in The Guardian. The country, together with the two other Mano River Union states , Liberia and Guinea, are presently in economic paralysis. Despite being natural resource -rich countries, inflation, food prices and currency exchange rates have soared, international investors have fled, and industries have come to a grinding halt. World Bank estimates suggest that the Ebola outbreak could cost the West African econoomy $32.6bn (£20.3bn) by the end of 2015, unless the epidemic is rapidly contained. In Sierra Leone, the macro-economic impacts of the crisis came into sharp focus two weeks ago, when the country’s second largest iron ore producer , London Mining, went into administration. The London-listed company was one of the country’s largest employers , providing jobs for 1,400 local people at its mine in Marampa, ...