AfDB_Women_s_Resilience_-_Integrating_Gender_in_the_Response_to_Ebola

Office of the Special Envoy on Gender
Women’s Resilience:
Integrating Gender in the Response to Ebola

Women’s Resilience:
Integrating Gender in the Response to Ebola
EmekaKupeski,2015

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| 3AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP
Foreword
In August 2014, the Office of the Special Envoy on Gender received a call from the
First Lady of Sierra Leone urging the Bank to integrate the socio-economic recovery of
Liberian, Sierra Leonean and Guinean women into our response to the Ebola epidemic.
The fact that the African Development Bank’s investments in public health systems in
these countries were thoroughly gender mainstreamed did not quite bring about the
recovery of women on the ground with the immediacy required. Thus, as the premier
African development finance institution, it was important for us to think altogether
differently so as not to lose the post conflict gains made by men and women in the region.
We commissioned this study to bring to light a topic that has often been discussed
but never investigated concretely – did Ebola affect women and men differently? The
answer is a resounding yes. We have long suspected that infectious diseases tend to
exacerbate the socio-economic vulnerabilities that are present prior to an outbreak, and
that knowledge has been confirmed here.
At the height of the epidemic, I visited the three countries affected. I met women and men
working tirelessly to eradicate this disease. Countless lives were lost in this battle and the
repercussions will be felt for years to come in terms of economic growth. For women,
there was, and still is, a danger of reverting to the way things were before.
This is why it was important to ensure a signature project that focused on women’s socio-economic recovery post
Ebola. The AfDB has created the Post-Ebola Social Investment Fund, with a special emphasis on women and girls. This
$33 million project, which is being implemented in partnership with the governments of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea,
as well as the US State Department, and under the auspices of Mano River Union Secretariat, looks to support civil society
organizations in the region in their efforts to reinvigorate economic empowerment and enhance the livelihood of women.
This approach highlights our thinking at the AfDB in terms of investing in gender equality for Africa’s transformation – whilst
mainstreaming is critical, women-focused initiatives are essential to driving real change.
Geraldine J. Fraser-Moleketi,
VP Special Envoy on Gender,
African Development
Bank Group
Source:AfDB

Acknowledgements
The report is the result of a rich and varied collaboration, one that involved staff in most AfDB departments and field
offices. The AfDB’s Special Envoy on Gender, Geraldine J. Fraser-Moleketi, provided overall guidance, and Dana Elhassan,
managed the publication. Chief writer, Robtel Pailey, and data specialist, Derek Powell, prepared the inception report, set
up the barometers and compiled the report. Also from the AfDB, Patrick Hettinger, Senior Country Economist, and Sandy
Jambawai, Social Sector Expert, gave extra data support.
The Office of the Special Envoy on Gender extends a heartfelt thanks to the President of Liberia, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf,
the First Ladies of Sierra Leone, Sia Koroma, and Guinea, Djene Condé, as well as to Finda Koroma. Thanks also to the
Ministers of Gender: Julia Duncan-Cassell, Liberia; Mustapha Attila, Sierra Leone; and Hadja Diakité, Guinea Conakry, who
mobilized advocacy efforts for a gendered approach to post-EVD recovery efforts.
On operationalising this study and pushing for an approved project in the region, a special word of gratitude also goes
out to the Resident Representative of Liberia, Margaret Kilo, and Manager of Transition States, Yero Baldeh. AfDB Gender
Specialist Amel Hamza, and Director of Human Department, Sunita Pitamber and her team, Caroline Jehu-Appiah
Budali Issahaku.

Table of contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Executive summary
| 3
| 5
| 9
| 11
Introduction Introduction and Background
Epidemiological Outlook
| 13
| 16
Women before Ebola Overview
Guinea
Liberia
Sierra Leone
| 17
| 17
| 18
| 20
Women during Ebola Farming, Agriculture and Food Security
Cross-border Trade and Market Restrictions
Tourism and Hospitality
Access to Financial Services
Access to Land
Access to Health Services
Access to Health And Infrastructure
Stigma, Gbv and Breakdown in Family Structures
| 23
| 24
| 26
| 27
| 27
| 27
| 28
| 29
Women after Ebola Overview
Bank Engagement in the Mano River Union
| 31
| 32
References | 35

Acronyms and Abbreviations
AfDB African Development Bank
ANC Antenatal Care
CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
DRC Democratic Republic of the Congo
DHS Demographic Health Survey
ETUs Ebola Treatment Units
EVD Ebola Virus Disease
ELWA Eternal Love Winning Africa
FAO Food and Agriculture Organisation
FHI Free Healthcare Initiative
GBV Gender Based Violence
GII Gender Inequality Index
GoSL Government of Sierra Leone
HCWs Health Care Workers
IFC International Finance Corporation
MRU Mano River Union
NPR National Public Radio
PPE Personal Protective Equipment
PNC Postnatal Care
UNDP United Nations Development Programme
UNFPA United Nations Population Fund
WHO World Health Organisation

According to a 2007 World Health Organisation (WHO) report, infectious diseases tend to unmask already entrenched
gender disparities in societies struggling to cope with them. When the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) struck Guinea, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone in 2014, they were ill-prepared for a massive healthcare crisis. The breakdown of pre-existing weak
healthcare systems and near economic collapse across the three countries further exposed women’s socio-economic
vulnerabilities.
On August 14, the Washington Post reported that across Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, collectively 55 to 60 % of
those dead were women. Although there is a dearth of evidence-based reporting on multifaceted implications of EVD for
women in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, there is also sufficient anecdotal evidence to indicate that they have been
disproportionately impacted by the outbreak. The reduction in health services has increased maternal, infant, and child
mortality rates. According to reports across the three countries, women farmers, marketers, and cross-border traders
have lost their livelihoods due to declines in agricultural productivity, imposed quarantine measures, and closed borders.
Women employed in the private sector across the sub-region are in hospitality/food service, insurance, air-transport, and
shipping, sectors that have been severely hit by the Ebola virus. In addition to a loss of livelihoods, women have had limited
access to healthcare services, and have been overburdened by their roles as caregivers in the home. While women have
spent countless hours tending to the sick, they have exposed themselves to contagion and disengaged from productive
work to sustain livelihoods.
For the purposes of this report, particular attention is paid to women’s labour force participation (or lack thereof), as well
as their access to financial services, land tenure, healthcare, and decision-making in both the home and nation. This
report suggests that the EVD crisis in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone has most likely impacted women in the following
ways: i) increased infection rates among women because of their traditional roles as caregivers, cross-border traders, and
marketers; ii) compromised the livelihoods of women marketers due to the closure of community and national markets;
iii) compromised the livelihoods of women who dominate the agricultural, retail trade, hospitality and tourism sectors;
iv) stigmatised women who work in hospitals and Ebola Treatment Units (ETUs); v) barred widows from accessing their
deceased husband’s land because of discriminatory inheritance laws; vi) increased abuse, sexual and gender-based vio-
lence because of the pressures of EVD, as well as reduced access to justice mechanisms; and vii) reduced the number of
women accessing health care, including reproductive, child, and pregnancy related health services due to the closure of
facilities across the three countries. Women who fall within special categories of vulnerable groups, such as (mentally and
physically) disabled or elderly women, will more than likely have been doubly or even triply impacted.
AfDB research indicates that:
■■ It is impossible to build resilience to Ebola and future infectious disease shocks in households and
communities without also addressing systemic gender inequality. Factors that entrench vulnerability for
the entire population must be addressed in the immediate response, medium- mitigation and long-term
intervention.
■■ Gender effects of Ebola in the region are influenced by the skills and strategies used prior to the outbreak,
and the mechanisms individuals used to cope and adapt differ. Gender-differentiated coping mechanisms
often have both direct and indirect consequences that place individuals and their households at greater
risk to future shocks such as food crisis.
■■ The lack of gender disaggregated data should not limit interventions and all efforts must be expended
in order to collect the relevant information to combat this disease now. These insights may not only be of
value in dealing with other epidemics but also prevent further outbreaks.
Just as macro-economic indicators attributed to Ebola are speculative at best, a comprehensive analysis about the
socio-economic implications of EVD on women cannot be pursued in totality until the three Mano River Union countries
are declared Ebola-free.
Executive summary

Women’s Resilience: Integrating Gender in the Response to Ebola
|12 OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ENVOY ON GENDER
AfDB recommendations
To adequately integrate gender in the response to Ebola, AfDB recommends that:
■■ A regional Social Investment Fund is established in order mitigate the economic losses of women during the
pandemic and to position them for economic recovery and eventually, economic empowerment in the aftermath
of the pandemic. As the AfDB Special Envoy of Gender, Mrs Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi indicated, “…the affected
economies need to ensure that women are empowered to help them rebuild [as the] current nature of the on-going
Ebola outbreak requires an increasingly multi-disciplinary approach to provide an integrated response”1
. The needs
of women farmers, cross border traders, SME owners must be addressed so as to bolster their resilience.
■■ Research is commissioned to conduct cross-country quantitative and qualitative analyses on the
socio-economic impact of EVD on women, in order to inform policy decisions about how to mitigate challenges
post-Ebola.
■■ As part of preparedness, greater partnership is needed among donors to contribute towards reducing the infra-
structure gap which contributed to the slowed response
■■ For long-term interventions, post-Ebola governments should establish bilateral scholarships specifically tai-
lored for women healthcare workers who want to specialise in epidemiology, public health, infectious diseases,
or who want to be trained as medical doctors.
1
www.afdb.org/en/blogs/measuring-the-pulse-of-economic-transformation-in-west-africa/post/ebola-the-need-for-a-gendered-approach-13472

Introduction and Background
Despite having recently recovered from protracted armed
conflict and regional political instability, Guinea, Liberia and
Sierra Leone “remain extremely fragile, with low per capita
incomes, low levels of human development, high gender ine-
qualities, and a relatively high disease burden.”2
According
to the 2014 African Economic Outlook, 55.2 percent, 57
percent, and 53 percent of Guineans, Liberians and Sierra
Leoneans, respectively, live below the national poverty
line. Lacking strong healthcare systems and sufficient per-
sonnel trained in infectious diseases, the three Mano River
Union (MRU) countries were the perfect breeding ground
for Ebola to spin wildly out of control.
Liberia, Guinea and Sierra-Leone, in spite of recent pro-
gress in economic and political terms, remain extremely
fragile, with low per capita incomes, low levels of human
development, high gender inequalities, and a relatively high
disease burden. In socio-economic terms, the most dev-
astating impact of the EVD is the negative impacts on liveli-
hoods—in both urban and rural areas. Households directly
affected suffer immensely, as the disease is capable of
wiping out whole families. However, the disease, by dis-
rupting the entire economic framework, has important
indirect or second round effects on communities and the
whole country.
The Ebola epidemic continues to cripple the economies of
Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. Since mid-2014 all three
economies have seen flat or negative income growth (and
large resulting fiscal needs). All three were growing briskly
in the first half of 2014. But full-year 2014 growth in Guinea
collapsed to an estimated 0.5 percent from a rate of 4.5
percent expected before the crisis. Full-year growth for 2014
in Liberia fell by more than half to an estimated 2.2 percent
from 5.9 percent expected before the crisis. Full-year 2014
growth in Sierra Leone fell by more than half to 4.0 percent
from 11.3 percent expected before the crisis. All three of
these rates imply shrinking economies in the second half
of 2014. The total fiscal impact felt by the three countries in
2014 was over half a billion dollars, nearly 5 percent of their
combined GDP. Second-round effects and investor aver-
sion make 2015 growth estimates sober: -0.2 percent in
2
Brief entitled “Impact of the Ebola Disease: Short, Medium and Long-term Perspectives” by staff of the African Development Bank (AfDB),
Abidjan, October 2, 2014.
Liberia
Guinea
GUÉCKÉDOU
FOYA
HARBEL
KAILAHUN
DISTRICT
Sierra
Leone
Sierra Leone, May 2014
Frst of EVD is reported was in
Kailahun District (●) bordering Guinea.
The vectors may have been
14 women who participated in
funeral rites for a traditional healer
in Koindu, across the border from
Guéckédou (●).
Since October 2014, the disease
spread to all of the13 districts
in Sierra Leone.
Guinea, December 2013
Probable origin of 2014 EVD in West Africa:
a 2-year-old boy in Guéckédou (●)
Liberia, March 2014:
A female health worker unknowingly
treats two infected persons in a hospital
in Foya (●), on the border of Guinea.
She then seeks treatment in Harbel (●)
at the Firestone Hospital, and subsequently
falls ill, becoming Patient Zero.
.
Figure 1.
Women’s involvement in the evolution of the Ebola virus

It is unsurprising that women signify central figures in this
most recent Ebola narratives. In Muslim burial practices
across the sub-region, women prepare corpses for funerals
although there is little to no empirical evidence proving a
correlation between burial practices and increased EVD
transmission rates. Women are also disproportionately the
caregivers in homes across the MRU. They represent the
largest share of marketers, cross-border traders, and small-
scale farmers. Similarly, women dominate the healthcare
sector, primarily as nurses, midwives and traditional birth
attendants, although statistics on the number of female
nurses in the three most affected countries could not be
found at the time of writing this report. The quarantine of
markets and residential areas, or restrictions of move-
ment, as measures to stop the spread of EVD, have also
devastated income generation—especially in the informal
sector, where female household heads and other women
predominate.
Guinea, 3.0 percent in Liberia, -2.0 percent in Sierra Leone
(down from pre-Ebola estimates of 4.3 percent, 6.8 percent,
and 8.9 percent, respectively: Figure 1). These projections
imply forgone income across the three countries in 2015
of about $1.6 billion (about $500 million for Guinea, $200
million for Liberia, and $900 billion for Sierra Leone: Table
1), more than 12 percent of their combined GDP3
.
According to a report4
in the New England Journal of
Medicine, the 2014 Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in West Africa
may have originated from a 2-year-old boy in the town of
Guéckédou, Guinea, in December 2013. It is suspected
that the virus spread further when a female health worker
unknowingly treated two infected persons in a hospital in
Foya, Lofa County, on the border of Guinea, in March 2014.
She then travelled to Harbel in Margibi County to seek treat-
ment at the Firestone Hospital, subsequently falling ill. This
woman became Liberia’s patient zero, the first reported
EVD case in the country. Across the border in Sierra Leone,
the first reported case of EVD was in May 2014 in Kailahun
District bordering Guinea, and the vectors may have been
fourteen women5
who participated in funeral rites for a tra-
ditional healer in Koindu, a diamond-mining town across the
border from Guéckédou. Since October 2014, the disease
spread to all of the country’s thirteen districts.
3
The Economic Impact of Ebola on Sub-Saharan Africa: Updated Estimates for 2015 – WB prepared for the World Economic Forum 2015.
4
www.nejm.org/doi/pdf/10.1056/NEJMoa1404505
5
www.nytimes.com/2014/08/29/health/ebola-outbreak-in-sierra-leone-is-tied-to-one-funeral.html
Source:CERD,AfDB
...examining who is most adversely impacted
by infectious diseases “shows you who has
power and who doesn’t. In a way, it holds a
mirror to society. And it shows societies how
they treat each other.”

It is clear that infectious disease outbreaks tend to expose
already entrenched disparities and inequalities within
national populations, particularly with respect to gender.
According to a Foreign Policy Magazine article6
published
in August 2014, Columbia University epidemiology pro-
fessor Wafaa El-Sadr argues that examining who is most
adversely impacted by infectious diseases “… shows
you who has power and who doesn’t. In a way, it holds
a mirror to society. And it shows societies how they treat
each other.” Indeed, the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Guinea,
Liberia, and Sierra Leone may have exacerbated women’s
socio-economic vulnerabilities, though apart from a few
isolated empirical studies conducted to date evidence of
this is generally anecdotal. For instance, Liberia’s Minister
of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Julia Duncan-
Cassell, has been particularly vocal by illustrating the nature
of women’s disease burden:
“At the beginning of the outbreak [in Liberia], 65
percent of those infected were women. That’s now
reduced slightly. Women are losing their husbands,
they are losing their sons and their daughters.
Women are often both caregivers and breadwin-
ners. They go to the market, they do farming. Most
nurses in Liberia are female. Directly or indirectly,
they are taking the brunt of this”.7
Duncan-Cassell’s appeal not only emphasises the need for
gendered analysis, but also for data accuracy and reliability.
Some have argued that the psycho-social trauma has been
so enormous that the toll from Ebola might become heavier
than the toll of armed conflict.
In the same way that there had been limited to no research
on finding a cure for Ebola in its 40-year life cycle before
this latest outbreak, and comprehensive qualitative and
quantitative studies8
on the impact of EVD on women are
yet to be pursued. Indeed, tailored interventions to address
gender dimensions have been lacking, with only few of the
recent interventions by the international community main-
streaming gender.
On the 28th
August 2014, the AfDB Special Envoy on
Gender, Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi, received requests from
the MRU countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone to
advocate and champion the gender agenda during the
many interventions planned in the countries. This prelimi-
nary report assesses the socio-economic impact of EVD
on women providing empirical evidence to support the
African Development Bank’s establishment of an MRU
Social Investment Fund for Women. Intended to restore
and improve the socio-economic and political status and
capacity of women in the three countries most affected
6
www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/08/20/why_are_so_many_women_dying_from_ebola?wp_login_redirect=0
7
www.eboladeeply.org/articles/2014/10/6411/ebola-women-julia-duncan-cassell-liberias-minister-gender
8
Although an example of ground breaking analysis, Martha Anker’s 2007 WHO report entitled “Addressing Sex and Gender in Epidemic-Prone
Infectious Diseases” does not focus solely on Ebola: www.who.int/csr/resources/publications/SexGenderInfectDis.pdf?ua=1
0
4,000
6,000
8,000
2,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
8,000
ACROSS 8 COUNTRIES* IN TOP THREE COUNTRIES
Confirmed, probable and suspected cases / reported deaths
15,351
5,549
Guinea
1,214
2,047 2,693
7,082
1,267
6,190
Liberia Sierra Leone
341
94
136
Liberia
Health care workers infected
with EBV, by country
Guinea
2 Mali
11 Nigeria
Sierra Leone
1 Spain
3 United States
57%
588
INFECTED
337
DEAD
TOTAL
HEALTH CARE
WORKERS
HEALTH CARE
WORKERS
BY COUNTRY
Fatality rates
of health care workers
Guinea
60%
Sierra Leone
60%
Liberia
60%
cases deaths
Figure 2.
EVD infections / fatalities, as of November 2014

by EVD, this Fund will: i) strengthen the livelihoods of
rural farmers, rural micro- and small-scale entrepreneurs
and cross-border traders; ii) provide social protection for
women and other vulnerable groups; (iii) establish an infec-
tious disease protocol and handbook for maternal and child
health care centres to minimise the risk of infection and
provide psycho-social counselling to those most impacted;
and (iv) support access to safe and sanitised facilities and
infrastructure in border communities affected by EVD to
recover agricultural, agri-business and small business
activities.
The findings of this report suggest that without clearly
defined, reliable and verifiable disaggregated data on the
actual number of women EVD infections/fatalities in Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone; survey data collected from
women heads of households, marketers, farmers, health-
care practitioners, cross-border traders, etc.; and qualita-
tive interviews with women based on snowball sampling,
it is nearly impossible to provide a comprehensive analysis
of the socio-economic implications of EVD on women in
the three MRU epicentres. Nevertheless, previous EVD
outbreaks in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of
the Congo support some of the assumptions about how
women may be disproportionately impacted by the current
outbreak. For instance, in the Gulu district of Uganda during
the 2000-2001 Ebola epidemic, the infection rate amongst
women outpaced9
that of men.
Epidemiological Outlook
Since October 2014 there have been major improvements
in Ebola transmission rates in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra
Leone. These improvements have come from better aware-
ness of correct sanitary procedures among populations,
earlier case diagnosis, and increased availability of care
within Ebola treatment units (ETUs). The expected spread
of any potential outbreak of Ebola beyond Guinea, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone is now lower and so, therefore, are the
likely economic effects of such a spread.
As of 21 November 201410
, a total 15,351 confirmed, prob-
able and suspected cases and 5,459 deaths have been
reported across eight countries—namely Guinea, Liberia,
Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Spain and the United
States. Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone have had the
most intense and widespread transmissions, with 2047,
7082, and 6190 respectively, as confirmed, probable and
suspected cases. Additionally, the three countries have
also reported 1214 (Guinea), 2963 (Liberia), and 1267 (Sierra
Leone) cumulative deaths. A total 588 health care workers
(HCWs) have been infected with the virus—94 in Guinea;
341 in Liberia; 2 in Mali; 11 in Nigeria; 136 in Sierra Leone; 1
in Spain; and 3 in the United States (2 were infected in the
US and 1 in Guinea). A total 337 HCWs have died. As of
December 2014, the fatality rates in the three Ebola epicen-
tres were 60 percent in both Guinea and Sierra Leone and
61 percent in Liberia.
Most troubling about data reported thus far is that con-
firmed, probable, and suspected infections and fatalities are
not disaggregated. Also concerning is that reliable epide-
miological statistics disaggregated by gender is difficult to
access although Guinea has provided concrete data in this
regard. According to the Ministry of Health, as of November
25 Guinean women accounted for 51 percent, 60 percent
and 58 percent of the confirmed, probable and suspected
cases of EVD, respectively. This means that out of the total
2047 cases, women have been particularly affected.
Apart from Guinea’s preliminary statistics, it is very likely
that gendered disaggregated data across all three MRU
countries may not be forthcoming until EVD is fully con-
tained. The need for reliable data cannot be overem-
phasised, as some figures on women have tended to
contradict one another. At one point during the outbreak,
the Liberian Ministry of Gender estimated that 75 percent
of the confirmed, probable and suspected cases of Ebola
were women, while Ministry of Health and Social Welfare
figures appeared more conservative. Despite the paucity of
gender-disaggregated data, however, anecdotal evidence
suggests that there is a strong likelihood that women in all
three countries having been disproportionately impacted by
the virus.
In order to evaluate the extent to which women’s socio-eco-
nomic positions have been impacted by Ebola, it is first
important to assess the status of women in Guinea, Liberia
and Sierra Leone prior to the Ebola outbreak as a base-
line. Although all three countries have explicitly ratified the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), this initial framing will enable a
discussion further, about how Ebola has reversed some of
the gains made in improving the lives of women while also
enhancing their socio-economic vulnerabilities.
9
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12460399
10
WHO, “Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report Update”, November 21, 2014. Data is based on information reported by the ministries of
health in Guinea and Sierra Leone up to November 18 and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in Liberia up to November 17.

Women before Ebola
All the three countries are in the last quintile of the Human
Development Index, with scores that have been below the
Sub-Saharanaveragesince2000.Theirlowrankonthisindex
is also reflected at a more micro level in the very poor per-
formance with respect to measures associated with gender
inequality. For a bird’s-eye view of the socio-economic status
of women in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone pre-Ebola,
one only has to look at the latest Gender Inequality Index
(GII) for the three countries in 201311
, in which 152 countries
were ranked. The GII is a measurement of gender-based
inequalities in three categories: reproductive health, empow-
erment and economic activity. While reproductive health
indicators measure maternal mortality and adolescent birth
rates, empowerment is measured by the number of parlia-
mentary seats held by women and the attainment of sec-
ondary and higher education. Economic activity is measured
by women’s and men’s labour market participation.
Guinea’s GII and rank were not recorded in 2013. Neither
the percentage of adult men/women with at least a sec-
ondary education nor the percentage of women in parlia-
ment was recorded. Pre-Ebola women’s participation in
the labour force was 65 percent, compared to 78 percent
for men. Guinea recorded lower maternal mortality rates
than both Liberia and Sierra Leone. For every 100,000 live
births, 610 women died from pregnancy related complica-
tions. Estimated female-headed households (FHH) are 17.3%
in Guinea12
.
Liberia’s GII in 2013 was 0.655, thereby ranking it below Sierra
Leone at 145 out of 152 countries. This means that there
was a 65.5 percent loss in human development because
of entrenched inequalities between men and women in the
country. While 11.7 percent of legislative seats were held by
womenpre-Ebola,15.7percentofadultwomenhadobtained
at least a secondary education compared to 39.2 percent
men (slightly higher than Sierra Leone). Pre-Ebola women’s
participation in the labour force was 58.2 percent, compared
to 64.7 percent for men. For every 100,000 live births, 770
women died from pregnancy related complications, slightly
better than Sierra Leone yet worse than Guinea. The number
of FHHs are 30% in Liberia13
.
Sierra Leone’s GII in 2013 was 0.643, thereby ranking it
141 out of 152 countries. This means that there was a 64.3
percent loss in human development because of entrenched
inequalities between men and women in the country. While
12.4 percent of parliamentary seats were held by women
pre-Ebola epidemic, only 9.5 percent of adult women had
obtained at least a secondary education, compared to 20.4
percent men. Pre-Ebola epidemic women’s participation in
the labour force was approximately 65.7 percent, compared
to 68.9 percent for men. And for every 100,000 live births,
890 women died from pregnancy related complications.
FHHs are recorded at 30%14
in Sierra Leone15
.
In the sections that follow, the socio-economic status of
women in the three countries prior to the Ebola epidemic
is presented in varying detail, largely dependent on data
obtained during the writing of this report. The section on
Guinea is the least comprehensive, largely due to the paucity
of gender-disaggregated data available.
Guinea
Women’s labour force participation in Guinea was approxi-
mately 64 percent in 2005 and 65 percent in 2010 and 2012,
respectively.16
According to the government’s 2013 report
on CEDAW, the vast majority of women work in the informal
sector, particularly as market vendors, subsistence farmers,
or agricultural workers. Women account for only 10 percent
of formal sector work, and are primarily concentrated in agri-
culture, retail, catering, hospitality, and to a lesser extent the
11
http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/table-4-gender-inequality-index
12
World Bank 2011, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.HOU.FEMA.ZS
13
Indexmundi 2009 www.indexmundi.com/facts/liberia/female-headed-households
14
Indexmundi 2009 www.indexmundi.com/facts/liberia/female-headed-households
15
ICPD 2008 Country implementation profile
16
World Statistic Pocketbook Country Profile for Guinea: https://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crname=Guinea
Table 1.
Gender Inequality: Liberia, Guinea and Sierra-Leone
Country
Maternal mortality
(deaths per 100k
live births
Share of women
in parliament
(%)
Female/Male population
aged 25+ with at least
some education
Female/Male labor
participation rates
(%)
Female Headed
Households
(%)
Liberia 770 11.7 15.7/39.2 58.2/64.7 30.0
Guinea 610 - - 65.0/78.0 17.3
Sierra Leone 890 12.4 9.5/20.4 65.7/68.9 30.0
Sub-Saharan Africa 474 21.7 21.9/31.9 63.7/76.3
Source: UNDP, Human Development Report, 2014.

within the extractives industries. Seventy percent of Guinean
women live in rural areas, where, based on customary law,
they cannot inherit land. This severely limits their access to
credit because collateral remains a pre-requisite for loans.
Furthermore, women can be subjected to humiliating wid-
owhood practices if accused of being the cause of death of
a husband.
Guinea established a “Health for All Initiative” giving women
wider access to pregnancy and post-natal services, revi-
talised women’s health cooperatives (called MURIGA), and
embarked on an initiative to re-train women who practice
female circumcision to provide them with alternative live-
lihoods. Yet, Guinea still has high maternal mortality rates,
insufficient pre-natal care, and poor obstetric care where
75 percent of births occur without a trained professional.
Contraception prevalence between 2006 and 2012 was only
9 percent, and the fertility rate between 2010-2015 (total live
births per woman) has been 5 consistently.
Guinea has a National Policy for the Advancement of Women
thatwasrevisedin2006,aNationalPolicyonGender2011,and
a National Strategy on Gender-based Violence, all of which
have an expressed mandate to improve the socio-economic
position of women. Guinea, like Liberia and Sierra Leone, rat-
ified the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa in 2004.
As of January 2013, women represented only 22 percent
of positions in Guinea’s high-level decision-making bodies
such as the National Transition Council, Supreme Court,
Independent National Electoral Commission, Economic and
Social Council, and National and Communication Council.
Furthermore, only seven out of 36 government ministers and
three out of 38 mayors were women.
Liberia
Although Liberia has adopted a number of key policies to
enhance the status of women—namely, the Gender Equity
in Politics Act—mandating that women occupy at least 30
percent of the leadership of political parties; the Sexual and
Gender-Based Violence Action Plan; the National Gender
Policy; the National Action Plan on the Implementation of
United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and
1820; and the amended Customary Marriage Law of 1998,
which provides equal inheritance rights to women married
under both customary and statutory laws—its 2013 Report
on CEDAW states: “Liberian women are marginalised in all
sectors and at all levels.” In 2014, women comprised only
11 percent of the national legislature, with nine representa-
tives and five senators out of a total 108. Liberia also has two
women out of five judges of the Supreme Court.
0 20 40 60 80 100
0 20 40 60 80 100 600
800
1000
Gender Inequality
Index (GII)
Maternity Fatalities,
per 100,000 live births
Participation in the labour force (%)
Adult women with a secondary education (%)
Legislative seats
held by women
NA
NA
Liberia
0.655
Sierra
Leone
0.643
Sierra
Leone
890
Sierra
Leone
Liberia
770
Liberia
Guinea
610
Guinea
Sierra
Leone
Liberia
Guinea
LOW HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
HIGH HUMAN
DEVELOPMENT
Guinea
Liberia
11.7%
Sierra Leone
12.4%
WOMEN 65%
MEN 78%
WOMEN 15.7%
MEN 39.2%
WOMEN 9.4%
MEN 20.4%
WOMEN 58.2%
MEN 64.7%
WOMEN 65.7%
MEN 68.9%
Figure 3.
Pre-Ebola: Women in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone

The marginalisation of Liberian women is particularly stark in
their economic positioning. In a country where 60 percent
of the population relies on agriculture for their livelihoods,
Liberian women are deeply entrenched in this sector. In 2010
alone, 68.8 percent of all economically active women were
farmers, weeding, harvesting and processing most cash
crops. They represent 80 percent of the agricultural labour
force; 36 percent of the total labour force in the production
of rice and cassava, Liberia’s staple crops; and 20 percent
of agri-business employees. Despite being the backbone of
the Liberian economy—contributing to 60 percent and 80
percent of agricultural production and trade, respectively—
women only generate 16 percent of agricultural earnings,
which are primarily controlled by men.
Between 2005 and 2012, women’s labour force participa-
tion was approximately 58 percent.17
According to Liberia’s
2010 Labour Force Survey, women represent 53 percent
of the eligible workforce, but only constitute 24 percent of
formal sector paid work. With 68 percent of Liberia’s pop-
ulation engaged in informal work and 79 percent in ‘vulner-
able employment’, 89 percent of women are considered
vulnerable workers, particularly in the agricultural, whole-
sale and retail trade sectors. Market women have become
particularly visible during the two administrations of Liberian
president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. The Sirleaf Market Women’s
Fund, for instance, has actively provided rehabilitated market
infrastructure, skills training, and financial assets to market
women throughout the country through their fundraising
efforts in Liberia and abroad. Yet, women’s earning power
is generally lower than men’s, regardless of their educational
attainment. Moreover, their low share of paid employment
is not based on the lack of skills acquisition, but rather on
deeply entrenched gender inequalities.
With respect to land ownership, Liberia’s customary tenure
practices are similar to most patrilineal societies where
women have usage rights to nuclear family land and upon
marriage the right to cultivate her husband’s land. Upon the
death of a husband, however, if a Liberian woman does not
have children with the deceased and decides not to marry
his male relation, she loses all claims to his land. The imple-
mentation of inheritance provisions within the Customary
Marriage Law of 1998 has stalled because of resistance
from men in certain communities. The 2003 Inheritance
Law grants women married under customary law the same
inheritance rights as those married under statutory law, but
implementation remains a challenge. Although the land
accessibility gap between female and male-headed house-
holds has decreased from 12 percent to 4 percent, women
owned only 16 percent of land compared to 33 percent of
men in 2006. Furthermore, 11 percent of women compared
to 20 percent of men held title deeds to property. A 2008
study on women’s pre- and post-war land ownership in four
of Liberia’s subdivisions (counties) showed a decrease in
both communal and customary rights from 15.4 percent to
10 percent and 59.8 percent to 57.5 percent, respectively.
Given that secure land tenure for women is the only means of
enabling female farmers to move beyond subsistence agri-
culture, the administration of land requires a complete over-
haul. The Land Commission was established in 2009 to do
just that.
Liberia has instituted other measures, particularly in the
health sector, to improve the condition of women. Access
to skilled maternal care during delivery increased from 65
percent in 2010 to 80 percent in 2012, and, according to
17
World Statistic Pocketbook Country Profile for Liberia: https://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crname=Liberia
0 20 40 60 80 100
% of agricultural labour force
...women represent
53% of the eligible
workforce...
In Liberia...
...but only 24%
of formal sector
paid work
89% of women
are considered
vulnerable workers,
particularly in
agriculture,
wholesale, and
retail trade sectors.
% of agri-business employees
%of total labour force in the production of rice and cassava
% of contribution to agricultural production
% of contribution to agricultural trade
% of agricultural earnings
80%
36%
20%
60%
80%
16%
Figure 4.
Liberian women in the work force

the Demographic Health Survey (DHS) of 2007, eight in 10
mothers reported receiving pre-natal care from a trained
health professional. This is primarily why maternal mortality
decreased drastically from 994 in 2000 to 770 in 2012 per
every 100,000 live births. In 2012, 87 percent of the first ante-
natal clinic visits were reportedly attended by a skilled pro-
fessional. Nevertheless, contraception prevalence between
2006 and 2012 was low at 11 percent and the fertility
rate18
between 2010-2015 has been consistently high at 5
percent. According to Liberia’s 2007 DHS, 58.2 percent of
women—39 percent urban and 72 percent rural—under-
went female circumcision, although the practice has been
subsequently banned in the country.
Sierra Leone
Like Liberia, Sierra Leone has adopted a number of policy
measures to improve the conditions of women, such as
the National Policy on the Advancement of Women and the
National Gender Mainstreaming Policy. In 2007, “Gender
Justice Laws” were instituted in succession, namely, the
Domestic Violence Act; the Registration of Customary
Marriage and Divorce Act; the Devolution of Estates Act and
the Sexual Offences Act of 2012. To anchor these laws in
practice, the Government of Sierra Leone (GoSL) devised
national action plans including the National Gender Strategic
Plan (2010-2013); the new Ministry of Social Welfare, Gender
and Children’s Affairs Strategic Plan (2013-2018); the Sierra
Leone National Action on UNSCR 1325 and 1820 (2010-
2014); the National Action Plan on GBV (2012) and National
Referral Protocol on GBV (2012).
Although women’s rights are stipulated in policy pronounce-
ments, the practice of women’s empowerment is more
tenuous.Duringthe2012elections,forinstance,only16outof
65 women vying for parliamentary seats were elected, falling
below 13.7 percent in the 2007 parliament. At the district level,
there has been some improvement in the number of female
local council members elected, at 18 percent representation.
At the executive level, nine women were appointed minis-
ters although only two have cabinet ranking. Despite women
comprising 53 percent of the population in Sierra Leone,
their share of political power is negligible. Nonetheless, there
are slight indicators of economic advancement. Between
2003 and 2011, female-headed households were doing rel-
atively better than male-headed households. For instance,
the percentage of female-headed households living below
the poverty line decreased, from 59.8 percent (compared
to 61.3 percent male-headed households) to 43.8 percent
(compared to 47.5 percent male-headed households).
Although Sierra Leone has a Draft Land and Devolution
of Estate Bill, land tenure administration for women varies
from region to region. In the North and Western areas, for
instance, women can own land whereas in the South and
Eastern areas women can only access the land of their male
relatives. In the South and East, widows or divorcees are
particularly vulnerable, as they cannot claim land owned by
a deceased husband or former spouse. If they return to their
nuclear family, they are only entitled to cultivate the land of
a male relative. Similar to Guinea and Liberia, the patrilineal
land tenure administration pre-dominates in Sierra Leone
where customary law often supersedes statutory law.
Similarly entrenched inequalities confront women in the
labour market. Women’s labour force participation19
was
approximately 65 percent in 2005 and 66 percent in 2010
and 2012, respectively. According to a 2008 economic
survey, women represented 17 percent of the formal private
sector labour force, with hospitality (hotels/restaurants), (34
percent), insurance (33 percent), air transport (28 percent),
shipping (23 percent), and foreign exchange (22 percent)
among the top five. The numbers are more pronounced in
the informal sector, with 84 percent of rural women and 63
percent urban women, respectively, engaged in informal
employment, most notably farming and petty trading.
Because 70 percent of women are small-holder farmers they
dominate the agricultural sector, which employs 70 percent
of the total population and accounts for 40 percent of Sierra
Leone’s GDP. Women process, preserve, store and trans-
port all food crops for marketing, and are most adversely
impacted by poor road conditions and limited transportation
facilities because of the lack of cold storage facilities to pre-
serve highly perishable produce. With very little access to
land, credit, extension services, post-harvest technologies
and training, women farmers are barely surviving in the very
sector that should enable them to thrive.
While men dominate the cash-earning economy, women
are often relegated to the low-income earning categories
of service and retail, as well as agriculture and fisheries,
all of which lack social-protection benefits and occupa-
tional safety. According to the AfDB’s 2011 Country Profile
of Sierra Leone: “Women’s predominance in low-skilled
occupations reflects their low status in the society, low skills
18
Total live births per woman
19
https://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crname=Sierra%20Leone

training and educational levels, and poor career and promo-
tion prospects” and “… leaves them open to exploitation and
increases their vulnerability to poverty.” Unlike the informal
sector, women’s participation in the formal sector is negli-
gible at best. A 2009 enterprise survey of 150 firms by the
International Finance Corporation (IFC) reported that women
owned only 7.9 percent of the businesses surveyed.
Although Sierra Leonean women represent 80 percent of
micro-finance clients, mostly between the ages of 18 and 60,
many have opted not to use such facilities because of their
high interest rates or collateral requirements. Regardless of
whether or not they ‘opt-out’ of micro-finance, many female
entrepreneurs supplement their incomes with alternative
sources of financing, such as rotating and credit associa-
tions called ‘osusus’.
The health sector is another area of concern for women.
In April 2010, Sierra Leone introduced the Free Healthcare
Initiative (FHI) for pregnant women, lactating mothers, and
children under five, thereby improving maternal and child
health in the ensuing years. Despite these gains, however,
Sierra Leone had 2436 health care workers for a popula-
tion of 6.34 million, two doctors per 100,000 people, and
only 35 percent of the population had access to health
care services—significantly lower than the sub-Saharan
Africa rating of 65 percent. Furthermore, Sierra Leone’s
2013 GII shows a decline in maternal mortality, yet WHO
figures for 2013 indicate an increase at 1100 per 100,000
births. Contraception prevalence between 2006 and 2012
was only 8 percent, primarily because of men’s perceived
need to control fertility rates, which have been consistently 5
total live births per woman in the past five years. According
to the 2008 DHS, 72 percent of women delivered at home
while 25 percent delivered in health facilities. Only 42 percent
of those deliveries were assisted by healthcare workers.
Contrastingly, 87 percent of women received antenatal care
(ANC) from health professionals. The 2008 DHS also reports
that the prevalence of female circumcision was 95 to 96
percent among women aged 25 to 49. It is highest in the
Northern (97 percent) and Western regions (80 percent), and
higher in rural areas (95 percent), than in urban areas (85
percent).
The analysis included here-in shows that although gains
have been made in attempting to improve the conditions
of women in the three MRU countries, following protracted
political and economic instability, their pre-Ebola socio-eco-
nomic positions adversely exposed them to the shocks of
the outbreak.
Source:CERD,AfDB

Women during Ebola
Farming, Agriculture and Food Security
Given that women dominate the agriculture sectors in
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it is vital to assess how
their livelihoods have been impacted by EVD. In Sierra
Leone alone, the Ebola virus disease continued to rise
at critical junctures in the country’s agricultural produc-
tion calendar; when land preparation, planting, weeding,
harvesting, and marketing are most actively pursued by
women. The epicentres of the disease were the Eastern
districts of Kailahun and Kenema, Sierra Leone’s prover-
bial breadbaskets that produce the country’s staple food
(rice) and other important cash crops such as cocoa and
palm oil. Kailahun and Kenema boast of a large number of
women master farmers and heads of households whose
livelihoods have been compromised by EVD.
inflation in key commodities such as cassava (52 percent),
fish (43 percent) and imported rice (13 percent) were com-
monplace during the Ebola virus, as families who owned
farms reported migrating to areas with low numbers of
Ebola cases.
Apart from the direct impact of EVD on agriculture,
women’s productivity in this sector has also been hurt by
the abrupt halt in manufacturing activities. The Sierra Leone
Brewery Company, for instance, uses raw material such as
sorghum, which is produced by female farmers, primarily.
With the drop in sales of local beer, women sorghum pro-
ducers have been adversely impacted. Food insecurity is
a significant problem in Sierra Leone, with more than two-
thirds of households reporting having to undertake coping
strategies in the week prior to the survey conducted jointly
by the Government of Sierra Leone, Innovations for Poverty
Action, and the World Bank, though quarantine restrictions
do not seem to be a major contributing factor. Finally, there
is important evidence in Freetown that the Ebola epidemic
has reduced the use of non-Ebola related health services,
with a sharp decline in post-natal clinic visits by women
who have recently given birth.
20
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security (MAFFS) Sierra Leone and United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), (2014).
“The Food Security Situation in the Context of Ebola Outbreak in Sierra Leone: A Rapid Assessment Report.” Freetown, Sierra Leone: MAFFS
and FAO.
24.8%
Serious sickness
of a household member
Source: Liberian Ministry of Agriculture, 2010
11.5%
Death of a
household member
58.9%
Attributed to
Ebola virus
9.3%
High food prices
13.3%
Loss of / reduced income
41.1%
Other
KOINADUGU
BOMBALI
WESTERN
RURAL
Freetown
WESTERN
URBAN
KAMBIA
KONO
BO
KENEMA
PEJEHUN
KAILAHUN
BONTHE
TONKILILI
MOYAMBA
PORT LOKO
Figure 6.
Top four reported contributors to shocks in food security
attributed to the Ebola virus
According to estimates, 65 percent of rice farms are cul-
tivated and run by women in Sierra Leone, though they
also consume imported rice. Agricultural production is
largely subsistence, with cocoa, coffee, palm oil, cassava,
local rice, livestock and fisheries produced on a small-
scale by mostly female farmers. Based on a food security
rapid assessment20
conducted in September 2014 by the
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Food Security in part-
nership with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in
Sierra Leone, findings that labour shortages in farming and
Figure 5.
Sierra Leone’s 13 districts

In a 2010 report by the Liberian Ministry of Agriculture, the
top four reported contributors to shocks in food security
then can all be attributed to the current Ebola virus, namely:
i) serious sickness of a household member (24.8 percent); ii)
loss of/reduced income (13.3 percent); iii) death of a house-
hold member (11.5 percent); and iv) high food prices (9.3
percent). The traditional kuu21
system, in which primarily
female farmers work together in small groups to plant and
harvest, has been disrupted because of EVD. Thus, food
production has slowed down drastically in Bong, Bomi,
Lofa, Margibi, and Nimba, Liberia’s breadbaskets. The price
of imported rice has increased by as much as 12 percent22
in July and August, while cassava prices remained stable.
With the high levels of unemployment and increases in
the prices of basic commodities, anecdotal evidence indi-
cates that food security is becoming a cause for concern
in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, with families severely
limiting their food intake. According to Sierra Leone’s food
security rapid assessment, 70 percent of respondents
reported having only one meal per day. This represents a
recipe for disaster, particularly for women across the three
countries who are responsible for both food cultivation and
preparation. These challenges have also impacted inter-re-
gional trade amongst women in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone as well as daily, and periodic market activities.
Agriculture has been particularly hard hit in Guinea as the
epidemic began in one of the country’s main agricultural
regions. Rice production is estimated to have fallen by 20
percent in 2014, coffee by half, cocoa by a third, and corn
by a quarter. World Food Program (WFP) telephone surveys
have found some households substituting foodstuffs and
reducing the quality and frequency of meals to cope with
shortages. The most recent WFP estimates project 1.2
million Guineans suffering severe food insecurity in March
2015, of whom it estimates about 470 000 as the additional
effect of the Ebola epidemic23
. Falling commodity prices
also play a role in this downward revision of economic
growth.
Cross-border Trade and Market
Restrictions
It has been argued that well-functioning cross-border trade
increases food security in regions where it is most prevalent.
According to MRU Secretary General, Dr Saran Daraba
Kaba, there were at least 22 weekly markets functioning
between Sierra Leone where nationals of at least 9 coun-
tries would meet to trade and exchange goods (including
Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Ghana amongst MRU countries).
Because women comprise 70 percent of all cross-border
traders in the MRU sub-region, they have been severely
constrained by EVD. According to the Sierra Leone
Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (SLCCIA)
women account for 60 percent of all cross-border traders
and 70 percent of owners of small and medium sized enter-
prises. Informal cross-border trade represents 70 percent
of the income for Sierra Leonean women who are engaged
in this form of employment. Sierra Leonean cross-border
traders supply processed cassava products such as gari
exports to markets in Liberia24
. According to an AfDB brief
in October 2014, Sierra Leone has increasingly supplied
gari, palm oil and local rice to the Guinean market.
While Guinea imports nearly 25 percent of its rice, imports
from Sierra Leone cover 1.4 percent of the country’s
domestic rice production gap. With the closure of borders
between the two countries, women traders in Guinea
have been unable to access this market lifeline and Sierra
Leonean women traders have not been able to access this
important source of income.
Women in Liberia have not escaped these limitations. In
an interview25
with Ebola Deeply26
, Minister of gender Julia
Duncan-Cassell lamented the negative impact EVD has
had on women, cross-border traders in her country:
In Lofa in northern Liberia, known as the bread-
basket of the country, a lot of the agricultural work-
force [are] women. They are traders, too; they are
the ones normally going across the border to buy
goods at the markets in Guinea. Now they can’t do
that very easily. Either way, they are stranded—by
the death of a loved one or by the loss of business.
21
Mercy Corps, 2014
22
AfDB brief, October 2014
23
FAO and WFP 2015
24
Government of Liberia, 2010
25
www.eboladeeply.org/articles/2014/10/6411/ebola-women-julia-duncan-cassell-liberias-minister-gender
26
www.eboladeeply.org

In August 2014 when the Liberian government declared a
state of emergency, it promptly closed borders with Guinea,
Ivory Coast and Sierra Leone, and advocated for the closure
of weekly markets throughout the country. The livelihoods
of many women in Lofa and Nimba were particularly com-
promised because they relied on cross-border trade to pur-
chase and sell goods before the Ebola outbreak—such as
beans, peanuts, peppers and agricultural inputs including
fertilisers and seeds from Guinea—and have had to shift
their focus to Monrovia for imports. The reduction in flights
and shipping lines to Liberia also increased the prices of
imported goods.
Just as cross-border trade has been severely hampered,
internal domestic market activities have slowed down
in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as a result of EVD.
This has adversely impacted the livelihoods of women
vendors. In a report published by Mercy Corps in October
2014, based on an assessment of the economic impact
of Ebola on markets and households in Monrovia, Nimba
and Lofa counties, one female pepper vendor in Monrovia
complained:
Before Ebola, I sold maybe 10-15 bags of pepper
per day. Now, I sell maybe two-three bags. I have
eight children, but we’ve had to reduce the amount
of rice we eat from 10 cups per day to eight.
The Mercy Corps report findings show that household
income during the outbreak declined drastically in the
surveyed counties and borrowing increased to stave off
hunger. Purchasing power of households particularly has
decreased. Monrovia vegetable vendors also complained
that perishable goods from the counties were getting spoilt
due to long transportation times. For instance, the transport
union in Sanniquellie, Nimba, reported that due to bad road
conditions and checkpoints erected throughout Liberia to
prevent the spread of Ebola, their usual four to five commer-
cial trucks travelling to Monrovia per day in the rainy season
were reduced to only two. Transportation costs have also
increased for women vendors because the state of emer-
gency required fewer passengers on motorbikes and
taxis. Because Liberia’s state of emergency was officially
lifted in early November, a few weeks before the writing of
this report, a more detailed analysis will have to be con-
ducted to determine if this has mitigated the vulnerability of
women marketers.
The state of emergency in neighboring Sierra Leone,
however, has been maintained, largely because of an
unanticipated spike in EVD cases during the latter part of
November. Quarantines, restricted movement and curfews
during the state of emergency halted market activities in
Sierra Leone’s thirteen districts, particularly the sale of
agricultural goods and other food items such as cassava,
groundnuts and palm oil. As argued by Haja Fatmata Marah,
a female marketer from the Kabala Women Vegetable
Cooperatives Society, “… even when we take our produce
to the market, we can stay there for the whole day and still
not sell everything, so I’ll rather stay home.’’ In August 2014,
traders like Marah in the Society reported losing revenues of
approximately 200 million Leones, primarily because limited
incomes have constrained consumer spending. Figure 7
captures the average prices of staple food commodities in
Sierra Leone’s 13 districts from March to August 2014.
Rice
(bag)
SIERRA LEONEAN LEONE (SSL) SIERRA LEONEAN LEONE (SSL)
350,000 6,000
5,000
4,000
3,000
2,000
1,000
0
300,000
250,000
200,000
150,000
100,000
50,000
0
Groundnut
(wholesale)
Palmoil
(liter)
Rice
(cup)
Cassava Groundnut
(retail)
Palmoil
(pint)
Fish
(retail)
WHOLESALE:
MARCH-MAY
JUNE-AUGUST
RETAIL:
MARCH-MAY
JUNE-AUGUST
Figure 7.
National Retail and Wholesale Market Prices of Selected Commodities in Sierra Leone
Source: Primary Data from Rapid Market ASSESSMENT-PEMSD/FAO August 2014

an alternative source of livelihood for bushmeat traders.
Besides relying on it for a source of income, women also
prepare bushmeat as an alternative source of animal
protein and nutrition for their families. In its place, there is
now widespread hunger and malnutrition.
Tourism and Hospitality
Before the Ebola outbreak, Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
had over 10 commercial flights each. As of November 30,
Sierra Leone and Liberia were only serviced by Brussels
Airlines and Royal Air Maroc. Visitors and investors to the
region have been particularly wary because of fear of con-
tagion. According to data from the National Tourist Board
in Sierra Leone, for instance, tourist arrivals at the Lungi
International Airport declined by 30 percent from January
to August 2014, compared to the same period in 2013.
The number of business visitors (investors) decreased
by 46.9 percent. As indicated earlier, women within the
MRU tend to dominate the airline and hospitality indus-
tries. Because of declines in commercial airline traffic and
hotel bed occupancy, they have either been laid off or are
experiencing reduced salaries. Comprehensive quantita-
tive and qualitative research will have to be conducted to
assess the full extent of tourism/travel declines on women
in the sector. While one could argue that restricted travel
within and between the three MRU countries generally
impacts women more adversely than foreign travel restric-
tions, the medium- to long-term difficulties women in this
sector will face after EVD is fully contained, cannot be
overemphasised .
While some basic commodity prices increased, other food
items such as maize, sweet potatoes, and peppers nose-
dived. If not sold, these food items were left to rot because
of the ban on periodic markets, known as lumas, and
limited transportation of goods between districts. During
focus group interviews conducted for Sierra Leone’s food
security rapid assessment, women vegetable traders in
Koinadugu reported losing millions of Leones because
they tend to sell perishable goods. As indicated in Table 2,
prices of vegetables were nearly slashed in half to meet
consumer demands.
Apart from losses in income from the sale of basic produce,
female-headed households reported that restrictions on
the sale of bushmeat adversely impacted their livelihoods.
Concerned about fruit bats being the vectors of Ebola,
governments within the MRU instituted drastic measures
by banning the sale of all bushmeat without introducing
Table 2.
Change of Vegetable prices in Kabala, March-September 2014
Item Unit Price range /unit before March in Leones Price range /unit after March in Leones
Cabbage 50kg/bag 90, 000 -200,000 30,000-40,000
Pepper 50kg bag 250, 000-300,000 110,000
Lettuce 10 dozen 180,000 -200,000 10,000-20,000
Tomatoes carton 120,000 -130,000 50,000
Spring onions bundle 10,000 -20,000 1,000
Cucumber 1 dozen 10,000 7,000 -8,000
Egg plant 50kg bag 80,000 -100,000 60,000 -80,000
Carrot 50kg bag 150,000 -170,000 80,000 -100,000
Source: Primary Data from Rapid Market ASSESSMENT-PEMSD/FAO August 2014
Source:CERD,AfDB

Access to Financial Services
The decline in banking hours and loan facilities has com-
promised women’s ability to access financial services or
pay off loans. For instance, BRAC, the largest provider
of micro-loans amongst the micro-finance institutions in
Liberia, closed its operations in August 2014. According
to a combined report27
published in September by the
GoSL and its development partners, community banks
and rural financial services have either closed completely
or severely scaled down operations. For instance, normal
banking hours in non-epicentre regions had been tempo-
rarily reduced from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., while in the epi-
centres of Kenema and Kailahun banking hours were 8:30
a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Anecdotal evidence suggests that with
the halt in agricultural activities, closure of some markets,
and limited tourism and cross-border trade, women’s bor-
rowing through informal channels has increased and their
ability to pay off micro-loans has decreased. Furthermore,
savings groups such as osusus in Sierra Leone and susus
in Liberia may either be buffers against loss of livelihoods,
or the source of severe stress for women who cannot main-
tain their monthly payments. Given the current situation, a
number of MFIs which have closed may either never return
at all or come back only after a few years. This further
makes the access to economic sustainability and empow-
erment much more difficult for women.
Access to Land
Given that women’s access to land in Guinea, Liberia,
and Sierra Leone was already limited because of some
discriminatory policies and practices, women who have
experienced the loss of a husband from Ebola-related or
non-Ebola related complications are likely to encounter
obstacles of inheritance since customary land tenure
systems in rural areas primarily favour men in practice, if
not in formal policy.
Access to Health Services
With the closure of some medical facilities and funding
diverted to Ebola-related relief, women’s access to health
services for non-Ebola related ailments has significantly
decreased. Although contraceptive use was relatively low
before Ebola, women in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone
have experienced severely limited access to birth control
and family planning services. In Sierra Leone, for instance,
the Marie Stopes Obstetrics Clinic in Freetown reported that
family planning methods declined by 90 percent between
May and August 2014 alone. Similarly, pregnant women
and lactating mothers attempting to access health facili-
ties have been particularly challenged. In Sierra Leone, for
instance, deliveries in primary health care centres dropped
by 7 percent, and post-natal as well as ante-natal consulta-
tions declined by 8 percent and 15 percent, respectively28.
The gains made in reducing maternal and child mortality
across the three countries have been compromised by EVD.
In October, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
substantiated these assumptions. They estimated29
that of
the more than 800,000 women giving birth within a year
in Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, 120,000 would face
severe complications during pregnancy and childbirth.
While the fatality rate of Ebola during the most recent out-
break in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone hovers at 70
percent, pregnant women are at a higher risk of sponta-
neous abortions and/or miscarriages. One study30
in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) found that for a
small sample of pregnant women who contracted Ebola
in 1995, the fatality rate was close to 95 percent. And
while pregnant women are at risk, those who come in
contact with them—primarily women midwives, nurses,
27
UNFPA, October 2014
28
UNFPA, October 2014
29
www.unfpa.org/news/pregnant-shadow-ebola-deteriorating-health-systems-endanger-women
30
http://jid.oxfordjournals.org/content/179/Supplement_1/S11.long
Source:CERD,AfDB

Another gendered storyline that has escaped media atten-
tion is the rate of women infected by partners who survived
Ebola and engaged in sexual intercourse without a condom.
Because semen may be infected with the Ebola virus for up
to three months from the onset of symptoms, women are at
an increasingly high risk of infection. In late November, Dr.
Atai Omurutu, overall head of the Island Clinic ETU on the
outskirts of Monrovia, expressed34
alarm that male Ebola
survivors were infecting their partners at an alarming rate.
“Almost all the wives of male Ebola survivors are coming
to the ETU as patients” he said, imploring the Ministry of
Health to distribute free condoms to survivors and local
communities. The medical doctor’s concerns raise other
important questions about the ability of women to demand
the use of condoms in sexual relations with partners who
have survived Ebola.
Access to Health and Infrastructure
The EVD epidemic revealed the serious challenges that
lack of infrastructure (specifically that of roads and energy)
posed for all three affected countries at the onset of the
epidemic and even now in dealing with isolated hotspots
in remote locations. The poor state of rather limited roads
in the region made it very difficult to move medical teams
and supplies into remote areas. It also spelt delays in deter-
mining EVD status from test results since it took several
31
www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/18/364179795/dangerous-deliveries-ebola-devastates-womens-health-in-liberia
32
www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/11/18/364179795/dangerous-deliveries-ebola-devastates-womens-health-in-liberia
33
www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ebola-virus-outbreak/ebola-outbreak-dr-olivet-buck-dies-sierra-leone-after-who-n202991
34
www.emansion.gov.lr/2press.php?news_id=3144related=7pg=sp#sthash.P4y1dVh5.dpuf
and doctors—the risks are also enormous. In a November
18 National Public Radio (NPR) post entitled “Dangerous
Deliveries: Ebola Leaves Moms and Babies without Care”31
,
Liberian midwife Lucy Barh recalls how she came in contact
with a pregnant woman who was later suspected to have
died of Ebola:
I was on duty that day when the patient came in.
We did the examination. She was not in labour.
But to our utmost surprise, the very next day, that
woman was rushed on our ward, bleeding pro-
fusely. Right after the fetus came out, that woman
started bleeding from all over. We did everything
we could, just to save her life. But even with a
blood transfusion, she ended up dying.
The woman’s medical history was revealed only after her
baby also died: she had been in contact with two relatives
who eventually died of Ebola. Barh talked about how the
instinctual drive to help without personal protective equip-
ment (PPE) is what led to the high number of female health-
care workers dying from Ebola, because the risk of coming
into contact with bodily fluids is so high: “Sometimes it
doesn’t even give you ample time to put on your gloves…
That alone is so dangerous for the midwives.” Agreeing
wholeheartedly, Esther Kolleh, lead midwife at Eternal Love
Winning Africa (ELWA) Hospital outside Monrovia, said32
:
“Everybody is afraid of catching Ebola because most nurses
who caught Ebola died. Last night we received three ladies.
They had been in labour one week, two weeks. Nobody to
help them… The babies died before they came.”
Although data is currently unavailable on the number of
female health workers who have been infected with Ebola,
anecdotal evidence has shown that they represent a large
shareoftheincidencerates.WhenFreetown-basedmedical
superintendent Dr. Olivet Buck33
was infected with Ebola in
mid-September and subsequently denied a request to be
airlifted to Germany for treatment, this dealt a huge blow
to the country. Not only was Dr. Buck on the frontlines of
containing the disease, but she was also among a handful
of female doctors (and hospital administrators) that Sierra
Leone could boast of. Having disappeared from the head-
lines not too long after her tragic death, Dr. Buck was a
classic example of the gendered dimensions of Ebola: one
of female sacrifice.
Source:CERD,AfDB

35
www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/ebola-is-killing-women-in-far-greater-numbers-than-men
36
www.buzzfeed.com/jinamoore/ebola-is-killing-women-in-far-greater-numbers-than-men
37
www.wfp.org/stories/liberia-wfp-supports-ebola-survivors?utm_content=bufferff3b3utm_medium=socialutm_source=twitter.comutm_
campaign=buffer
38
http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/25/health/ebola-fatu-family
days to get necessary blood samples to laboratories. This
then resulted in a delay in relaying this critical information
to suspected patients– adding to anxiety and frustration of
both medical staff and patients. The infrastructural chal-
lenges that hampered the EVD fight include lack of decent
accommodation for the teams for healthcare workers and
insufficient volunteers to reach the sick in remote areas,
making it necessary and costlier to rotate the medical teams
over shorter periods of time for rest and recuperation.
Stigma, GBV and Breakdown in Family
Structures
For Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the
psycho-social trauma has been enormous,
with some arguing that the toll from Ebola
has been heavier than the toll of armed
conflict.
According to a report filed by ActionAid Liberia, women
who have lost their breadwinner husbands to Ebola have
been scarred in multiple ways. A pregnant widow with four
other children, Christina Scotland, 33, was stigmatised
by her neighbours and lost her home. Now jobless, she
lamented the tragic death in October of her husband, a
medical doctor, as well as the psycho-social toll Ebola has
had on her:
“It’s not easy at all. It hurts so much, especially in
the evenings. That’s when I would usually expect
him to get home from work. I still expect him home
and when I remember that he isn’t coming home
ever, it gets too painful to bear”.
For Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the psycho-social
trauma has been enormous, with some arguing that the
toll from Ebola has been heavier than the toll of armed
conflict. There has been an erosion of social cohesion in
communities that had stuck together. Women, particularly,
have watched their children and husbands languish and die
while still trying to revive them. In an interview35
in August
with Buzzfeed, Sayday Williams Taylor, a Liberian psychia-
trist, talked about the dehumanising logic of Ebola:
“We’re used to bathing our bodies. We’re used to
burying. We’re used to hugging. When you’re told
not to … it’s like we’re being denied the chance to
give a mother, a child, that last love… And it’s hard
for the sick. You have to say, ‘I love you, but I can’t
touch you.’ You have to do that for the people you
are leaving behind”.
Defying the Odds
While it is evident women have been dispropor-
tionately impacted by EVD, they have also defied
odds. In September, CNN released a story38
about a
22-year-old Liberian final year nursing student, Fatu
Kekula, who single-handedly treated four family
members at home when they fell sick with Ebola in
Kakata, Margibi County. With most hospitals closed
and no access to PPEs, Kekula relied on her wits,
using trash bags, rubber gloves, boots and a face-
mask to shield herself from contagion. Three of her
four relatives survived and Kekula never got infected.
Her ‘trash bag method’ was hailed as an example of
local ingenuity. Her story is a testament of the resil-
ience of women across the sub-region who have
triumphed over the disease.
Source:CERD,AfDB

In a similar fashion, Dr. Wvannie-Mae Scott McDonald, Chief
Administrator at the John F. Kennedy Medical Centre in
Monrovia, said: “To care is to comfort, to console. Ebola has
taken away our comfort. It has taken away our humanity.”36
The attendant stigmatisation of families of the dead, Ebola
survivors, burial teams, and healthcare workers, has left
entire communities across the MRU sub-region psycho-
logically wounded, particularly women who serve as both
breadwinners and caregivers.
Besides stigma, another unintended consequence of Ebola
is that the breakdown in law and order and policing may
have exposed women to increased gender-based violence
and sexual exploitation. The militarisation of Ebola, in which
security forces have been deployed to quarantine entire
communities in Liberia and Sierra Leone, for instance,
conjured up war-time experiences and may have exposed
women to secondary trauma. Although there is no doc-
umented evidence of this, it is an area of policy research
and intervention that should be pursued. The psycho-social
impact of Ebola on communities of women across the three
countries deserves critical attention, especially for women
who experience loss on multiple levels. For instance, some
young women have been left behind to fend for orphaned
relatives. This was the case of 30-year-old Siatta Stewart
and her 32-year-old sister, Famatta, who are now raising
six children after losing their mother, father and five other
members of their family to the disease.37
Without steady
incomes or social safety nets to anchor them, these two
young women face enormous challenges in Kakata,
Margibi County, Liberia.

Women after Ebola
While projections have been made about the short-,
medium-, and long-term impacts of Ebola on the econo-
mies of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, it is clear that
women in the three countries are likely to experience those
impacts disproportionately. Yet, it is difficult to speculate
with any certainty about the post-Ebola socio-economic
implications for women given the limited empirical data
available now. Data must be disaggregated by gender in all
country reports to include statistical analysis on the number
of women confirmed, probable, and suspected cases, as
well as fatality rates.
should lend itself to developing an MRU infectious disease
management system that can be used in future outbreaks,
in the same way that Nigeria used its polio eradication pro-
gramme to contain Ebola within three months.
Whilst the Bank is implementing an MRU Initiative designed
to help reduce the infrastructure gap in Cote d’Ivoire,
Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, the EVD epidemic has
demonstrated the urgency of the road transport and energy
programs of the MRU Initiative. The Bank needs to push for
greater partnership among donors to contribute towards
reducing the infrastructure gap, especially due to the
cyclical nature of the outbreaks. As part of preparedness
to deal with a second or even third round of the epidemic,
transportation and accommodation can be facilitated if
these urgent investments are made now.
Commissioned research should be undertaken to conduct
cross-country quantitative and qualitative analyses on the
socio-economic impact of EVD on women, in order to
inform policy decisions about how to mitigate challenges
post-the Ebola pandemic. It is important to sample across
a broad range of ages, socio-economic status, regional
locations (urban + rural), and professions. Data collected
from the comprehensive study should include house-
hold surveys (equally distributed between female- and
male-headed households) and semi-structured interviews
with key women informants in the EVD epicentres across
each country. Purposive sampling should include women
whose professions have been particularly impacted by the
virus, such as healthcare workers, farmers, cross-border
traders, marketers, teachers, and tourism/hospitality sector
employees. Such data should feed into an MRU Crisis
Information Management System that will enable the three
countries to collect, verify, analyse and report data in real
time, as Ebola infection rates are constantly changing. This
For healthcare workers (male and female) who have lost
their lives to EVD, their spouses and children should be
compensated with life insurance packages that will offset
the cost of economic difficulties. Healthcare workers cur-
rently on the frontlines should be paid daily rates and hazard
pay comparable to that of their international counterparts
to ensure equity. As a result, donors may have to top-up
the salaries of these employees through Ebola relief aid.
Salaries should, of course, be commensurate with rank and
the level of risk involved in performing one’s duties. On the
AfDB’s President, Dr. Donald Kaberuka, visit to the region
in August 2014, this was an issue that was raised by the
President Sirleaf as well as the Minister of Health, and sub-
sequently AfDB’s health interventions have accommodated
for this. For more long-term interventions, post-Ebola gov-
ernments should establish bilateral scholarships specifically
tailored for women healthcare workers who want to spe-
cialise in epidemiology, public health, infectious diseases,
or who want to be trained as medical doctors.
Source:CERD,AfDB
Source:CERD,AfDB

In the short-term and as a matter of national policy women
should be prioritised for any planned programmes, as they
have borne the brunt of EVD. Women farmers should also
be provided with agricultural and livestock inputs (fertil-
isers, farm tools) for the production of high-yielding food
crops (rice, cassava, vegetables) and livestock production.
Donors, banks and Ministries of gender should consider
providing social cash transfers to female-headed house-
holds, recognising and compensating them for the hours of
unpaid care work that they do inside the home.
For women who agree to serve as the legal guardians of
children orphaned by Ebola, a system could be devised
similar to the foster care system where they are compen-
sated for each child under their supervision and care. The
Ministries of health in the three MRU countries can deploy
social workers already in their employ to monitor this system
for efficiency.
Policy makers should consider easing the burden on
women cross-border traders by establishing three special
Ebola economic zones, and deploying equal numbers of
female and male police officers at the borders to monitor the
movement of goods. Committed investments for infrastruc-
ture should proceed following a careful risk analysis, and
renewed commitment by donors should be forthcoming in
order to support economic opportunities in the region.
For women farmers selling perishable goods, govern-
ments and donors should partner with female farmers’
cooperatives and women’s savings and loans groups to
rent cold storages at minimal fees. For women who have
lost husbands to Ebola and are hampered by customary
inheritance practices, governments should allocate plots of
public land for them to purchase on a mortgage scheme.
Inheritance laws must be revisited and validated by rural
communities to ensure compliance.
Bank Engagement in the Mano River Union
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone will experience a reduc-
tion in their economic growth and related fiscal revenues,
which makes the African Development Bank and other
key financial institutions an important recourse of affected
states to ensure the continuity of their operations and facil-
itate the resilience of their economies.
Indeed, the AfDB was among the first development part-
ners to approve an emergency operation to respond to the
epidemic in April 2014. The Bank responded swiftly to the
Ebola emergency by providing a package of assistance
of about US$ 210 million towards efforts at containing the
spread of the disease and to creating fiscal space for the
affected countries to meet their budget deficits through
Budget Support operations.
There is an urgent need to mitigate the economic losses of
women during the pandemic and to position them for eco-
nomic recovery and eventually, economic empowerment
in the aftermath of the pandemic. The affected economies
need to ensure that women are empowered to help them
rebuild. The current nature of the on-going Ebola outbreak
requires an increasingly multi-disciplinary approach to
provide an integrated response. Therefore, we must look at
how we can innovatively assist governments in responding
to what will be one of their biggest
Conclusion: After the Emergency
Building Resilience for Gender in MRU
Women are the main caregivers in the countries of
the MRU, as elsewhere in Africa, as health workers
and in their homes—they are literary on the front-
line in the fight against the disease. Secondly, it is
predictable that women traders in local markets and
across borders have been affected by the quaran-
tines and restrictions to the movement of people
and goods. Their income generating activities are
thus constrained when they are most needed.
Thirdly, women are predominant in agriculture. The
expected sharp decline in productivity in the sector
will hit their incomes hard. There is thus a case
for designing interventions to help women remain
return on their feet during the crisis—and also to
assist them to recoup their losses and those of their
households ex post. In the aftermath of the current
Ebola crisis, women in Liberia, Sierra Leone and
Guinea will require substantial financial, material and
technical assistance to return their economies back
to its pre- Ebola state. A good policy response by
the AfDB will be the establishment of the Ebola
Social Investment Fund.

The engagement of civil societies and community groups
promoted by the project will be essential to empower,
reach and mobilize women. In the three countries, NGOs
and CBOs operating at the community level are playing an
increasingly important role in supporting the Government in
containing the disease and providing assistance to groups
affected by EVD. The proposed design of the Fund will not
only strengthen the institutional capacity of these organi-
zations, but also help them to build linkages with the gov-
ernment agencies and the private sector so that they can
maximize their impact at the community level. Overall, the
project will strengthen the capacities of the MRU, Ministries
of Gender, community groups, NGOs as well as individual
women in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea.
The AfDB is proposing a Social Investment Fund39
to com-
plement ongoing containment support of the Bank by
providing livelihoods support and assistance to EVD survi-
vors, orphans and health workers. It will also complement
efforts of other development partners such as the Food
Agriculture Organization (FAO). The proposed Fund will be
the Bank’s holistic response to the gender dimensions of
EVD. The Fund will operate on a Public Private Partnership
(PPP) arrangement adopting a community demand-driven
intervention strategy guided by a Standard Operations
Manual to be developed. It will be an autonomous entity
established at the regional level with country-level affiliates.
Globally, the project will foster economic and social inclu-
sion, and gender equality. It is important to halt any further
damage to financial and social institutions in order to ensure
basic livelihoods in the affected countries. Specifically,
it aims at mitigating socioeconomic effects of EVD and
preparing women and girls to recover from economic
and social losses. It will play a catalytic role in improving
community response to outbreaks thereby contributing to
inclusive growth and poverty reduction in the three affected
countries of the MRU region.
Through this Investment Fund, the Bank will be able to help
women to come out of the current disadvantaged situa-
tion and rebuild the financial foundation, particularly in rural
areas. As indicated in this report, Ebola induced poverty
due to the curtailment of economic activities, particularly
handled by women (e.g. farming and cross-border trade).
This Fund will support revival of agricultural and trade activ-
ities which will increase food security. The project activities
are designed in such a way that those who come out of
poverty will continue to stay above the poverty line as the
project will link women with sustainable financial means. As
a result, women will be permanently relieved from the dual
economic and social burden in households where they are
the main source of income and care givers.
39
The Bank has experience in financing Social Funds, such as the ECOWAS Peace and Development Project, the Gambia Social Development
Fund Project and the Lake Chad Sustainable Development Program; the experience will be extensively tapped in during the project
implementation.
Source:CERD,AfDB

References
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- (2014a). “Liberia Country Gender Profile.” Abidjan, Ivory Coast: African Development Bank.
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Development Bank.” Abidjan, Ivory Coast: African Development Bank.
Baize, Sylvain, et. al (2014). “Emergence of Zaire Ebola Virus Disease in Guinea.” New England Journal of Medicine,
371 (15): 1418-1425.
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Nutrition Survey 2010”. Monrovia, Liberia: Ministry of Agriculture, Republic of Liberia.
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Information Services (LISGIS).
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Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women.” Freetown, Liberia: Government of Sierra Leone.
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New York: UNDP
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World Health Organisation (2014). “Ebola Response Roadmap Situation Report Update, November 21, 2014.”
Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.

About AfDB
The African Development Bank is a multilateral development institution, established in 1963 by agreement by and among
its member states, for the purpose of contributing to the sustainable economic development and social progress of its
Regional Member Countries (RMCs) in Africa. The members of the Bank, currently seventy eight (78), comprise 54 RMCs,
and 24 Non-RMCs. The Bank’s principal functions include: (i) using its resources for the financing of investment projects
and programs relating to the economic and social development of its RMCs; (ii) the provision of technical assistance for
the preparation and execution of development projects and programs; and (iii) promoting investment in Africa of public
and private capital for development purposes; and (iv) to respond to requests for assistance in coordinating development
policies and plans of RMCs.

Contacts :
Immeuble du Centre de commerce International
d’Abidjan CCIA
Avenue Jean-Paul II
01 BP 1387
Abidjan 01, Côte d’Ivoire
Tel.: (+225) 20 26 10 20
Email: d.elhassan@afdb.org
Website: www.afdb.org

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