AFP    July 26, 2015
Freetown  - Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma has unveiled a post-Ebola "battle plan" to help the west African country turn the page on the devastating epidemic.

Sierra Leone's President Ernest Bai Koroma speaks at an International Ebola Recovery Conference on July 10, 2015 at the United Nations headquarters in New York (AFP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)

"Beyond the immediate nine-month recovery period, we will commence a two-year plan during which we must resolve to restore Sierra Leone to the path to prosperity," Koroma said in a statement released Friday.

"We will work to reinvigorate the private sector as a source of growth, create jobs and livelihoods in our economy," he said, emphasising the need to improve roads and market access.

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http://news.yahoo.com/sierra-leone-president-unveils-post-ebola-battle-plan-175118537.html

weather.com - June 26th, 2015 - Brian Kahn

Big changes are afoot for the energy sector in the next 25 years. Coal and gas are headed out, and solar and wind are rushing to take their place on a multi-trillion dollar investment bonanza, according to a new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The report scopes out the power generating landscape through 2040.

The main reason for the big shift in power generation isn’t likely to be because of a grand climate agreement, national policies or carbon pricing scheme, though. Instead, it comes down to cold, hard cash, with renewables offering more power-generating bang for the buck than fossil fuels. Here are the three big numbers.

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An Ethiopian man examines his crop near Korom in northern Tigray province, November 25, 2004.
REUTERS/Radu Sigheti

CLICK HERE - RESEARCH - A multifaceted program causes lasting progress for the very poor: Evidence from six countries

reuters.com - by Dean Karlan - June 17, 2015

For years, policymakers have debated different approaches to helping the poor . . . new data, published in May after a nine-year, six-country study, offers resounding evidence for a strategy that works.  An approach known as a "Graduation" program is such a strategy.

Organizations employing this approach had been offering participants a “productive asset” (an asset that generates income, such as livestock or supplies to sell in a small store), training on how to use it, healthcare to keep them healthy enough to work, a small amount of food or money to support themselves while they learned to make a living (so they didn’t have to sell the asset immediately, merely to eat), access to a savings account to build up a buffer for future emergencies, and weekly coaching in areas like overcoming unexpected obstacles and meeting their savings goals.

THE WORLD BANK                                                                       June 15, 2015

WASHINGTON—Employment in Sierra Leone has returned to pre-crisis levels, though earnings and hours worked still lag behind. This is according to respondents in the latest round of high-frequency mobile-phone surveys, led by Statistics Sierra Leone with support from the World Bank Group, assessing how Ebola is impacting people’s livelihoods.

The survey contacted a sample of 1,715 households during May, 2015, which represents 41 percent of the 4,199 households covered in the baseline, nationally-representative Labor Force Survey conducted in July and August 2014.

 “Sierra Leone is working tirelessly to get to zero cases of Ebola,” said Francis Ato Brown, World Bank Group Country Manager for Sierra Leone. “Our job has to be not only to support the country in eradicating Ebola, but also to look toward economic recovery and toward mitigating the short-, medium-, and long-term impacts of the crisis on the social and economic wellbeing of all Sierra Leoneans.”