As Ebola crisis ebbs for Sierra Leone, food insecurity gnaws at recovery

The deadly virus overwhelmed Sierra Leone's key agricultural district, leaving thousands of farms, and their farmers, abandoned. The impact of that lost harvest has shaken the economy — and its food supply.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR  by Ryan Lenora Brown                    Aug. 16, 2015

Kailahun, Sierra Leone —...Today, the Ebola virus appears to be in retreat. Massive tented treatment centers built by international donors stand vacant and ghostly across the countryside, unnecessary to cope with the single-digit numbers of new cases recorded in recent weeks. Schools, closed for nearly nine months, have reopened. On weekend mornings, Freetown’s Atlantic Ocean beaches are once again thronged with joggers, pick-up soccer games, and informal aerobics classes, as fears fade of passing Ebola through physical contact.

Lahai Momoh, a buying agent for cacao in the eastern Sierra Leonean town of Kenema, seen here talking on his cellphone in August 2015, says 2014 was the worst year of his career due to the country's Ebola outbreak.

While life on its surface seems almost eerily normal, however, the region's recovery is still in the balance. Ebola is no longer such a deadly killer, but its impact is still leeching life from poor economies in West Africa — dramatically reducing output in industries from mining to tourism in ways that economists say are only beginning to be felt. In Sierra Leone, where two-thirds of the population farms, nowhere was the pain more widely felt than in agriculture.

 An initial assessment by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization near the end of 2014 suggested that more than a third of farmers in parts of eastern Sierra Leone had either abandoned their farms or died.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2015/0816/As-Ebola-crisis-ebbs-for-Sierra-Leone-food-insecurity-gnaws-at-recovery