Understanding West Africa's Ebola Epidemic

Ibrahim Abdullah was until recently a professor of history at Fourth Bay College, University of Sierra Leone. He has published extensively in the area of African social/labor history and contemporary social change and conflict in West Africa, and is the editor of Democracy and Terror: The Sierra Leone Civil War (2004). Ismail Rashid is professor of history at Vassar College. Among his recent publications are (co-edited with A. Adebajo) West Africa’s Security Challenges (2004),and (co-edited with Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley) The Paradoxes of History and Memory in Postcolonial Sierra Leone (2013). He currently serves as the Vice President of the West African Research Association (US) and member of the board of the African Peacebuilding Network of the Social Science Research Council.

Maps

Introduction: Understanding West Africa’s Ebola Epidemic - Ibrahim Abdullah and Ismail Rashid

Part I: The Regional History and Origins of Ebola
1. Ebola and Regional History: Connections and Common Experiences - Allen Howard
2. Eurocentric Epistemology: Questioning the Narrative on the Epidemic’s Origin - Chernoh Alpha M. Bah

Part II: The Neoliberal Affliction: Different Countries, Similar Convulsions
3. Interpreting the Health, Social, and Political Dimensions of the Ebola Crisis in Guinea - Alpha Amadou Bano Barry
4. The Political Economy of the Ebola Epidemic in Liberia - George Klay Kieh, Jr.
5. Confronting Ebola with Bare Hands: Sierra Leone’s Health Sector on the Eve of the Ebola Epidemic - Ibrahim Abdullah and Abou Bakarr Kamara

Part III: Development, Gender and its Discontents
6. Structural Violence, Public Health, and the Militarization of Assistance - Julia Amos
7. “I am a woman. How can I not help?” Gender Performance and the Spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone - Aisha Fofana Ibrahim
8. "God Bless Whatsapp": Neoliberal Ebola and the Struggle for Autonomous Space in Sierra Leone - Ibrahim Abdullah

Part IV: Transnational Actors and the Politics of Crisis Response
9. African Union, ECOWAS, and the International Political Economy of the Emergency Response to Ebola - Semiha Abdulmelik
10. The World Health Organization and the Ebola Epidemic - Meredeth Turshen and Tefera Gezmu
11. The Ebola Epidemic Moment in the US-(West) Africa Relations - Fodei Batty
12. UNMEER and the International Response to the Ebola Epidemic - Ismail Rashid