Ebola Ward ~ BBC on Treatment Facilities...

BBC shows How Ebola is being treated on the ground...

"The treatment centre is designed to separate confirmed Ebola patients from probable or likely cases. Upon entry, patients are examined by medical staff in full protective gear. Following the initial diagnosis, they are then split into low or high probability wards until the laboratory results come in, which could take anything from a few hours to days, depending on the facility. There is little that medical workers can do for their patients, as there is no cure for Ebola. All they can help with is to care for the patients and treat symptoms like dehydration, as well as wash and comfort them. According to MSF, good care increases the chances of survival from a disease that has a 50% fatality rate and whose symptoms include vomiting, diarrhoea and bleeding, sometimes from the eyes and mouth. However, overcrowded facilities and a shortage of staff on the ground have made this difficult so far."

R.I.P. Sheik Umar Khan ~ Sierra Leone Ebola Doc

Exceedingly sad to hear that Sierra Leonean Dr Sheik Umar Khan, one of the leading fighters against epidemic Ebola, has also succumbed to that deadly virus after treating over 100 afflicted countrymen. This just underscores that this currently West African-centered situation is in fact a global public health emergency. More must be done ASAP.

Violent Coast ~ BBC in Post-War Liberia & SL...

BBC's Ben Anderson in Liberia & Salone just after civil wars...

Liberia 77 ~ Topham Brothers Revisit Memories

See full Liberia 77 by the Topham brothers (mentioned earlier)...

Benguela Railway ~ Angolan Infra History+Today

Moved 2 Monrovia makes a very nice and timely discovery of a vintage colonial-era 1960s promo brochure for the Portuguese-built Benguela Railway from Angola's Lobito port city to the deep interior border with the Congo, complete with background, timetables, passenger and freight photos, and route map...

West African Mining ~ Big Corporate Action...

Spotlight on international mining and resource extraction in West Africa, starting with this FT piece on Sierra Leone's new chapter... And a survey piece on SL's mining sector... Corporate promo video by London Mining in Marampa, Sierra Leone... Also one by Koidu Holdings, Sierra Leone. ArcelorMittal in Liberia Mines Again: From Dream to Reality... And more from AM in Liberia... Al Jazeera on Chinese reviving Bong Mine, Liberia...

Dream Great ~ Johnson Sirleaf Says "Think BIG!"

Inspirational Harvard Commencement address this past May 2011 by Kennedy School alumna and author of This Child Will Be Great, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf!

“The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.”

Powerful Women ~ Two Top West African Leaders

Many thanks to Dr Fred P.M. van der Kraaij of Liberian Perspectives for spotting Africare's president Dr Darius Mans interviewing the two most powerful women in West Africa, Nigeria's Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf! James Butty writes in the VOA...

"Ngozi Okonjo said girls and women are the future of Africa. “Any country that focuses on their (women’s) development will do better in economic development, in social development. And so, we really need to focus our attention, and, I must say, maybe I’m a little bit biased. Women also tend to be more transparent, they tend to have fewer egos and, so, I think that they tend to move countries along and sectors along..."

Vibrant Monrovia ~ Clean & Green Future City...

After taking a historical view and posting about Vintage Monrovia, I followed Matt's Moved 2 Monrovia advice and links to try and learn a bit more about the Liberian capital today. The Monrovia City Corporation (MCC) is playing an essential role in building towards a vibrant future city, running clean-up campaigns, making sanitation investments, planting trees, and placing other key clean & green infrastructure commitments. All important prosperity policies and practices. See for yourself via their first two MCC TV episodes with host Archel Bernard...

Vintage Monrovia ~ Inspiring Historical Imagery!

Thanks to Matt Jones at Moved 2 Monrovia for an ongoing stream of inspiring historical images of capital city Monrovia and info about Liberia more generally. While most folks probably think first about the more recent civil wars and destruction and diaspora, click on these photos and postcards below to see a more peaceful and prosperous past -- and to get some ideas about this West African country's tremendous future potential... Plus, don't forget the Liberia '77 documentary and website...

African Borders ~ Legacy of Colonial Carve-Up

Given the South Sudanese independence vote, the NYTimes has the following infographic on African borders, A Continent Carved Up, Ignoring Who Lives Where... Thanks to Emeka Okafor of Africa Unchained fame for spotting this. Of course, it gets even more tricky on a fine-grain basis. Consider the complexities of Rwanda or the internal migrations of Nigeria or the Americo-returnee vs native tensions in Liberia or the northern vs southern dynamic in Côte d'Ivoire, and so forth. And Sudan, an enormous country the size of Western Europe, has its own ethnic patchwork, as this BBC infographic shows...

Liberia '77 ~ Living History of Past & Present...

Thanks to Moved to Monrovia for spotting the Liberia '77 documentary by the Topham brothers...

"For Jeff Topham and his brother Andrew, 70s Liberia was a childhood paradise [...] Their father worked for Exchem, a Canadian company that made explosives for the Liberian mining industry. He also took thousands of photographs -- extensively recording not only an ex-pat family’s extraordinary African experience, but also unknowingly documenting a country and a people on the edge of destruction. A bloody coup d’etat and two brutal civil wars would soon devastate the nation. 30 years later, and now both photographers themselves, Jeff and Andrew return to Liberia to revisit and re-shoot their childhood Eden. But what starts as a personal journey, exploring the connection between memory and photography, quickly evolves into something they didn’t expect. [...] their father’s photos are far more than just family snapshots of an idyllic ex-pat childhood. For a people whose happy memories -- and photographs -- have been destroyed by war, the images also offer a rare proof of a once peaceful and prosperous country, and hope for a brighter future."

Their side-by-side photo juxtapositions are especially powerful, for example, home in Liberia, past and present... P.S. The one-minute promo clip above is fine indeed, but check out the extra goodness in this extended clip...

Securing Liberia ~ Women Police & Peacekeepers

Very compelling NYTimes article on The Female Factor: A Female Approach to Peacekeeping by Doreen Carvajal...

"Women of the United Nations police and peacekeeping forces that entered Liberia after the civil war have inspired a new generation of Liberian women to don uniforms. [...] "When female soldiers are present, the situation is closer to real life, and as a result the men tend to behave..." [...] As modern peacekeeping has evolved into nation building, the number of female police officers in U.N. peacekeeping missions around the world has doubled during the past five years to 833, or more than 6 percent of a force of 12,867. Nigeria and India are top contributors to a total that is still far below the international goal of 20 percent. In some missions -- notably Darfur and Liberia -- women are edging closer: Women account for 14 percent of the 1,354 police peacekeepers in Liberia."

Be sure to see the related video, Securing the Peace in Liberia...

Monique Maddy ~ Learning to Love Africa...

After finishing her Harvard Business School MBA, Monique Maddy, born in Liberia and educated in the UK and US starts up a business in Tanzania to provide telephony services. Her saga...

Sliding Liberia ~ Sport, Tourism, and Delights!

A West African surfing flick?! Yes, Sliding Liberia!

Vital Liberia ~ Open for Business & Investment...

Surfing for info about West African infrastructure, I ran across this great promo video about Liberia and its vital future...

Mercy Ships ~ Buoyant Healthcare Infrastructure

I just read A taste of Sierra Leone: A student report posted on the MIT Global Health Initiative blog by my colleague Anjali Sastry. Anusuya Das shared class-field experiences observing the fragmented and undercapitalized Sierra Leone hospital and care infrastructure. This got me thinking about how to uplift such infrastructure rapidly and effectively and with enduring consequences. Partly this is a larger challenge of accelerating development in exponential increments over time. But we need transitional solutions now. So in the case of healthcare, perhaps a greater role for hospital ships? I remembered that post Indian Ocean tsunami and post-Katrina, there were stories about US Navy hospital ships. Sure enough, the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort. But it also turns out there's a wonderful organization called Mercy Ships which runs the largest non-governmental hospital ship, the M/V Africa Mercy which after visiting Liberia is now in Benin. What a great idea! To get an informal day-to-day sense of the inspirational work by the doctors, nurses, crew, and staff, check out Mercy Ship Adventure by South African Murray Tristan Crawford or Love for Liberia by American Katie O'Hara!

Floating Power Plants ~ Economies of Flexibility

Reading about the challenges in South Africa, with ESKOM not generating enough, or Liberia, with devastated infrastructure, it seems that surely floating power plant solutions would allow for rapid infrastructure deployment. There's a bit of precedent with Waller-Marine's designs, including this 220 MW power barge... The Russians are proposing floating nuclear plants...