Investigating the Impact of the International Response to the 2014 West African Ebola Crisis

The 2014 West African Ebola crisis was the deadliest outbreak in this region. While the international response was delayed, eventually international actors, including scientists, clinicians, NGOs, and governments came to the aid of affected countries. What remains unclear is the impact of the international response on key African actors and institutions. This project will investigate the impact of the international response on the visibility, agency and capacity of African scientists, researchers and other key stakeholders. Through a social network analysis, using authorship and institutional affiliations, this project will map scholars contributing to the global discourse on Ebola. Additionally, a scoping review will be used to determine how the crisis of Ebola was framed. Combined, they may suggest the relative power African scientists had in shaping the scientific dialogue around this epidemic. This project will also conduct interviews with key stakeholders such as scientists, researchers, and policy makers in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Regional actors based at Africa CDC, will also be included. These interviews will provide important perspectives from key African actors about how the international response to the Ebola crisis, impacted on their agency, capacity and visibility during and after the crisis.