Reported cases of 18 deaths in a single day somewhere in middle Nigeria seemed frightening. Thankfully initial tests did not return the Ebola verdict.

Perhaps the victims binged drunk on some adulterated alcoholic substance. Ebola has just been reportedly cleared in Liberia. Guinea and Sierra Leone are reporting cases albeit not in the droves we witnessed some 15 months ago. Ebola has killed 10,000 West Africans in the last 15 months.

The scare is not gone, but the bigger scare is the drying up of critically needed investment in a region that must grow in order to stem the tide of terror gangs like Boko Haram and ISIS. It is reported that an additional $400m is needed by mid 2015 to shore up Ebola efforts in the region but that money primarily from donors will be difficult to find as donors cut aid to the World Health Organisation.

It is depressing to wait on the beneficial largesse of donors for basic health care protocols that must be in place for a dignified life for its citizens. This is where governments in West Africa must be focusing their attention- basic health care. Yes, we should be dreaming of mega growth statistics, but the ultimate natural resource in any country with promise is its people. If people cannot get basic health care then we are doomed as a region.

However, governments alone should not pretend they can take care of every West African.

Governments should focus on the basics of life and free up resources for building some kind of prosperity network for its citizens. A prosperity network that says whilst we ordinary West Africans pay a tax to our governments, they must be willing to provide us with security of our persons and honestly acquired property.

They must invest at least 10% of all revenues in health care and health care research to prepare for denigrating diseases like Ebola.

However, the greatest assets in the prosperity network should be entrepreneurs, big and small, who must be encouraged with the right regime for business growth to blossom, pay taxes to governments and at the same time employ people who can be paid to purchase their own health care insurance and the basics of life. As for me, I am encouraged by the dedicated works of the likes of Simon Simon Eyram Tsike-Sossah whose ACIPP organization is currently leading local grassroots efforts towards Ebola called www.derswa.org . Simon’s West African focus in the heat of the Ebola scare deserves support.

He had to travel to the West to tell would be investors that the three countries hit by Ebola did not represent the whole of Africa, but that is an uphill task that cannot be shouldered by any single individual or oraganisation. Together with Simon, we would like to focus our working relationships across West Africa starting with Anglophone West Africa, Liberia, Sierra Leone and the Gambia.

Imani already has a pilot francophone project dedicated to Benin but now with interns from Ivory Coast, Togo and Burkina Faso replicating same objective for their countries. The overall objective of Imani Francophone (Benin) is to influence policy decisions and public debates in Benin by researching, reporting and analyzing policy related challenges on issues such as Trade and regional integration, agriculture and economic governance and provide workable recommendations along the identified challenges.