If weather and disease concerns weren’t enough for the upcoming cocoa bean harvest in Ivory Coast, then the Ebola epidemic surely provides a real what-if fear — one that’s sending the price of cocoa beans soaring.
Ivory Coast’s western region borders Liberia, which has been battling an outbreak of the Ebola virus since March 2014. In the five most affected countries — Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, Senegal and Nigeria — 5,864 people have been infected and 2,803 have died. Although Liberia’s borders have been closed, with the exception of certain crossings points, the border between Liberia and Ivory Coast can be called porous at best.