In late 2014, I watched the Zaire strain of Ebola overwhelm Liberia and Sierra Leone following its emergence from Patient Zero, a two-year-old toddler in Southern Guinea. The international community was frozen in bureaucratic inertia.
I remember a frantic 48 hours spent coordinating emergency lines between Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and U.S. congressional leaders to bypass gridlock in Washington and catalyze White House action—an operational challenge I detailed in the epilogue of my memoir, Choosing the Hero.
Precedent: Collective Mobilization
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Yet, out of that raw friction, a groundbreaking public-private partnership emerged, driven by ArcelorMittal, Liberia’s largest investor. Rather than evacuating personnel, the company kept operating, protected its workforce, and spearheaded the Ebola Private Sector Mobilization Group (EPSMG)—a coalition of over 40 multinational mining, logistics, and energy companies across Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea.
READ: The ‘Magic’ Mobilized by the Private Sector to Defeat Ebola (by Riva Levinson – 2015)
Working alongside healthcare responders, the EPSMG pooled heavy machinery to construct treatment units, synchronized supply chains, offered access to clinics and transport, and shared daily protocols. The coalition proved that multinational infrastructure could serve as a vital stabilizing force. This case study remains a definitive, actionable model for crisis teamwork in developing countries.
Illusion of an Isolated Defense
Twelve years later, a similar crisis is unfolding across East and Central Africa. A significant outbreak of the Bundibugyo Ebola strain is expanding rapidly through the mineral-rich fields of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and into Uganda. Today’s mining companies, facing intense operational and safety mandates, are understandably relying on an inward-looking strategy, creating heavily secured perimeters to insulate their immediate workforces and protect industrial continuity.
But these corporate operations cannot isolate themselves from how the virus moves. Transmission is being driven by highly mobile artisanal miners navigating cross-border trade routes. The outbreak has already pushed past 900 suspected cases and more than 130 laboratory-confirmed cases.
Because the Bundibugyo strain lacks an approved vaccine or therapeutic stockpile, containment relies entirely on field diagnostics, aggressive contact tracing, and physical isolation—capabilities that corporate infrastructure is uniquely positioned to help scale.
Responding to domestic pressure, the Trump administration has adopted a fortress mentality. This is highlighted by a plan to construct a 50-bed quarantine field hospital at an airbase in central Kenya to hold and treat Americans exposed to Ebola, a policy which has faced local opposition. Regional allies are rightly asking what reciprocal protections they receive under this posture.
Furthermore, restricting infected American citizens from returning home undermines the most basic responsibility of the U.S. government to its citizenry. Instead, the administration should reactivate the specialized biocontainment units and regional treatment centers established across the country after 2014, providing a secure, managed pathway for medical evacuations.
Long-term operational survival depends on expanding containment protocols beyond corporate boundaries and extending the U.S. military ethos to our frontline volunteers and healthcare workers: “No Man Left Behind.”
Architecture for Joint Intervention
While the Trump Administration should be commended for its $162 million commitment to the ongoing response in Africa and its $350 million in humanitarian assistance to the DRC, Uganda, and South Sudan, funding alone is insufficient to halt the spread. Due to the administrative limitations of implementing partners and a diminished USAID ground presence, capital is not translating into rapid containment.
A mineral pipeline cannot operate if transit corridors are paralyzed by an uncontained virus. Because the epicenter sits within commercial mining concessions, Washington must practice true commercial diplomacy—aligning public resources with established private infrastructure by deploying public health experts directly into secure corporate perimeters.
Inside these corporate walls, medical teams gain immediate access to uninterrupted power, clean water, and private airstrips for safe housing, asset storage, and laboratory processing. This allows international responders to secure their logistical nodes while safely executing public clinics, clinical trials, and community outreach in neutral civic spaces just outside the gates..
Barrick Gold Corporation, which operates the world-class Kibali mine, has the capacity to act as a regional anchor, maintaining advanced on-site multi-module PCR laboratory networks, deep ties to state mining body SOKIMO, and a private air charter fleet. AngloGold Ashanti retains an equal 45 percent stake in the project, meaning both global majors have a massive, shared financial interest in maintaining operational stability along this transit corridor.
Further down the supply line in North Kivu, mid-tier operators like Alphamin Resources maintain robust site security layouts and run protected logistics convoys directly to Goma, while just across the border in Rwanda’s Western Province, mineral operators use these exact transit channels. Other global majors like Glencore and Ivanhoe Mines possess the massive corporate supply chains and heavy transport fleets required to support and sustain large-scale regional logistics under crisis conditions.
Yet, while Western majors build out and maintain these vital stabilizing networks, China’s massive mining footprint along the broader corridor remains characteristically absent from the response. Despite dominating regional resource extraction, Chinese state-backed operators strictly focus on industrial assets and localized supply chains, leaving the broader systemic burden of regional stability entirely to other international stakeholders.
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Call to Action for Washington and the Boardrooms
The path forward requires immediate, synchronized action to turn these existing pieces into a functional shield:
- Activate the Great Lakes Private Sector Mobilization Group (GL-PSMG): Barrick Gold, AngloGold Ashanti, Glencore, Ivanhoe Mines, Alphamin, RETC, Aterian, and SOKIMO should pool their logistics, air fleets, and open gates to help surge healthcare responders.
- Operationalize Public-Private Risk Pooling: The State Department should trigger compact frameworks as funding vehicles, matching U.S. surge capital with the physical assets of the mining consortium to support international responders.
- Support Nairobi as a Logistical Hub: Instead of trying to isolate sick Americans there, Washington needs to work with Kenya to transform its regional presence into the primary staging and supply line for healthcare workers deploying directly into the DRC and Uganda.
- Reactivate U.S. Biocontainment Infrastructure: Ensure specialized domestic treatment centers are open and prepared to manage medical evacuations directly.
The model pioneered in west Africa in 2014 proved that private infrastructure is an invaluable public asset when paired with bold national and international response coordination.
FROM THE ARCHIVE:
Companies Tackle Escalating Ebola Crisis
K. Riva Levinson is the President and CEO of KRL International LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based communications and government relations firm specializing in emerging markets. She is a veteran international strategist and the author of the award-winning memoir, Choosing the Hero.
