$700 Million in Ebola Money Is Missing While Congolese Die

More than 5,400 people have died in the Democratic Republic of Congo since May. Over 11,000 have been infected. Mothers are burying their children in the eastern provinces, and the money that was supposed to stop them is sitting in accounts nobody can explain.

Let us be precise about what we are looking at. Africa CDC, our own continental public health body, has said that $700 million of the $962 million disbursed to organisations running the Ebola response cannot be traced. Its chief, Jean Kaseya, was careful to say it was too early to call it embezzlement. Fair enough. But ask the nurse in North Kivu who has not seen a salary since the outbreak was declared whether this is a reporting problem, and watch her face. Ask the mother whose child died in a health facility with no water, no chlorine, and no triage system. Missing money is not an accounting term to them. It is the difference between a clinic that treats and a clinic that kills.

Médecins Sans Frontières has now put its name to the damning picture. In its report, the charity described frontline responders trying to contain the outbreak "with empty hands and empty pockets." It described surveillance teams that exist on paper but are nowhere to be seen on the ground. Its president, Javid Abdelmoneim, said the situation was simply unacceptable six months into the response, and he is right. MSF also found that two-thirds of deaths are happening in communities rather than treatment centres. The virus is moving through homes, markets, and churches because the system meant to find it is hollow. The eminent epidemiologist Neil Ferguson has estimated that more than half of cases are going undetected, which means this outbreak could drag on for another year. Another year of dying, funded by money that cannot be found.

The Congolese health minister, Samuel-Roger Kamba, has himself admitted that only 22 per cent of aid agencies have provided the ministry with the details of their work. Read that again. Four out of five partners have not told the state what they are doing with the resources flowing through it. Kinshasa has a duty to demand full disclosure, and it has not enforced that duty. The Congolese state cannot blame foreign NGOs for opacity while it tolerates opacity as the price of doing business. Accountability starts at home.

But we would be dishonest if we stopped at Kinshasa. Some of the worst-hit zones are under the control of M23, a militia that Congo's own government and the UN Group of Experts, in reports including S/2025/446, have shown to be operationally led by the Rwanda Defence Force. This is not a home-grown rebellion. It is Paul Kagame's war of aggression, carried out through a proxy that provides deniability while Rwandan soldiers direct the offensive. When a foreign army occupies the terrain where a deadly virus is spreading, it does not just kill civilians with bullets. It blocks roads, cuts supply lines, chases away health workers, and turns the epidemic into a weapon of attrition. Health workers cannot reach villages they are afraid to enter. Surveillance cannot function in territory no official is allowed to visit. The MSF report says the response was "too slow" in North Kivu. Of course it was. You cannot run an outbreak response in a war zone with a foreign army in your backyard.

And Rwanda continues to sell itself to the world as a model of order and development. It hosts summits, markets gorilla tourism, and polishes its image on the global stage while its soldiers occupy the eastern Congo. The hypocrisy is obscene, and we will keep naming it until the world stops accepting it as normal.

Here is what history teaches us. In 2014, Nigeria stopped an Ebola outbreak in Lagos within months, not by magic, but because public health officials, led by Dr Ameyo Adadevoh, moved fast, traced contacts relentlessly, and kept the public informed. Senegal contained a case that same year through disciplined surveillance and clear chains of command. Rwanda's own health system has invested heavily in community health workers, and that is worth copying even as we condemn its military adventurism. Good institutions beat outbreaks. Weak institutions feed them.

So what must happen? The African Union should convene an emergency session of its Peace and Security Council and demand a single, public, audited Ebola budget, with every dollar tracked from donor to district clinic. Africa CDC should publish a quarterly ledger online so that any journalist, legislator, or market trader can check where the money went. The Congolese parliament should summon the health ministry and the finance ministry to explain the 22 per cent compliance figure, and it should pass a law requiring every partner to register its spending before receiving a franc. Donors, including the United States, the European Union, and the UK, who lecture us about transparency every time they write a cheque, should attach audit conditions to every disbursement. Pay health workers first. Put fuel in the ambulances. Put chlorine in the taps. Those are not luxuries. They are the minimum.

And the UN Security Council must stop treating the eastern Congo as a permanent emergency that can be managed rather than a war that must end. Rwanda must withdraw its forces, and M23 must lay down its arms. Until that happens, no amount of money will save lives in the places that need it most.

Citizens of Congo, Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, and every African country watching this unfold: demand the figures. Ask your MPs what your health budget was, and where it went. Ask your government why it accepted money it could not account for. Ask Kigali why its army is in another country's territory and why its proxies are blocking the doctors. Silence is how this continent keeps paying for its own suffering.

We have the knowledge to stop Ebola. We have the examples to follow. What we have lacked is the will to insist that every dollar must answer to the people who are dying. That will starts with us.

Based on reporting by BBC