[WSMDiscuss] What are African journalists, scholars and activists saying about Covid-19?

[Brian K Murphy]

https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/what-are-african-journalists-scholars-and-activists-saying-about-covid-19/ <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/what-are-african-journalists-scholars-and-activists-saying-about-covid-19/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+FromPovertyToPower+(From+Poverty+to+Power+:+Duncan+Green)>
> What are African journalists, scholars and activists saying about Covid-19?
> 
> Duncan Green, - From Poverty to Power, April 16, 2020
> Although Covid’s impact in poor countries is starting to look pretty terrifying (as, often, is the political response), the debates that I see are still being framed largely in Northern terms of self-isolation, PPE and all the rest. And often it’s advice from well-meaning northerners about how Delhi, Nairobi or Cape Town should be responding.
> 
> In search of other views, I came across the Canadian Association of African Studies thread on Covid-19 articles by African authors <https://twitter.com/CAAS_ACEA/status/1242828793997377537>.
> 
> Which raises a wider issue – who, if anyone, is collating and synthesizing the views of developing country writers on Covid-19? And not just them – the volume of reportage, analysis and research on Covid is rapidly approaching tsunami proportions (here’s just one round up on the Conflict and Governance angle <https://heathermarquette.com/2020/04/09/what-were-reading-on-conflict-governance-covid-19-edition-9-april/> from Heather Marquette). Who is summarizing all this and making it accessible? Could someone kidnap Dave Evans <https://www.cgdev.org/expert/david-evans> (who summarizes hundreds of conference papers for fun) and force persuade him to provide such a service?
> 
> Here’s a taster of what I found:
> 
> Critiques of simply importing rich country responses
> 
> ‘If you live in a township, make a living in the informal sector, or travel on a crowded bus, how do you self-quarantine? <https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/africa-social-distancing-privilege-afford-200318151958670.html>’ By Karsten Noko <https://www.aljazeera.com/profile/karsten-noko.html>
> ‘It’s hard to wash your hands when 380 families share three taps <https://www.groundup.org.za/article/covid-19-its-hard-wash-your-hands-when-380-families-share-three-taps/>’. Views from a Cape Town informal settlement, by Vincent Lali <https://www.groundup.org.za/author/201/>
> OluTimehin Adegbeye  <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OluTimehin_Adegbeye> on why ‘we need an African solution to a global problem <https://thecorrespondent.com/378/why-social-distancing-wont-work-for-us/8821051470-0c1f22cf>: Social distancing is a valid containment solution for the novel coronavirus, yes. But it is a solution that doesn’t grasp a reality that is extremely widespread across Africa: people survive difficulty by coming together as communities of care, not pulling apart in a retreat into individualism.’ 
> 
> Mwanahamisi Singano <https://tz.linkedin.com/in/mwanahamisi-singano-6722bba> (on FP2P) on How to stop Coronavirus Lockdown Leading to an Upsurge in Violence Against Women <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/how-to-stop-coronavirus-lockdown-leading-to-an-upsurge-in-violence-against-women%ef%bb%bf/>
> ‘It is planting season in most parts of the Continent, and yet farmers are being asked to sit at home, the movement of seasonal workers is restricted, research institutes that provide seeds, fertilizer blending companies and agrodealers, processors and markets are all being shut down.’ Ndidi Nwuneli <https://businessday.ng/author/testuser/>  on Ensuring that hunger does not kill more people than COVID-19 <https://businessday.ng/features/article/ensuring-that-hunger-does-not-kill-more-people-than-covid-19-in-africa/>
> Concerns on Africa’s Political Leadership’s ability/willingness to respond
> 
> Excellent, if worrying, overview of Africa’s (un)readiness for Covid-19, and the likely politics of the response <https://oecd-development-matters.org/2020/04/08/global-response-to-covid-19-in-africa-must-protect-lives-livelihoods-and-freedoms/>. From Afrobarometer’s E.Gyimah-Boadi <https://www.afrobarometer.org/our-network/executive-committee/e-gyimah-boadi> and Carolyn Logan <https://www.afrobarometer.org/our-network/executive-committee/carolyn-logan>
> Crisis, Covid-19 and Capitalism in Africa <https://roape.net/2020/03/26/out-of-control-crisis-covid-19-and-capitalism-in-africa/>: Activists and researchers from across Africa speak about the impact of Covid-19 on their countries. Writing from Kenya, South Africa, Burkina Faso and Nigeria and Zimbabwe, Femi Aborisade <http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Z1oIeh8AAAAJ&hl=en>, Heike Becker <https://www.uwc.ac.za/Biography/Pages/Heike-Becker.aspx>, Didier Kiendrebeogo <http://roape.net/tag/didier-kiendrebeogo/>, Gacheke Gachihi <https://www.york.ac.uk/cahr/defenders/protective-fellowship/past/gacheke-gachihi/>, Lena Anyuolo <https://africasacountry.com/author/lena-grace-anyuolo> and Tafadzwa Choto <https://twitter.com/tafadzwachoto> look at how the crisis is taking shape – how governments are using the virus as a cover for wider repression, and the broader context of capitalism, climate change and popular struggles for radical change.
> 
> George Ogola <https://www.uclan.ac.uk/staff_profiles/dr_george_ogola.php> argues that Africa’s news media is abdicating its responsibilities <https://theconversation.com/why-africas-journalists-arent-doing-a-good-job-on-covid-19-134416> by not questioning the appropriateness of the global response to the crisis.
> 
> Professor Chidi Oguamanam <https://commonlaw.uottawa.ca/en/news/africa-and-covid-19-blog-professor-chidi-oguamanam>: ‘As the virus berths on the continent’s 54 countries, there is a dreadful and ominous vacuum of political leadership. Some political leaders are ensconced in their palatial opulence scampering for their own personal health now that they can no longer travel overseas for medical tourism. Save for a few countries like South Africa, Rwanda, Kenya, Ghana and Ethiopia, there is little appreciation of the scale of the problem and the danger it portends. Nigerians have yet to hear the voice of their President on the COVID-19 pandemic. Africa as a highly religious and communal society is forced to seek solace outside their resilient traditional cultural and social structures. It is a steep learning curve for a society ravaged by insecurity, unaccountable political leadership and economic stagnation.’
> 
> Zaheera Jinnah <https://www.uvic.ca/hsd/socialwork/faculty/home/faculty/Members/jinnah-zaheera.php> on lockdown politics in South Africa <https://mg.co.za/article/2020-03-30-the-lockdown-south-africas-test-of-its-democracy/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1585601341>: ‘the real test for South Africa is not if the lockdown will help slow down the pandemic. Instead, lurking within and throughout this lockdown is a battle for the future of South Africa’s democracy. Three issues to watch out for over the next three weeks:
> 
> Will South Africans comply with the rule of law? 
> Will the army and police rein themselves in?
> Will our politicians remain united?’
> Patrick Gathara <https://www.aljazeera.com/profile/patrick-gathara.html> argues that ‘governments should stop seeing non-governmental actors as a threat to their own legitimacy’ <https://africasacountry.com/2020/04/the-need-for-a-people-driven-response-to-the-coronavirus-pandemic>.
> 
> Emerging Agency from social movements, civil society organizations and others
> 
> This is the bit I am most interested in – things like this week’s FP2P piece on organizing in informal settlements in the Cape Town lockdown <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/covid-advocacy-in-south-africas-shanty-towns-what-works/>. Or this piece from Jessica Horn on why the response needs to listen to African feminist organizations <https://awdf.org/surviving-covid19-why-we-need-to-listen-african-womens-organisation/>. Or this from Ruth Nyambura on organizing with an eco-feminist perspective <https://darajapress.com/2020/04/09/organising-in-the-time-of-covid-19-eco-feminist-perspectives>. More of this kind of thing is bound to emerge, either in response to the virus, or to the negative consequences of the way governments are responding – do please send links.
> 
> Overall, that’s just a flavour, and some of the links are quite old (in a time of Covid, that means over two weeks), so please help me out – where to look for regularly updated syntheses? Is there a round-up of round-ups somewhere?
> 
> *****


> https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/more-covid-analysis-by-african-authors-and-a-first-instalment-from-india/ <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/more-covid-analysis-by-african-authors-and-a-first-instalment-from-india/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+FromPovertyToPower+(From+Poverty+to+Power+:+Duncan+Green)>More Covid analysis by African authors, and a first instalment from India
> 
> Duncan GreenDuncan Green, - From Poverty to Power,  April 17, 2020
> The responses to yesterday’s post <https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/what-are-african-journalists-scholars-and-activists-saying-about-covid-19/> were so enthusiastic that I’ve put together a second instalment and included a couple of links at the end to Indian authors. Seems like it would be a useful exercise to keep publishing these kinds of syntheses as the crisis evolves, so if you see particularly perceptive or striking analyses from Africa, Latin America or Asian writers, please send me the links.
> 
> Some big picture pieces
> 
> David Mwambari <https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/pandemic-catalyst-decolonisation-africa-200415150535786.html>: ‘As African countries started cancelling flights from former colonial countries and putting their citizens under quarantine, the myth of Western invincibility fell apart, alongside its corollary that only the Global South is susceptible to infectious epidemics….. while [Africans] will certainly also go through a tough period, they should see this crisis as an opportunity to fast track the process of decolonialisation.’
> 
> African Development Bank economists Martin Fregene and Atsuko Toda <https://nutritionconnect.org/resource-center/mitigating-covid-19s-impact-africas-food-systems> remind us that even before the COVID-19 crisis, Africa was already facing 3 crises: locusts, droughts and foreign exchange losses. The arrival of COVID-19 on the African continent creates a convergence which “sets the stage for an imminent food crisis—unless measures are taken to mitigate the impact of the pandemic.”
> 
> Caroline Bowah, Korto Reeves, and Lakshmi N. Moore have a great gender analysis of Covid in Liberia and proposals for a feminist response <https://newspublictrust.com/the-double-jeopardy-of-inequality-and-lockdown/?utm_source=ReviveOldPost&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=ReviveOldPost>:
> 
>  ‘The lockdown mandates people to stay home and limit movement to an hour within their communities. Yet, for women and girls, a home is not always safe and secure. In addition to the increased burden of caregiving, it will become a space where sexual and other forms of gender-based violence is further normalized.  It is where the family friend lurks to plan his sexual assault. It is where the father beats on the mother for not cooking food on time. It is where fiancés are murdered; partners are stabbed over allegations of affairs; and children have been abused and killed. Traditionally, long distance between communities and police stations, poor logistics for police officers, and high transportation costs hinder survivors from reporting cases of abuse, harassment and domestic violence.’
> 
> African realities and alternative ways of responding
> 
> ‘Curfews are a safer plan than total lockdowns to slow Covid-19’s spread in informal economies’.  W. Gyude Moore <https://qz.com/author/w-gyude-moore/> on Quartz Africa <https://qz.com/africa/1836458/curfews-not-lockdowns-will-slow-covid-19-spread-in-africa/>
> ‘We keep houses in Nairobi, but our true north is back in the place where we grew up. I believe that this aspect of our identities and the identity of our cities may have an important bearing on the way that Kenya and other African countries deal with the coronavirus pandemic.’ From Where to Face Death: Coronavirus and the Villager <https://www.theelephant.info/reflections/2020/04/14/from-where-to-face-death-coronavirus-and-the-villager/>, by Alexander Ikawah
> 
> The BMJ Global Health blog <https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjgh/> has some truly alarming accounts of the situation in Guinea and DRC: 
> 
> In Guinea <https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjgh/2020/04/10/first-line-response-to-covid-19-community-health-centres-and-doctors-offices-in-guinea/?fbclid=IwAR1bwvbWyuC7r94bBc6LYfGHho-9CBvrJ7E4sJNFTrbkOZzSZwe3xuvWrE8>, Abdoulaye Sow and Bart Criel report that:
> 
> ‘At the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic, the Guinean population felt unconcerned because according to the rumours this was “a Chinese, a white men’s and finally a rich “bosses” disease” that mainly hit high-ranking individuals such as a minister and the chief official of a republican institution.
> 
> Panic broke out as a result of more rumours, fake news and the state of emergency that was declared with immediate effect. Restrictions included the closure of all places of worship, a ban on group gatherings, a limit on the number of people allowed on public transport. The closure of mosques and the cancellation of Friday prayers are seen by the population (85% of whom are Muslim) as a violation of faith.’
> 
> In DR Congo <https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjgh/2020/04/11/the-forgotten-first-line-response-to-covid-19-in-lubumbashi-democratic-republic-of-congo/>, Didier Chuy Kalombola and Bart Criel report that:
> 
> ‘The people of Lubumbashi are misinformed and there is complete panic. In addition to other health problems and killer diseases such as malaria, and the low socio-economic status (living on less than 1$/day), the increase in the price of food and basic necessities comes as an extra blow to an already impoverished population. Essential and generic drugs, mainly from China and India, have become expensive. Burglaries by armed bandits and awareness raising with inaccurate information about COVID-19 increase anxiety and terror among the population. The popular perception of COVID-19 is that it is caused by a demonic spirit.
> 
> The COVID-19 vaccine that we want to test in Africa is seen as “a drug meant to kill African women”. The public believes that such a vaccine should first be tested in countries with a high COVID-19 death toll such as France and Italy.
> 
> Politicians have side-lined and forgotten the first line of care in their response to COVID-19, a disease that will stay with us for a long time.’
> 
> Good sites to trawl
> 
> Two useful sites suggested by Teni Tayo:
> 
> The WATHI Covid-19 <https://www.wathi.org/debat-covid-19/> site is aggregating pieces on West Africa in particular, in English and French. Many of them are by outside organizations (eg World Bank, McKinsey, Reuters). Mix of African and non-African authors.
> 
> Africa’s a Country <https://africasacountry.com/search?query=covid-19> hosts essays that are largely broad brush political critiques from a left perspective (typical title: ‘How COVID-19 reveals the paradoxes of neoliberal logic <https://africasacountry.com/2020/04/how-covid-19-reveals-the-paradoxes-of-neoliberal-logic>’)
> 
> And thanks Catherine Kyobutungi for pointing me to The Conversation Africa <https://theconversation.com/africa> site
> 
> Meanwhile, a first instalment from India:
> 
> ‘In India, these are difficult times for all of us, but even more so for my Adivasi neighbours. How many will we let starve or die in the name of preventing the further spread of the virus?’ Powerful piece from ‘Mukesh’ <https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/persecuted-their-own-land/> (not their real name) on Open Democracy 
> 
> ‘This blog <https://vscoronatimes.blogspot.com/> archives the covid-relief efforts and other localisation initiatives coming up in response to the crisis across India.’ 
> 
> And then of course there’s Arundhati Roy’s extraordinary essay  <https://www.ft.com/content/10d8f5e8-74eb-11ea-95fe-fcd274e920ca?fbclid=IwAR2RzSxxv_nHp8cMnJvvjUisHzt7AZz71XwZHR2Y1IM0tMW_LfXvqDVOsDM>in the FT. Still the best thing I’ve read on Covid.
> 
> ‘As an appalled world watched, India revealed herself in all her shame — her brutal, structural, social and economic inequality, her callous indifference to suffering.  The lockdown worked like a chemical experiment that suddenly illuminated hidden things. As shops, restaurants, factories and the construction industry shut down, as the wealthy and the middle classes enclosed themselves in gated colonies, our towns and megacities began to extrude their working-class citizens — their migrant workers — like so much unwanted accrual.’ 
> 
> Keep them coming please!
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