Lessons from Africa’s past to cope with COVID-19
How managing COVID-19 and other crises necessitates Africa’s structural transformation, and what we can learn from the early post-independence development projects.
health
Hospitali za mabepari
Ubinafsishaji wa huduma ya afya nchini Kenya.
The privatization of healthcare in Kenya
In Kenya, only the rich and politically connected can afford decent healthcare. Everyone else is a major illness or a road accident away from ruin.
Missing datasets
African societies are failing to systematically capture the true impact of COVID-19.
No one is coming to save us
The government of Zimbabwe has decided it does not care whether Zimbabweans live or die.
Fighting the pandemic in the global South
On the other side of the pandemic, we must strengthen and build strong working-class movements to challenge imperialism and neocolonialism.
The lost heritage of emergency relief
Local traditions of crisis management have largely been shed along the path to “development.” The age of COVID-19 is the time to recover them.
A plagued history of Kampala
The parallels between COVID-19 and the 1910s in Kampala, when the colonial regime used a series of plagues to cut Ugandans out of the capital city.
Decolonizing the vaccine
Africans can lead the charge to decolonize the profit-driven biomedical system by challenging European and American claims to prioritized access to the COVID-19 vaccine.
Access delayed is access denied
It will be survival for the fittest when the COVID-19 vaccine arrives. As it stands, relevant international regimes for its distribution are not in Africa’s favor.
Young, gifted, and pregnant
A series of social and political interventions are required to bring down Kenya’s startling teenage pregnancy statistics.
Masks off
The revival of an elite technocratic rationality is starting to undo South Africa's lockdown, now in its second month.
The tools for defeating quackery
Why we need randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to find the best ways to treat COVID-19.
The irrelevance of NGOs in Tanzania
NGOs have been notably absent in the fight against COVID-19, despite claims they exist solely to ensure accountability and transparency by government.
Paying the ultimate price
COVID-19 is teaching us lessons we should have learned from the HIV epidemic.
‘We are workers, not heroes’
African health workers ask for decent work and a strong, public health care system—not applause.
Out of sight
In South Africa, social distancing to bring down COVID-19 infections takes a decidedly local shape. In a racialized society, it manifests primarily as white melancholia and black Afro-pessimism.
People Power in the age of COVID-19
Will the coronavirus pandemic extend Museveni’s authoritarianism or the lockdown instead provide openings for Uganda’s opposition?
Will COVID-19 keep out of Africa?
While COVID-19 hasn't yet hit African cities as hard as those in the global North, it will eventually likely penetrate deep into the countryside where the most vulnerable live and where health facilities are rudimentary.
Destroying public trust during a pandemic
Few things are going on as normal during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, political dysfunction in Lesotho continues, with negative ramifications for Basotho.