This archive report was first published on 7 May 2020.
Covid-19: A Threat to Africa's Most Vulnerable ¶
As the world grapples with the Covid-19 pandemic, Africa is bracing itself for the worst. The continent's fragile healthcare systems, coupled with deep-seated socio-economic disparities, make it a ticking time bomb for the disease.
According to health experts, the racial disparities in infection and death rates in the US are a stark reminder of the impact of structural racism on healthcare outcomes. In Africa, the situation is no different, with socio-economic disparities having become increasingly acute over the past 40 years of market liberalisation.
The opening up of African markets to globalisation has seen major foreign corporations, along with their local facilitators and parasitic capitalists, move much of Africa's wealth away from Africans and into the hands of foreign corporations and local elites. This has left a gaping hole in the basic services that would have guarded Africans against health emergencies.
As a result, gross inequality in Africa's healthcare systems has become a stark reality. Although coronavirus does not discriminate on the basis of class and political power, it will still be the most politically and economically marginalised who will suffer the most should it start spreading its wings in Africa.
With the infection rates gathering momentum in Africa, it is even more worrying to picture poor, post-war, and politically fragile countries like Sudan, Congo, South Sudan, or Central African Republic. Overcrowded and unplanned urban settlements, crumbly hygiene, subsistence industries, poor rural areas without access to healthcare, and millions of refugees and internally displaced persons make Africa seem like a continent welcoming Covid-19.
Looking to the future, the question now is how much longer can Africans go on ignoring or learning to live with these disparities and still expect their countries' health systems to come to their rescue when emergencies emerge? Do we adhere to unworkable isolation measures or can we use the inequities to which Covid-19 has exposed to stand together for equitable systems?
The author is a professor of anthropology at Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.
