Rwanda president Paul Kagame receives a COVID-19 vaccination at King Faisal hospital in Kigali, Rwanda, March 2021. Photo: Uruwiro Village/AFP

On 11 March, 2020, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) formally designated COVID-19 as a global pandemic. Citing “alarming levels of spread and severity”, he called on governments to take “urgent and aggressive action” to tackle the crisis. Most countries based their response on the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which allows the restriction of “certain individual rights during public emergencies that threaten the life of the nation to the extent that they are strictly required by the exigencies of the situation”.

This content is restricted

Add To Cart

Richard Goode is an economist with four decades of experience working on the political economy of development in Africa. His research interests include employment, inequality, industrial structure, problem solving for ecologically sustainable economic growth and the exercise of political power within social organisations.

Dr Anna Trapido is an anthropologist and a chef. She trained as an anthropologist at King’s College, Cambridge, completing her PhD in the department of community health at Wits University, Johannesburg. She qualified as a chef at the Prue Leith Chef’s Academy in Pretoria, and uses both disciplines in her work. She has won gold at the World Gourmand Cookbook Awards three times (for To the Banqueting House - African cuisine an Epic Journey, Hunger for Freedom – the story of food in the life of Nelson Mandela, and Eat Ting – lose weight, gain health, find yourself).