ISSUE 59
Editorial: Post-covid and a brave new world
This editorial is written from Johannesburg as the third wave of coronavirus infections subsides – even while health authorities and government are warning citizens to brace for a fourth, predicted to hit the country in November/ December this year. This scenario is not unique to the southern tip of Africa; it is a global reality. The fact is that in the latter part of 2021 a totally post-COVID world seems very far away, even in the Global North with its vastly greater resources to combat the...
Africa and vaccine economics
Africa’s fortunes in a post-COVID world will depend on how it navigates the critical questions of vaccine economics – vaccine diplomacy and regional integration. As the continent slowly recovers from the pandemic, it now needs to navigate a trifecta of new challenges – namely, debt, disease...
African authoritarianism: COVID rules should be regularly reviewed, not normalised
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...
Africa and vaccine economics
Africa’s fortunes in a post-COVID world will depend on how it navigates the critical questions of vaccine economics – vaccine diplomacy and regional integration. As the continent slowly recovers from the pandemic, it now needs to navigate a...
African authoritarianism: COVID rules should be regularly reviewed, not normalised
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...
Video feature
Africa’s policies must leverage pandemic-created opportunities
Two meetings of African leaders in May and July on the region’s post-pandemic economic recovery strategies were not short on big...
After COVID it’s time for Africa’s green revolution
The continent is looking to put the green agenda at the heart of its COVID-19 economic recovery, with the proposal of the African Green Stimulus...
Crunch time for Africa’s health systems
In November 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa convened the Fifth Health Sector Directors’ Meeting across...
Regional integration a must in post-COVID Africa
Regional integration helps countries overcome divisions that impede the flow of goods, services, capital, people and ideas. The World Bank has...
Africa is tough for small business but COVID-19 has created opportunities too
Africa is a tough place for small businesses, given its high-cost operating environments, onerous compliance issues and lack of support where it...
Africa’s dual catastrophe of COVID-19 and water and food insecurity
Food and water insecurity have saddled Africa with a risk tantamount to a pandemic, but the COVID-19 shock has made the threat even more and...
Africa’s policies must leverage pandemic-created opportunities
Two meetings of African leaders in May and July on the region’s post-pandemic economic recovery strategies were not short on big...
After COVID it’s time for Africa’s green revolution
The continent is looking to put the green agenda at the heart of its COVID-19 economic recovery, with the proposal of the African Green Stimulus...
Crunch time for Africa’s health systems
In November 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Africa convened the Fifth Health Sector Directors’ Meeting across...
Regional integration a must in post-COVID Africa
Regional integration helps countries overcome divisions that impede the flow of goods, services, capital, people and ideas. The World Bank has...
Africa’s informal traders adapt to hostile COVID environment
By the beginning of July 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had gripped the world, shutting down much of what had previously been taken for granted. Perhaps more significantly, it had laid a deep sense of trepidation on the world. On the fifth of the month, police raided the Jambanja, Unit L, market in the town of Chitungwiza in Zimbabwe. This had become commonplace: the authorities had instituted lockdown measures that severely restricted activity, and informal traders had been blamed for spreading the disease. The vendors attempted to salvage their stock and evade arrest, but the police action was especially aggressive. Boarding his vehicle, vendor Samson Chamunorwa Zharare suffered a bullet wound to his leg. He was dumped at a hospital, where the leg was nearly amputated....
The pandemic has boosted Africa’s digital transformation
Africa's opportunity to transform itself into a "cyber-continent", bypassing capital-intensive legacy infrastructure and leaping straight into the fourth industrial revolution, has been...
Africa’s high youth unemployment a security threat post COVID
The youth make up 75% of sub-Saharan Africa’s total population. Even at a broader level, almost 200 million people aged between 15 and 24 live in Africa. It has the youngest population in the...
How wildlife trafficking networks got around COVID-19 restrictions
When COVID-19 first broke out, there was great hope that what was a catastrophe for humans would be a blessing for wild animals. This hope rested on early theories that the novel coronavirus...
COVID job losses force East Africans back to their rural homes
It is a hive of activity on Enock Musembe’s farm, which is part of his homestead on the outskirts of Busia town in western Kenya. Immersed in his chores, Musembe appears unbothered by the...
Displaced in Nigeria: Surviving COVID through prayers, miracles
Eight-year-old Kelu was ill for most of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown in 2020. Her family relocated to the Malaysia Gardens Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp in Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, in 2016. They had fled Boko Haram attacks in...
African tourism – lessons from COVID-19
Imagine the ideal tourist destination: a magnet for people from all over the world, safe, full of beautiful natural sites, with urban delights such as music concerts and theatres, friendly locals, and perhaps even opportunities for business-minded individuals....
Africa: COVID stories from the trenches
Pushed to the limit, Friday Ochieng' fixed his eyes to the ceiling of his home. He felt like crying but he could not; in his Luo culture, it is taboo for a grownup man to weep. A month earlier, the father of five had buried his wife after she lost a decade-long...
BOOK REVIEWS
Shaping Africa’s Post-Covid Recovery
Book Review Shaping Africa's Post-Covid Recovery Edited by Rabah Arezki, Simeon Djankov and Ugo Panizza Published by Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2021 With most of the world still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, different regions face unique challenges to overcome, to ensure adequate health and economic outcomes. Undoubtedly, the pandemic has added urgency to developmental plans for the health, education, and infrastructure of most developing nations.Shaping Africa’s Post-Covid Recovery brings together some of the leading economists conducting research on Africa to evaluate the impact of COVID-19 on the continent’s economies, and to assess future policy implications. Several options are proposed to address the ongoing economic difficulties, for instance, access to international financing, debt restructuring and the suspension of patents due to the mutation of the virus. Except for some flashpoints in northern and...
Shaping Africa’s Post-Covid Recovery
Book Review Shaping Africa's Post-Covid Recovery Edited by Rabah Arezki, Simeon Djankov and Ugo Panizza Published by Centre for Economic Policy Research, 2021 With most of the world still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic, different regions face unique...
Outbreaks, epidemics and the health of Africa
Book review Epidemics and the Health of African Nations published by the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection (MISTRA) 2019 and edited by Zamanzima Mazibuko Epidemics and the Health of African Nations explores Africa’s vulnerability to diseases and ably...
Buried deep within our hearts and never forgotten
Book review Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Viviana Mazza; published by Harper Collins 2018 Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree is the heartbreaking account of a true- life event that happened in the small north-eastern Nigerian town of Chibok....
National Liberation Movements as Government in Africa
Book Review National Liberation Movements as Government in Africa Edited by Redie Bereketeab Routledge, 2018, Oxford Liberation movements begin as war machines animated by the desire for justice and, if successful, end up as governments clinging on to power. They...
Book review
The Political Economy of Energy in Sub-Saharan Africa Edited by Andrew Emmanuel Okem and Lucky E Asuelime. Routledge, London and New York; 2018 In pre-industrial society, one used wood and fire for heat and light, gathering wood from the environment on a more or less...
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