Theme: Livelihood Insecurity & Economic Impact

The impact of COVID-19 on the citizens of the Lake Chad Basin region – and, in particular, the BAY states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe – has been severe. The pandemic came at a time when the states were starting to recover from the devastating effect of the Boko Haram insurgency. COVID-19 has affected the post-insurgency recovery, livelihood support and infrastructure development activities undertaken by the respective state governments, partners and donors in the region.

While Africa has demonstrated a degree of resilience against the COVID-19 pandemic to date, this progress could be affected by a potential second wave of infections. If such a second wave is even worse than the first, which seems to be the pattern in Europe, it will have serious implications for Africa’s health systems, as well as its economy and the growing debt crisis. This situation presents additional challenges for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), which has thus far played a leading role in coordinating prevention measures and promoting a coherent African response.

In the past few days, the dominant debates on COVID-19 have included the development of a vaccine and making it available to a desperate 7.2 billion people worldwide, against the background of an alarming 54.8 million cases of infection and 1.4 million deaths. Three potential vaccines, with promising clinical trial results, have been announced in the last few weeks in the United States (US), Europe and Russia, leaving Africa isolated and marginalised as the developed world engages in highly competitive discoveries.

Some of the key words in the unprecedented era of the COVID-19 pandemic are disruption, damage, change, adaptation, recovery and resilience. Against the background of these words, what is clear is that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the status quo as we knew it. In this change, the pandemic has also challenged the interdependence of economies, leading to the disruption of global and regional supply chains. Some of the countries’ early responses to the pandemic were increased protectionist measures, especially with regard to the supply of personal protective equipment.

It is now 245 days since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared that COVID-19 constitutes a global pandemic, on 11 March 2020. Many commentators predicted that Africa, with its high levels of poverty, fragile institutions and weak public health systems, would be particularly badly affected by COVID-19, and that it could result in the collapse of social and political stability. Despite rising numbers of infections and severe economic hardships, Africa’s public health systems have not been overwhelmed, people in need have found support and the social order has not disintegrated.

On 6 May 2020, the African Union (AU) Office of the Youth Envoy, with the support of the Commissioner of Social Affairs and the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), established the African Youth Front on Coronavirus. This is an AU framework to engage youth in decision-making, to contribute youth-led solutions and co-lead Africa’s response to the pandemic, as well as to support the implementation of the African Continental Strategic Plan for COVID-19 pandemic.

About one million people on the African continent are now infected by COVID-19. And while we are still pondering how to rescue lives and assess the damage of the health crisis, two more ‘pandemics’ are still to come: the socio-economic spillover of the health pandemic, and its political consequences. With that comes the massive risk to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of creating peace, justice and inclusion (SDG16).

In 1956, my generation of women organised and mobilised 20 000 women across South Africa to march on the Union Buildings in Pretoria. Our protest action was against the oppressive system of apartheid. Today, as we commemorate the importance of the 1956 Women’s March in South Africa’s history, I want to assert that the struggles we faced then are not dissimilar to what today’s generation of women is being called upon to respond to.

COVID-19 has eroded some of the peacebuilding gains made in Liberia over the last decade and a half. The threat posed by COVID-19 to sustaining peace in Liberia has increased the need to strengthen regional and sub-regional collaboration and international cooperation to contain and mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

The measures taken by African governments to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic may have saved thousands of lives, but they have also left many struggling socially and economically in one way or another. In this turbulent moment, we need solidarity, inspired by ubuntu, so that we can be fully human together amidst COVID-19 for a common purpose of social protection, human dignity and economic stability.