Jan 8, 20214 min
Updated: Jan 17, 2021
An article by Ekene Raphael Nwaokolo
On the 30th of January 2020, the WHO declared Covid-19 as a threat to global public health. What followed were prophecies from the media and experts in the Global North predicting the catastrophic implication of such a pandemic on the African continent (Marbot, 2020). Pointing at the inadequate health care system, poor hygiene, and people living with underlying diseases such as HIV, Africa appears to harbour all of the ingredients that aid the deadly potentials of Covid-19. This fear was expressed by Melinda Gates when she predicted that “the disease is going to bite hard on the continent (…) I see dead bodies in the streets of Africa” (Africa Check, 2020).
These projections never materialized due to the early response and aggressive lockdown measures adopted by most African countries like Nigeria, Kenya or Ghana (e.g. Nkansah, 2020; Ebenso & Otu, 2020). The effectiveness of such a response was praised by the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres during a virtual news briefing on the 3rd of April: “I was quite impressed to see, for instance, Nigeria putting in place and immediately establishing a hospital. And I saw difficulties in countries that are much more developed to do quickly the same” (Shobiye, 2020).
Despite all evidence pointing to Africa’s proactive response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Western media has continued to express their surprise in relation to the comparatively low rates of infection on the African continent. The BBC revealed this surprise via Twitter with the caption ‘’Coronavirus in Africa: Could poverty explain the mystery of low death rate?” (BBC News Africa, 2020). Similarly, some experts in the West came out with theories that revolve around naturally given conditions such as immunity or hot climate to explain the low rates of infection and mortality across Africa (e.g. Deutsche Welle, 2020; Marbot, 2020; Marsh & Alobo, 2020). The first hypothesis is built on the speculation about Blacks people’s immunity to Covid-19, a claim that became baseless in the face of demographics from the USA that revealed a higher infection and mortality rate among People of Colour (Marsh & Alobo, 2020). This, likewise, disproves the theory of ‘poverty’ being a “shield” for the deadliness of the virus as clearly evidenced in Boehme's article (2020) highlighting the infection difference among races and classes in the USA. Like the argument on Black immunity, the theories on climatic conditions deflated when Brazil, a country that shares similar climatic features with most African countries, displayed some of the highest infection rates. Another over-flogged narrative to downplay the relatively low Covid-19 infection rates in Africa is referring to limited testing capacities. Such an argument is at least questionable when we consider the fact that (medical) science relies on random sampling and therefore, we do not need to conduct tests on everybody in Africa to know the positivity rate of Covid-19 on the continent. The comparatively low age structure also contributes to this, as many young people often only have the disease asymptotically and therefore do not always get tested for Covid-19 (Otieno, 2020; Marsh & Alobo, 2020).
But why are we surprised about the relatively low effect of the Covid-19 pandemic on a continent that has the most recent experience with similar epidemics like Polio and Ebola (Ebenso & Otu, 2020)? Maybe experience is no longer the best teacher, or at least not when the student is deemed inferior and destitute. We may also want to question the bias behind the theories from the Global North that turn a blind eye to any proactive approaches adopted by African countries but prefer to link low Covid-19 rates across the continent to factors that have nothing to do with human intelligence and creativity. The Global North seems to continue to rely on the tired colonial stereotype that sees Africa as a bounded space inhabited by people who lack the innate ability to be innovative even in the face of a deadly virus like Covid-19. The problem with stereotypes is not that they are static perceptions we have about the ’Other’ but the fact that they are products of a single story and in most cases, these stories are ugly, one-dimensional tales that rob people of their dignity and humanness, instead reducing them to caricatures reflective of a narrative that supports our fear of anything ‘different’ to us.
References
Africa Check. (April 2020). Melinda Gates said she feared coronavirus in Africa would lead to dead being put out in street, as in Ecuador. Africa Check. https://africacheck.org/fbcheck/melinda-gates-said-she-feared-coronavirus-in-africa-would-lead-to-dead-being-put-out-in-street-as-in-ecuador/
BBC News Africa. (2020, September 3). Coronavirus in Africa: Could poverty explain mystery of low death rate? [Tweet]. Twitter. https://twitter.com/bbcworld/status/1301298251002503168?lang=de
Boehme, J. (2020). Covid-19 and racial differences in the United States - which racial groups are hit harder and why? https://raceandthepandemic.wixsite.com/home/post/covid-19-and-racial-differences-in-the-united-states-which-racial-groups-are-hit-harder-and-why
Deutsche Welle. (2020, September 14). COVID-19 in Africa: Milder-than-expected pandemic has experts puzzled. Deutsche Welle (dw). https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-in-africa-milder-than-expected-pandemic-has-experts-puzzled/a-54918467
Ebenso, B., & Otu, A. (2020). Can Nigeria contain the COVID-19 outbreak using lessons from recent epidemics? The Lancet Global Health, 8(6), e770. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30101-7
Marbot, O. (2020, April 5). Coronavirus: Unpacking the theories behind Africa’s low infection rate. The Africa Report. https://www.theafricareport.com/27470/coronavirus-unpacking-the-theories-behind-africas-low-infection-rate/
Marsh, K., & Alobo, M. (October 2020). COVID-19: examining theories for Africa's low death rates. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/covid-19-examining-theories-for-africas-low-death-rates-147393
Nkansah, M. A. (2020, June 4). [Case Study] Ghana's multifarious response to COVID-19: Through a citizen's lens. University of Science and Technology, Ghana. https://www.ingsa.org/covidtag/covid-19-commentary/asantewah-nkansah-ghana/
Otieno, D. (2020, September 7). Covid-19: Africa’s low death toll explained. Newsplex. https://nation.africa/kenya/newsplex/covid-19-africa-s-low-death-toll-explained-1919800
Shobiye, H. (2020, April 3). Nigeria’s response to coronavirus remarkable – UN chief.
Vanguard News. https://www.vanguardngr.com/2020/04/nigerias-response-to-coronavirus-remarkable-un-chief/