When the latest coronavirus exploded out of China and started spreading across the world, many observers immediately concluded that Africa was the largest and deadliest destination for the pandemic. But so far the continent has stunned these grim predictions. Few things were more predictable in retrospect.
For decades, the convention in western media coverage has been treating Africa with a casual disregard that plays its problem – claiming incorrectly, for example, that its war, unusually brutal according to the standards of today, are uniquely power-hungry or corrupt or that its politicians, whispering as ‘Big Men’ are.
If all that was wrong, it’s bad enough that too many of the press speak about Africa. There is more, however. Africa ‘s performance is severely under decorated. The flip side of this perpetual pessimism. Many publishers viewed the influx of democratization across the entire continent in the 1990s as a little beer — a secondary trend that never is as glamorous or exceptional as the recent war.
This century is a success for the continent’s strong economic growth compared with many parts of the world or the emergence, in numerous African countries, of an increasingly robust middle class.
Coverage of Africa on the big brush is typically very heavy. It describes the stuff as “across Africa” in a chronicle fashion, thus overcoming the apparent reticence of many editors to commit columns inches and stating that what is described by the reporter happens practically everywhere, not indifferent countries that are now too hard to recall. In reality, both democratization and economic growth were very nearly continental and yet were underplayed, as opposed to the majority of the “without Africa” tales.
This is because the reflexes of foreign media are closely associated with pessimism and gloom for all in Africa, even more than in other countries. This was clearly illustrated during the early weeks of the pandemic. It should be remembered that Western governments, too often patronized the Contains as unwilling and burdensome guards, share these mental activities.
For example, in late March a copy of a memo then circulating in the French Foreign Ministry warning that African states are “giving an overwhelming demonstration that they have no way of safeguarding their populations,” which was concerned that after previous failures by the governments, the pandemic would lead to the final stage of popular disavowal by Africa.
Something very odd happened according to the parameters of these kinds of daily perceptions. As everyone else except the White House agrees, in both cases of coronaviruses and deaths, the United States now leads the world and has shown the uncertainty, leniency and incapacity of governance which is routinely linked to Africa. Many European states, not least England and France, two of Africa ‘s greatest settlers, have also been affected by the COVID-19 much worse than their former settlements.
A variety of variables possibly contributed to this result, which for some time would not be known. In contrast to the other, wealthier areas of the world, Africa is separated from foreign air traffic. In contrast to Europe, North America, and even China, Africa’s demographic structure is strongly skewed to the young and obesity, a major risk factor. A warmer climate can play a role in suppressing transmission, but this is at best negligible, taking account of the recent rapid spread of the virus in a tropical country such as Brazil.
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It seems, provisionally, that it’s time to say: at least in its first major phase, Africa has avoided the worst pandemic. The World Health Organisation’s regional office, in the Republic of Congo, has already forecast that this year will see the infection of tens of millions of Africans — probably almost one in four of the more than one billion people of the continent — and up to 190 thousand Africans would die from COVID-19.
The virus, warned by the WHO also, will remain on the continent for a number of years unless vaccinations are widespread. The possibility of seeing the wealthy of the world putting them behind the queue after vaccination becomes available in African countries becomes real and rarely discussed. Overall, the WHO’s prediction would be a tragedy, to be sure, but its projected death rate would be small when considered against the continent’s population of 1.4 billion people.
If this holds out, many African countries should be included more prominently in world stories, where deaths and disease rates are kept low by competence in governance, innovation, and yes, probably some chance. Senegal, Ghana, South Africa and other areas, where COVID-19 looked once as if it were bursting and was seemingly put to a halt by effective public health initiatives and political leaders, could be applied to New Zealand and Vietnam and whole regions like East Europe.
Why is this successful response accountable? Countries across the West and Central Africa had extensive experience with the Ebola epidemics of the past few years which, coupled with their experience in handling infectious diseases such as malaria, meningitis and yellow fever, have made it much easier for them to start their responses to COVID-19 than many rich countries to understand the Ebola epidemics.
Hopefully, in African countries, we never see people dying in mass for lack of a fan and safety clothes, or even hospital beds. However, we have another suggestion to a media that treats the continent too much like buzzards, which is sitting on bars waiting for road killing. Also as large-scale coronaviral-related deaths are not yet here, there is practically no question that another epidemic is going to be: the effect of the global viral recession on African economies.
It is one of the great challenges facing humanity at present, though these issues rarely are addressed in the international press, to know how the continent can shift away from the overwhelming reliance on poorly capitalized small-holder farming in its vast countryside and lowly paid, informal jobs of its booming cities. Through paralyzing the rich world’s economies and making their increasingly stingy governments less charitable, the coronavirus will remind us all how interconnected we are thus exacerbating these problems.