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Once again, Africa and its allies protest against the unequal distribution of the world’s resources. This time the subject is vaccines.
The West and the East are accused of failing to Africa in the distribution of vaccines.
As it stands, Africa, according to AU President President Ramaphosa, is expected to receive, through the WHO Covax Center and the AU’s Covid Working Group, 1 billion doses of Covid vaccine by the end of 2021. These doses would not be sufficient for the 1.3 billion Africans – even taking into account the large population of young people.
Even before vaccines, there were disparities around this pandemic.
Initially, Africa seemed relatively safe from the worst of this pandemic. Indeed, some have started to praise Africa for its response and to attribute our so-called public health strengths, in part based on lessons learned from Ebola and other outbreaks. In truth, the slight imprint of illness had little to do with what we did. The low burden of disease is more likely to be due to our young population, lack of health infrastructure, and failed tests.
The lack of a test was particularly glaring.
By the end of January, Africa had done about 30 million tests for our 1.3 billion citizens while the United States had done 385 million tests for its 300 million citizens! And some African countries have tested goats and fruits while denying the very existence of Covid until the death of some leaders!
It turned out that we had too few fans.
A New York Times report last year, as the pandemic escalated, said sub-Saharan Africa had only around 2,000 ventilators outside of South Africa, which also had 2,000. Indeed, ten African countries did not! As one wag put it, many African governments had more SUVs than fans.
Then we became complacent.
We have started to be lax on quarantines and public gatherings, including campaign rallies and demonstrations and large religious gatherings. The results were predictable.
In addition to the inequities of tests, ventilators, and vaccines, there are other inequities that we must face.
This pandemic has exposed not only inequalities in tests, ventilators and vaccines, but also in leadership, media effectiveness and civil society activism.
Our governments could have done better with testing and masking, contact tracing and isolation. While some of these resources required far more imagination and willpower than resources. And while others researched, planned, and pre-ordered vaccines, we should have been in the markets, looking to pre-order instead of waiting for documents. The argument that the leaders of the US, EU, Russia and China should have thought about Africa while researching and procuring vaccines for their populations, evokes unhappy echoes of paternalism .
While the American and European media aggressively questioned the political choices of their governments, our media, for the most part, licked whatever governments chose to come up with. They have covered political rallies without questioning their wisdom in light of the pandemic.
And our civil society groups have done little to demand more action.
Finally, if this is a global pandemic in a global village and the world needs to work together, we can and must do more for ourselves. A man who relies on his in-laws to care for his wife and children shouldn’t be surprised that they don’t give him the full respect he deserves.
The essence of “Africa beyond aid” is the will to do more for ourselves.
May God bless Africa.
Arthur Kobina Kennedy, MD.
(February 8, 2021)
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