Tayo Oke
for the die-hard cynic who does not believe we have a listening government in this part of the world, note this economic perspective on the coronavirus from last week’s write-up: “The main area that government in African countries ought to direct the most attention is debt re-scheduling. If you have less revenue coming in, you are not selling as much, and you rely on borrowing from outside the continent, the gap for servicing the debt will widen and unless you start renegotiating the terms of repayment now, we are all heading for the rocks in the near future”, (Coronavirunomics: How the financial world is shaping up”, The PUNCH, Tuesday, March 31, 2020.) Two days later, on April 2, the headlines across the media in Nigeria and elsewhere read: “Africa’s finance ministers push for foreign debt relief”. Mere coincidence? And does it really matter? Yes, it matters in a representative democracy. Even if the ministers’ move was not directly attributable to this column, we should still applaud them for doing the right thing by acting in the greater public interest. We must encourage them to do more, hence this piece, again, dwelling on a similar theme. No apologies. Nothing is more desperate than the moment we live in right now in Africa.
The most common response to the spread of coronavirus in many parts of the world is to impose a lockdown of a particular area, town or city for a period of time. This, obviously, is with the view to containing the spread, identifying the victims and isolating them from the general population. When a city is on a lockdown, it usually means, no going out of one’s dwelling, staying indoors, hunkering down and keeping safe. This is what we have watched governments in Europe and America do to contain the virus. Without further thought, it is what we are copying in Africa, as countries after countries, states after states, regions after regions, and provinces after provinces contemplate and indeed, impose a series of lockdowns as well. This is generally good, but there are important snags too dangerous to overlook as Africans.
First, when you compel people to stay at home and not go out, it means, for citizens in Western countries, staying with a family of say, two, three, four or even five. Home also means, access to one’s front door, and a delineated space known as flat, apartment, maisonette, bungalow, semi-detached or fully detached dwelling. In a society where this is reality, it becomes reasonable to impose a lockdown and stay at home policy. However, in the African environment where huddling together in shanty and crammed accommodation is reality for more than 70% of the population, does it make similar sense? Many houses built for rent in urban areas are dormitory-like functional bungalows containing a row of rooms on either side (pejoratively referred to as face-me-I-face-you), and a narrow passage in-between. People often bring out their stoves to cook right in the passage and the hygiene facilities are usually at the barest minimum. Residents of these dwellings are usually happy to be out of the house and not having to return until the evening. When a lockdown creates a situation of a full house under the condition we have just described, it is asking for trouble. The likelihood of contagion increases exponentially. Furthermore, when government implores people to stay at home in Western countries, they know their people will have access to uninterrupted energy supply, refrigerator, fan, cooling and heating systems etc. When the same policy is imposed in Africa where there are no commensurate basic amenities for survival – many do not have access to electricity at all, and some for barely a couple of hours daily – this creates more problems than it solves. Living in isolation in Africa is a luxury only available to the elite (with sound-proof generators to boot). So, the question is, can the elite remain safe while the masses are exposed?
Another crude African reality is that, culturally, we live in ‘open’ societies much more so than in Western societies. While the mega superstore and digital transactions are the norms in the West, the street, and the open market are still the favourite shopping venues for the majority on the continent. The bare hand is used for handling virtually everything in the market, including eating most food. Given this, the most obvious item that should have been installed in every marketplace across the continent are water fountains with liquid soap right beside for people to routinely wash and dry their hands on the go. No need for swanky water fountains when a cheap plastic drum can be adapted for the same purpose. Let the local government flood the marketplace with dozens of such as they also employ and deploy dozens of stewards (armed with hand sanitisers) to help superintend their use. Simply copying and pasting measures adopted in one environment onto another, hook, line and sinker is not always the best. In this particular situation of coronavirus, it may even be counterproductive.
Furthermore, in terms of vaccine and drugs, while scientists in the West are hurtling to develop medication for the virus, Africans with their peculiar understanding, knowledge and closeness to mother earth, should also find the antidote from the trees, the leaves and the branches in the forest as their forefathers had done for a thousand years. Western medicine is a fait accompli for all, yes, but it does not always offer the only remedy. The local “traditional doctors” in Africa are unregulated, their work too shrouded in mysticism, and the practice not deemed ‘scientific’ enough for official recognition. They need help and a better regulatory regime to become productive and viable. This is a wake-up call.
No doubt, the largest group of people that would be affected than most by any spread of the virus in Africa is the prison population. It is often said that a measure of a country’s civilisation can be taken from how it treats its prisoners. Most African prisons were built during the colonial era to house the leaders of the nationalist movements across the continent. The same prisons then became residence for opposition leaders after independence. Nowadays, the prisons accommodate double, even triple the numbers they were originally designed for. The judicial system can be shambolic in a lot of places in Africa; suspects are routinely remanded in custody without trial for years. In the absence of a jury system, single trial judges often dispense justice based on circumstantial and shaky evidence. The prison population willy-nilly swells by the day, and “social distancing” is neither applicable nor practicable. Consequently, any spread of the virus onto this category of citizens would make them sitting ducks quite literally. We do not pray for there to be any spread on the scale witness in Italy, or the USA for example, but in case the unthinkable happens, it is advisable for the judicial system to draw up a contingency plan well in advance.
Prisoners should be ranked by way of priority beginning with the release of non-violent offenders, people close to the end of their prison term, those remanded with no charge for a lengthy period of time, the list goes on. The aim should be to half the prison population overnight should that become necessary, but do so in a pre-determined, systematic manner. This is not only the time to start thinking the unthinkable, but also the time to start pondering the imponderable, and conceiving the inconceivable. With only 7,064 confirmed cases across the continent and 290 confirmed deaths, perhaps more than simply locking down Africa, our priority ought to be minimising the casualties from this deadly virus which, (we hope), may yet leave the continent relatively unscathed.
