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.
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly disrupted peace processes in Africa. In South Sudan, COVID-19 has not only presented a risk to the health and socio-economic circumstances of the citizenry but has also put a strain on the 2018 Revitalized Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (R-ARCSS). More efforts will have to be made to minimise the impact of the pandemic on the political processes around power-sharing and security reforms, as well as the preparation for elections at the end of the transitional period.
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.
COVID-19 has been quite a challenge to the world. It has made us question so many of the things we took for granted. It has changed the outlook and stereotypes we had about the world and humanity. For example, nobody imagined that with the current developments in technology and medicine, a pandemic could bring the world to its knees like this one has. COVID-19 has also questioned the impression we in Africa had that pandemics kill so many of our people, because of our lack of resources in terms of knowledge and facilities. This pandemic has shown that the world realities are more complex than we thought we know and we have mastered.
The 2020 United States of America (USA) elections were held during a deadly COVID-19 pandemic wherein many countries’ economies declined, and civil and human rights were suspended. Globally, the pandemic outbreak seriously questioned the traditions and norms, even in elections management. Many countries’ elections, by-elections, referenda, and all civic matters like meetings in villages, towns or cities were suspended indefinitely following subsequent lockdowns. Similarly, conflict resolution efforts, especially in Africa, were also adversely affected as security was tightened increasingly through lockdowns, and curtailment of inter-state travel.
What will governance and public service be like post COVID-19? We will not and should not revert to “business as usual” after this crisis. We should draw on the maxim from the United Nations (UN) 2030 agenda – the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – to “leave no one behind” in achieving a more sustainable, equitable, inclusive and secure/peaceful future. We should start a dialogue about the current and future implications of COVID-19 on governance and public service.
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.
During events to commemorate 75 years since the formation of the United Nations (UN), Secretary-General António Guterres repeated his earlier call to world leaders to achieve a global ceasefire. In this call, the UNSG correctly stated that it is “time for a stepped-up push for peace to achieve a global ceasefire”, because we are all confronted by “one common enemy: COVID-19”. Indeed, in a year that is so significant in many ways, there has never been such a crucial moment in our lifetime to build, consolidate and sustain peace.
In a year dedicated to Silencing the Guns (STG) in Africa, the world has been plunged into a global pandemic that risks reversing the gains made on the peace and security front on the continent, either by creating new forms of conflicts or exacerbating already-existing ones. While the African Union (AU) and regional economic communities (RECs) – such as the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) – concurrently seek to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic while attending to rising conflicts, this piece spotlights the agency of youth in the region and why it matters in emerging conflicts.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought multiple challenges to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) as a region and to its member states. Some of these challenges include the unavailability of medicines and health equipment, food insecurity, gender-based violence and a negative impact on the economies of member states. Whilst the pandemic has exacerbated existing challenges, the region has continued to defy some of the early forecasting that Africa would be hardest hit by COVID-19, following what happened in developed countries with better-resourced health systems. The region has thus shown a greater degree of resilience, demonstrating that lessons are not only learnt from developed countries.
Absent from the dominant narrative about the societal impact of COVID-19 has been the plight of indigenous peoples, who tend to disproportionately experience higher rates of infection, particularly women when confronted with health crises emerging from modern pandemics. This is linked to cultural factors, as well as weakened access to healthcare and linguistic differences that contribute to higher rates of infection.
This year we celebrate two defining milestones in the Women, Peace and Security Agenda, namely the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the 20th anniversary of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 of 2000. 2020 will also be remembered for the COVID-19 pandemic. How the pandemic will redefine the role of women in the peace and security context is still not clear. However, it seems COVID-19 has not been able to disrupt the fortitude and commitment of civil society in Africa. It was civil society that realised UNSCR 1325 in 2000 and it will be civil society that safeguard and implement UNSCR 1325 in 2020 and beyond, through their activism, advocacy, capacity building and conflict resolution practice.
Since the United Nations (UN) adopted UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 on Women, Peace and Security (WPS) in 2000 there have been significant shifts in discourse and practice on gender, peace and security. Twenty years later, conscious of the original limitations that shaped UNSCR 1325 in the first place, we must account for these shifts whilst striving to do much more than simply sustain the agenda.
On 31 October 2000, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) passed the landmark resolution 1325. The resolution represents a victory for women as a global recognition of their legitimate right to protection and participation in peace processes at all levels, and an acknowledgement of the world’s responsibility to prevent and address gender based violence.
Women’s meaningful participation in peace processes is a cornerstone of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on the Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda. As we commemorate the 20th anniversary of this landmark Resolution for WPS, we the Co-Chairs of the Network of African Women in Conflict Prevention and Mediation (FemWise-Africa) want to take the opportunity to highlight the work of Africa’s conflict prevention and mediation networks and their determination to ensure that the next twenty years for WPS will not be the same.
COVID-19 has created a global uncertainty: everyone everywhere is thinking about the possibilities of premature death. This uncertainty is upon all of us, but the African continent in particular, and the Global South in general, have been facing this uncertainty and this possibility of premature death for a very long time. Because of that, we will need to shift the geography of knowledge and even the biography of knowledge and begin to think about what is it that the Global South can offer us in dealing with this pandemic. What can we gain from indigenous African knowledges and epistemologies of the Global South? This argument arises because the Global South in general, and the African continent in particular, have some of the richest histories and experiences of dealing with epidemics and pandemics.