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.
Academic and research institutions find themselves tasked with learning how to adapt in real-time amid the COVID-19 pandemic that is significantly disrupting the global higher education sector. Most of the focus so far has been on western countries, leaving major gaps in our understanding of how Africa’s own centres of knowledge production are faring in this crisis. We know that the state of research and higher education on the continent has long been a cause for concern even before the COVID-19 crisis, and early indications show that the virus is exacerbating these vulnerabilities.
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption and uncertainty to universities in Africa. It forced the higher education sector in Africa to make changes that were long overdue by magnifying existing challenges to students’ ability to engage with their learning. COVID-19 has forced universities to recognize that the future is now. For years, many universities and governments have been talking about the need for online education or blended learning models in which at least part of a student’s education is captured online through a learning management system. However, many schools have been slow to respond to this call. COVID-19 has forced universities to either adapt quickly to an online delivery system or to stall and risk obsolescence.
We watched in disbelief as COVID-19 emerged in China and ravaged parts of Europe and the Americas. Being a deeply religious country, we prayed and hoped that we would be insulated after all, we were miraculously spared the 2014 Ebola crisis that hit a number of West African countries including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea and Nigeria. Our hopes did not last beyond March 12, 2020, when our first two imported cases were reported. The third case recorded on March 14, 2020 was a University of Ghana student who had returned from a trip abroad. That hit home painfully, and we quickly had to act.
When COVID-19 seized global attention, Somalia, a country in the Horn of Africa with a history of conflict and instability, was already facing a critical year in 2020. The methodology of the upcoming federal elections in early 2021 was in dispute amid a tug of war between the Federal Government of Somalia and Federal Member States. The spectre of renewed conflict as a result of political impasse loomed. The early forecast for Somalia was bleak and the possibility of a major humanitarian crisis was projected. Compounding the political and security issues plaguing Somalia’s development, environmental disasters such as locusts and floods were impacting food security and causing displacement. Moreover, Somalia’s health infrastructure ranks second last in the Global Health Security Index. With the nascent recovery of Somalia relying on significant and sustained support for governance and security from the international community, the arrival of COVID-19 was another crisis with hitherto unforeseen impact.
Like so many others around the world at the start of this year, I and members of the UN family watched with alarm the growing spread and impact of COVID-19 in Somalia and elsewhere in the world. Our biggest worry was the potential for the pandemic to spiral out of control. Somalia is rebuilding after three decades of conflict, protracted crises and repeated humanitarian emergencies. Continued insecurity makes parts of the country inaccessible to humanitarian workers.
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was first reported in the Horn of Africa region in early March 2020. At first, the number of cases seemed low compared to other regions, both on the continent and around the globe; however, these figures did increase steadily. Six months into the pandemic, it is encouraging to note the downward trend in the number of cases and deaths over the past few weeks. Thus far, more than 150,000 cases have been reported in the Horn of Africa; however, testing capacity is still quite limited, making the numbers a poor indicator of the actual infection rate. As pointed out by Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), both the drastic preventative measures applied across Africa by governments in the first months of the pandemic and the continent’s young population certainly played a significant role in limiting the devastating impact of the virus, as seen elsewhere. Regional and international efforts have also helped in hampering the immediate impact of the pandemic, but a sustained and coordinated effort is needed to reduce the longer-term effects of COVID-19, particularly the effects on public health and the economy.
The escalation of the COVID-19 pandemic across Africa, which began in March 2020, has gravely affected how the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) undertakes its operations. Given the multifaceted mandates of AMISOM, which include undertaking activities requiring close-quarters congregations and contact with Somali stakeholders, a balance has to be struck on how to continually discharge these mandates without putting the lives of its personnel and that of the Somali community in jeopardy.
The African Union (AU) and European Union (EU) were scheduled to adopt a new strategic partnership agreement at an AU–EU summit in October, but it had to be postponed due to COVID-19 risks and related delays. This may be a blessing in disguise, as it gives the negotiators more time to adapt the relationship to COVID-19 and to craft an agreement that expands the focus, scope and scale of African–European relations for the next two decades.