DI SPATC H E S| AF RICA'S COVID CONTAINMENT
COVID-19 hits Africa
The continent has so far avoided fatal decimation, but the number of cases is starting to grow and national economies are shrinking. It's not over yet, but consumate leadership has helped curb COVID.
Robert I. Rotberg
D
espite a woeful medical infrastructure, widespread disease, food insecurit y and crowded urban slums, much of Africa — compared to the Americas and Europe — has largely been spared a wrenching publichealth disturbance from this year’s raging coronavirus. So far. At the same time, economies throughout the continent have 56
tanked and Africans have been thrown back into poverty. Has the pestilence been biding its time and gathering strength to burst out in months to come? Is Africa’s predominantly youthful population — the median age is 19 — a protective factor? Has Africa’s usually warm and humid weather in and around the tropics slowed the virus’s spread? Or did the fact that the virus first proliferated in China, Europe and the Americas offer African political leaders valuable lessons, allowing them to lock down their own nations in a timely and preventive manner? Or have Africans finally just drawn lucky straws? Whatever the cause, Africa is avoiding a fatal decimation only simultaneously to suffer — possibly because of a prudent management of the COVID-19 pandemic
— a massive contraction of its 54 national economies, large reductions in GDPs per capita and the kinds of employment losses and company collapses that plunge Africans (and well-meaning outsiders) into the depths of acute despair and worry. Just when Africa was finally entering a zone of 21st-Century prosperity, the coronavirus has wiped out any possibility of the sustained economic growth on which many Africans were counting. The IMF estimates that sub-Saharan Africa’s economy will shrink by 3.2 per cent in 2020, with real per capita GDP contracting by more than 5 per cent. Growth will collapse in many countries, especially those dependent on tourism and resources, such as oil and mineral exporters. Growth in more diversified non-resourcebased economies is expected to come to a SUMMER 2020 | JUL-AUG-SEPT
MONUSCO
A woman from the United Nations' stabilization mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo washes her hands as part of measures to slow the spread of COVID-19 in the country. Africa has fared better than other continents in stemming the pandemic, partly due to strict lockdown measures.
