 Everyone for joining us this afternoon. My name is Awina O'Keech, and I'm the chair for the Center for Gender Studies here at SOAS at the School of Oriental and African Studies. This event, which is titled COVID-19, An Opportunity for Structural Transformation with a Focus on Africa, is being hosted in partnership with the Center for African Studies here at SOAS. I am very, very pleased to have with us a panel of friends, colleagues, and comrades, if you will, that I have worked with previously and people who I currently work with at the university where I teach, who are going to be having this conversation collectively with us. I will begin by introducing them and then talk to you about the structure of the conversation that we will have. We have with us Brian Kagoro, who is talking to us right now from Johannesburg, who is the programs director of the African Regional Office of the Open Societies Foundation. We also have with us, Gordon Murunga, who's talking to us now from Nairobi, Kenya, who is the executive secretary of the Council for Social Science Research, which is also known as Codestria, based in Dakar, Senegal. Codestria is headquartered in Dakar, Senegal. We have with us Eva Joyce-Winn, who is the programs and global engagement director for Action Aid International. We have Lucia Kula, who is a doctoral researcher with the School of Law at the SOAS, and Seraphine Kamdan, who teaches at the Africa section of the Department of Languages, Cultures, and Linguistics. As I mentioned at the beginning, this is a conversation of COVID-19 in Africa with a key question, does this present an opportunity for structural transformation in Africa? We have framed this panel, though, around a central question. And the central question that we are focusing on emphasizes the role of leadership, the nature of governance, and social capital in coalescing citizens around the response mechanisms to COVID-19 in Africa. Because this is a virtual event that we are live streaming at the moment and also recording, I would like to ask that if you're not a member of the panel, please mute your video, as well as your microphone. Later on in the conversation, we will have an opportunity for you to engage directly with the panelists. So if you have any questions, please make a note of those, and we shall turn to them 45 or 50 minutes into the conversation. Now to start us off, I'm going to ask each of the panelists to reflect a little bit on the first question, which is really around what are the ongoing responses telling us about the current situation or the current condition of our continent. And I want to begin with you, Brian, if you could offer us a continental overview. What are you observing when you assess, analyze the ways in which different African governments have responded to the challenge of COVID-19 in Africa? Thank you, Armino. When you look across the continent, there have been five strands of response. The first and most instinctive is the cut and paste response that what governments have tended to do is just copy and paste what they so happen in Wuhan, in Italy, in the US, the UK, and the US. The second and related to that first has been the militarized biomedical response. So most of our governments treating this as a war, deploying the military to enforce regulations that have been made. And of course, the point to be made later on on how these regulations sometimes are totally divorced from the context. So if you have informal settlements, you are asking people, wash your hands regularly, sanitize, socially distance in spaces that this is not possible. The third response has been an attempt to blend science and politics, but with politics still dominating. So if you look at the responses in Rwanda, the responses in South Africa, some of the responses in Uganda, you saw similar responses in Egypt and elsewhere that you have technical experts who are giving advice on the science, but the political class is still determining what happens. And the last response is the Guffuli type response, where it's all politics, or mostly politics, and very little deference to science. So the political imperatives, and in between, of course, is a spectra of responses where the dominant economic interests have driven both choices with respect to when do you lock down a country, when do you ban travel, when do you limit particular type of activities, and when do you reopen? Because we are seeing relaxations in Rwanda, in Ghana, and elsewhere. These are driven largely by economic interests. What has not happened across the continent? We have not seen any response that's driven by the request, the demand, and the interest of ordinary people. We have not seen in the design any such requests. There's been three outstanding features of this continental response, and let me end with that. The first one is that if you look at the frontline health workers that we're always talking about, in any of our countries, we're talking about nurses, we're talking about orderlies, we're talking about almost 87% of these are women. If you look at the community caregivers, mostly women. Now what's happened is in the national task forces, very few have a critical mass of women, and very few of the national responses have consulted women. Although in the West, most of the people dying elderly, what the pandemic has done on the continent is literally also affected young people in a very significant way. There's not been any significant involvement of young people in any of those responses. And the third is the informal sector and the rural sector. So you get the sense that our governments have no reliable data or statistics on the informal sector and on the rural sector. So all the responses, be they economic or biomedical or military, have tended to focus on what is so-called formal sector. So that means the invisibleization of the majority of the people in the response and their absence in the design, in the implementation, except as recipients of state terror, and sometimes the most ridiculous prescriptions by government means that we are going to have problems in enforcing this should we have to go more than two months. Thank you, Brian. Lissia, what are your observations of Angola? I think I have to agree with Ryan. A lot of the implementations on policy trying to contain COVID-19 in Angola specifically has been looking at how to ascertain the spread within the capital. A lot of the criticism that Angolan government has received is how has this approach been, how has this approach needed to be widespread to the more rural areas outside of the capital of Lwanda. But also looking at restriction of movement of people, specifically those in the informal sector, and not implementing any kind of relief when it comes to the economic sense. So as we mentioned, most of the front workers that we have in the continent are predominantly women. But in Angola, the implementation of these workers, ASCII workers in the battle against COVID-19, means that also they're not allowed to live with their family. This is a government implemented mandate. So those who are working in hospitals are not allowed to live in the same household. But this means that they're leaving a lot of families disproportionately affected not only by the the the threat of the disease spreading, but also the economic side of it. So how are we able to not only cope with trying to maintain the spread, but also coping with the financial aspect that COVID-19 has introduced in the continent? We don't have the same implementations of economic relief as we're seeing in the West or even in Asian countries. So how are we making sure that this doesn't have a longer standing effect within the already very poorest African economic system that we have, specifically in Angola economy that is very reliant on oil, which has been massively affected. And the implementation of trying to get funding to support COVID-19 relief has only meant that one loans for countries such as Angola has been very difficult again. They've have been degraded in the economic scale. So that means that it's very important for us as not only when we're looking at as research, just looking at how Africa is dealing. I think the countries are dealing with COVID-19 as a relief effort, but also looking how we're looking at the majority of regular everyday people and how it affects them, which is what a lot of the governments are forgetting. We're looking at copy pasting policies and implementations that not necessarily will work within the context of countries such as Angola or even South Africa. Thank you. Ej, when COVID-19 sort of escalated in the UK, I spoke to a student of mine from Rwanda and I asked how her family was and her immediate response was, you know, we are fine. We trust the government. We know this is a government that is very good at dealing with crisis. People are not worried in Rwanda. Would you argue this is the case in Zimbabwe? Oh, fortunately it is for the Rwandese. Thanks very much. And largely agreeing with Brian and you see us points, but I will answer your question first. You know, that's the biggest challenge that we have in Zimbabwe. You know, people do not trust the ruling party, government, which is the same thing. People do not trust the statistics that are being put out. And one often hears, you know, in the corridors, people say for every, they say they are four people. You should always multiply that by 10. And this doesn't come out of a vacuum. This is a government that has been known to hide information. The population is largely dependent on one public broadcaster, which is ZPC, which is state-owned. And therefore information is tightly controlled. You know, the one big newspapers again, you know, largely state-controlled, with the Herald, the Chronicle, Manika Post, a few independent ones. So largely people will then depend, I would say, on social media, which is where the conversation is happening. But within that already you see, you know, that the large majority of the population is excluded. If you take into account that, you know, most people do not have access to the internet and of course to social media, but also, you know, as we speak, literally yesterday, one of our biggest service providers has just tripled the cost of data, literally, you know, overnight. But I also want to, you know, paint a picture of, you know, what was the, in medical terms, they would say the pre-existing conditions, right, on which COVID comes into play in the case of Zimbabwe, right? So one is going back to the issue of trust in the state. I would say the state wasted a lot of time in the early days because this was a slow onset crisis, you know, as we would say in humanitarian circles. We saw it coming. We had two whole months to prepare. I think a lot of time was wasted while people were busy watching aeroplanes and seeing, you know, where was the travel coming from and, you know, who were the likely vectors where the Chinese coming in or the Europeans coming in. So in terms of messaging, I think government is now on the back foot trying to manage, you know, the information that's out there or rather the misinformation where people believe that this is something coming in from the outside. So there's a lot of focus on, you know, who's coming in, how do we manage them rather than looking at communities? As Brian was saying, looking at how are people living, you know, what are the living conditions that will, in the end, have an impact on the rate of spread, you know, when you look at that. I think secondly, one of the big, you know, pre-existing conditions is that we must not forget that we still have a large percentage of people in Zimbabwe still living with HIV and AIDS. The adult prevalence rate in Zimbabwe is 12.5%. So, you know, again, in this context, you know, you have a particular problem and I want to link that with the existing state of, you know, public health. Our public health sector was literally on its knees thanks to many years of lack of investment, but also, you know, the role of the IFIs and the impact of structural adjustment programs which Zimbabwe went through in the 1990s and those are still with us. You know, regardless of the fact that Zimbabwe is not exactly getting, you know, any support from the IFIs in this moment. So HIV AIDS is still with us. I think the other issue that's with us again on which COVID comes is the food crisis. You know, Zimbabwe, like most of Southern Africa is heavily impacted by climate change. We already saw the impact of that. Cyclone died most recently, but over many years of drought, failing, you know, rain-fed agriculture. And right now in Zimbabwe, almost 7 million people are in a food aid, right? And then you have the lockdowns, you know, as what Brian was describing, where literally overnight government then says, you know, everything is shut down, including the informal sector, and yet those are the, you know, channels for people to get, you know, access to even basic food. And then you had the head-to-head response from the police, stopping women from going to markets, you know, people buying and selling on the streets. You know, the police then seizing the goods from, you know, women in the informal sector, largely women, and burning them, and then they had to reverse that. You know, a few days later, when it was very clear that, you know, people were going to starving urban areas. And then I think, you know, the other issue to mention is, of course, in terms of public education, which was also again on its knees. So in a context in which schools have been closed, the children are at home, parents are expected to, you know, provide so-called homeschooling or using the internet. It is going to be extremely difficult. It's already extremely difficult. And let me say it is increasing the unpaid care burdens on women at the end of the day. Thank you. Thank you so much, Ije. Let me turn to you now, Seraphine, on Cameroon. Yeah, thank you, Awino. I would just start by saying the situation of Cameroon is far worse than many people think of it. I'll just give you the numbers. Cameroon is among, I think, right now the three countries in Sub-Saharan Africa with the highest numbers. Because we've already hit, we've gone, you know, above 2,000 cases. Now, Cameroon has only 25 million inhabitants. So you see, we are not among the top 10, even in Sub-Saharan Africa. But we are having close to the numbers of Nigeria, which is five times bigger than Cameroon. And South Africa is, of course, leading ahead, not in a great sense, because it's not like winning some time at the Olympics. So if I go back to your question, what does this tell us about the situation or the current state of the continent, I would like to point out two key things, the specifics of Cameroon is emerging very strongly. There is what I call a disconnect. So the COVID-19 crisis has shown us very strongly a very, very big disconnect between the political institution and the realities where COVID-19 is hitting most. Now, there will be time, not now, to look at what's the evidence or what's the operating mode of this disconnect in terms of how the political discourses are not reaching the grassroots. Why is it happening like that? Do political institutions have the agency that allows them to have this sort of interventionist approach that they are trying to take? That is, do they have the means for what they want to achieve? So that disconnect is now very, very clear in the case of Cameroon because the government has been totally incapable of tackling this crisis because they are not reaching the grassroots and again for many reasons. They are the structural issues. There's even the issue of the ideology of power which is, for example, centralized in terms of decision making and funding any programs in terms of tackling the COVID-19. The second thing in the case of Cameroon which this COVID-19 crisis teaching us is there is what I call an ineffective over politicization of an essentially medical issue. With the consequence that in the case of Cameroon you have a lot of discourses on political aspect when actually the problem are medical in their roots. It's about being in hospital, equipping the hospital, dealing with people, tracing them, and knowing who is sick and following up so that you can control the pandemic. But when you go in the newspaper given the state television and the public media it's about political decisions. There's this sort of what I would call almost colonial perception of what power is which is just an entitlement so that you will control the discourse on an issue having enough awareness of what I call the basic impact in the community. In other words, it's far more important that it is the minister of health who is telling people what's happening with COVID-19 than the hospital giving the information when actually the reality is what's happening in the hospital. The minister has no way that the issue of the disconnect I just mentioned at the beginning the ministry has not set up a system to even collect the data on COVID-19 because they didn't plan for that. There is no way that in some rural area without electricity they will know what's going on there. So the fact that the ministry becomes the main point to validate the information about COVID-19 is problematic. I mean in terms of what we call the factual truth. These two issues are the one that for the case of Cameroon I think it's having an impact on how to tackle the COVID-19 that there is this sort of literally, you know, hogging the podium of COVID-19 where the politicians the political institution, the government is the only people who are even, even as this morning, deciding that if a private authority is trying to help the community then they must go and get an authorization from the administrative authorities, not even the medical authorities and that if they must have some evidence that they have been given this authorization to help communities. So people are dying, you want to bring them somewhere, which is what this is all about but oh no, no, don't help them they may die because you need to go back to the local administrative authority and get an authorization. I mean this is so real but this is the reality of Cameroon as early as this morning. Thank you, thank you Seraphine. Godwin, I'm hoping you can pick up on something here that Seraphine has said as you talk to us about Senegal or Kenya whichever one that you choose to focus on. I get the point about politicizing a response to the issue, but can we really argue that this is not a political issue, right? I can see it is a health question that raises in my political concerns and politics here is politics writ large because I think there's a risk here much who trace also the responses to HIV AIDS in the early years of dealing with an issue only as a health concern and then realizing that there are the social and economic repercussions but develop on this a little Godwin. No, thank you very much. Actually as Seraphine was talking I thought that the bigger point is not whether it's a politicization of an essentially medical question or on the other hand a medicalization of an essentially socio-political problem that there is an interplay between those two things and I think finding the balance is what everybody is struggling to do and unfortunately in most cases we've only begun to confront the truth of the matter that medical problems don't happen in heaven they actually happen in a socio-political environment it raises very interesting economic questions and if you not prepared to handle those things and balance the different dimensions to it then you end up worsening a situation that would have been better dealt with and so one of the disappointing things I see is that we've mobilized we've mobilized health officers but I'm not sure we've thought through about the social context within which this disease is happening this pandemic is happening and perhaps in this particular case more so because we're not here for the short term I don't see any signs that we're going to be dealing with this in the short term I think we are there in the long term and I was listening to I think the Minister of Health for Singapore who came up with a tripod and says that there are three things that are critical to dealing with the pandemic one of which is the standard of healthcare what do you have in your healthcare system that can deal with this the second one is the quality of governance which is perhaps what tends to get a shorthand if you approach it strictly as a medical problem but the third thing he pointed out was social capital the capacity to get the communities to buy into the methods that you use in order not just to control the pandemic but also to deal with the consequences of how we have dealt with this pandemic in most of Africa I would say in Kenya for instance we've been playing catch up perhaps for understandable reason that we didn't really know how to deal with this thing so it's been a catch up from the airports especially international airports following the pandemic into places and I think it's only this week that we've really begun to do even the basic testing that we need to do in order to deal with this pandemic and the consequence of that going back to the point that Brian made the consequence of that is the cut and paste method is not going to work at all because how do you seek to flatten a curve where you do not have the requisite data to know whether in fact how the curve looks like in the first instance and so in Kenya it's raising those kinds of questions that I would think come up when you have a system of healthcare that tends to treat pandemics as clinical problems rather than as social problems that need the mobilization of healthcare workers but also the mobilization of other sectors of society for you to be able to go back and look at the situation in Senegal if you do not have a fine understanding of how societies are organized then the key things that would play into a pandemic like this you most likely are not going to get it right and in Senegal I think one of the things that they have been able to deal with being an extremely religious society as it is has been to deal with the pandemic in the context of religious needs of people and going by the numbers and going by the stories that we've seen one would say they have been comparatively more successful in dealing with this than a whole range of other African countries but again I just want to conclude on the point that investing in the social capital is going to be a good thing I am a colleague a friend of mine wrote and said dealing with this pandemic is not about necessarily what we are going to do tomorrow it's what we did yesterday and I think that's a fine warning shot for how we need to think about it Brian what are some of the things that you think African governments or governments in the global south have done right or are things that we should not do to make the view that this is not an issue just about reducing the spread and containing infections but this is forcing us to look much longer time what are some of the things that you observed that you think have been done well what are some of the things that you think we should not do for those who are still trying to manage the situation so Ramaphosa unleashing 72,000 the entire army reserve onto the streets what did that achieve what are some of the other things that other countries have done that have shown sort of preemptive engagement and much more strategic forward looking disaster response for instance I think it's very interesting so if you take it conceptually and say what's been done right and I'll come back to the country context the first one is those countries that have managed to get certain things that are those countries that have looked for homegrown solutions okay for now all of us have been laughing some have been mocking Madagascar's claim that they have found and block or plant but if you look at the Eritrean attempt to raise money from Eritrean citizens for the purpose of this response is that those homegrown solutions as a concept number two the participatory approach so of all the things that the South Africans have done well in this was Ramaphosa who was facing a lot of challenges as you know before tried to involve as many people as you could within the political spectrum social spectrum big business taxi owners and so on and so forth that participatory approach gave you know you can either earn social capital you borrow it or steal it I suspect that in this particular context they have been able to do all three at the same time the third is the early preparedness the Rwandese were getting ready in December they were making inquiries as to what the issue would be they have their drones out in the streets there may be questions around invasion of privacy but the truth of the matter is they tried to leverage local technology and technical competencies in order to do some of the things that you need to do the fourth is what we're seeing in Seneca homegrown locally manufactured testing kits the biggest scandal with the moment we are in is the following is that the cost of PPE the cost of testing kits and medical equipment Africa will have spent more important these things than it has spent on its entire healthcare systems over the last 10 years so and these are controlled value chains they are controlled supply chains controlled by less than 10 big corporations so one of the things that we've seen are those governments that are looking inward in order to have whether it's the Kenyan ventilators or sanitizer produced locally now the challenge with the local production approach is unless if it deliberately targets unless it deliberately targets those who are normally excluded from the economy the small to medium enterprise and the informal sector COVID-19 will become an excuse for enriching the old boys club to become the biggest looting gravy train so what we normally call disaster capitalism is on steroids in the context of COVID-19 in the sense that every human being we're making regulations that you can't go out without wearing a mask it may make sense in medical terms but a dissension means a poor person who lives on less than a dollar a day has to go somewhere and buy a mask so thinking this mask is the usual privileged circles so there needs to be a revolution in that the third thing where we are seeing people doing well is this core leadership of technical experts which is science social leadership which is in order to build social capital by involving people and the third is clear political direction where are we going why are we going where we are going so what we have seen happen and which ought to be done going back to our South African cousins and brothers and sisters is the notion that in order to recover from COVID-19 you need to become more nationalistic and protectionist instead of building regional value instead of strengthening regional integration this inward focus will create new forms of discrimination xenophobia in a region such as Sadak which is a region made up of migrant laborers and it's a historical factor this is how the prosperity and infrastructure in Sadak was built through migrant labor the same would be for West Africa Africa needs to disabuse itself from the approach we are seeing in the North where the survivor is looking inwards closing your borders none of our economies are viable without looking outward the third thing that I see is problematic with all the responses but we are seeing rays of hope is the notion that COVID was the beginning of our catastrophe as ever Joyce and other colleagues have said COVID simply shown the spotlight on what we have failed to do for many years but COVID became almost to use a religious term the social profit that came to demonstrate how lost we were in believing in trickle down Washington Consensus economics that everything would be driven by the market that the market would solve everything now we have come to a moment where the surest assurance of being able to mitigate against the COVID overrun and also being able to transform our countries out of the COVID moment is the African people themselves what they do don't do what they believe in want to believe in who they believe in in terms of leadership the last point is that COVID has also dramatized we had gotten into a moment on this continent where every idiot could become elected on the basis of a good speech, a good suit or simply that they dance well to double law and this has demonstrated that what you need is competence what you need is capacity what you need is results based leadership so it has regenerated from Cote d'Ivoire to Biccuna Faso to Mali the question of leadership to you need because when faced with the crisis or pandemic of this nature you can't, you don't want Tom Fuller you want people who are clear about what needs to be done finally it has demonstrated the dis-delay in our regional integration rhetoric to this day we are struggling to find a meaningful pan continental or even regional if you take East Africa and West Africa the response to COVID we had underfunded CDC we had underfunded everything else that matters to the daily existence of human beings and we are spending a lot of money building airports which now cannot function there are things that could save human life like hospitals and schools we have under invested in, local economic development under invested in the social economy itself under invested in so it seems to one Africa has done well is that African philanthropists that's ordinary men and women and even our big capitalists have woke up and decided that there was no savior coming from America and thank God for Jack Ma and others who have contributed but the biggest contribution if you think in real terms has come from Africans themselves African women African men, African youth African young people are beginning to innovate how to make a mask how to make this and we are seeing again our governments who can't look outside for solutions beginning to look inward and the tragedy of it is they are stealing all these COVID responses and the mask and the ventilators taking them into their private homes and hospitals because they are afraid to go into the public hospitals they never invested in any public hospital so the biggest fear amongst African politicians is contracting COVID like Boris Johnson having to go into your own hospitals because they know what is the reality there is no hospital they have invested in and some are even afraid to go and face local doctors because they are so poorly paid so undervalued that they would take revenge on these thieves thank you Ej do you want to come in there thanks and thanks Brian I think again picking up on some of Brian's points this is a global crisis that requires global solutions I think this has been said many times before and the next level down is the region so again to bolster that point this is a regional crisis that requires regional responses because we know that the artificial borders between our countries the movement of our people across these borders is such that you are not going to fortify yourself inside your own national borders no matter how much you try and I think that much should be clear in terms of what can we learn from other places I want to come back to what we already know and what we already did as the African continent on the two pandemics that we have experienced in the past that is HIV and ARIFAR so there are some very points one is the likes that we had around HIV and ARIFAR I'm not going to work and I think Gordon was talking to that pretty well but already we are seeing signs that I'll go around COVID and not necessarily looking at the whole spectrum of the public health sector and everything else that goes with it because you're not going to be containing the virus only in the COVID world as we saw with HIV and AIDS so we don't want medical responses they have to be horizontal and look at the full spectrum of the health sector I think in terms of some of the very basic things and again we go back to this whole issue of you know how do you build trust how do you build rapport with communities right if I take the case of Zimbabwe Zanupia is doing what Zanupia does best talking at people you are not going to get anywhere without talking to people and the reason I say this is for a very simple reason people will believe what they believe about something that they can't see the virus is something that it doesn't matter how many garing images that the newscasters try and put behind them all those horrible images of the virus but people will believe what they believe so sooner rather than later you're going to have the prophets finding their voice and offering explanation you're going to have the traditional leaders the traditional traditional medical people coming in with explanations we've already seen Madagascar coming up with their homegrown remedy and by the way I'm not saying that but I'm just saying nature hates a vacuum so somebody is going to come up with an explanation so right now governments need to start with what they know bursting some of the myths that people are already holding out there and having real conversations face to face online when the space opens up under the trees as it were because you're not going to get past the need to engage people and change hearts and minds I think the other thing that is important is again as Brian was saying local philanthropy is already in motion but we saw this with Cyclone and I people mobilized they got together in churches in social groups in football clubs and collected whether it was clothing, pots and pans etc but what happened soon after the crisis was gone nobody went back to those groups and tried to work with them and support them and bring them in into being part of the longer-term preparedness and disaster management you know emergency response mechanism I think the other area that I have to talk to as somebody who works in the humanitarian sector is there is a big conversation in humanitarian these days about so-called localization so what they basically mean there is we must involve more local people their local leadership and their local organization folks here is our opportunity to have real localization of the humanitarian and emergency response system thank goodness there is no trouble right now the planes are not flying so the white boys in shorts and bibs are not coming any time soon to the continent so this is the opportunity in terms of preparedness in terms of working with civil society in terms of working with local groups which governments should seize upon and make sure that indeed localization is going to happen in this emergency but also in other emergencies that are coming along I think women's movements as always are what's new are in the forefront of doing the work whether it's being on the front line of doing the unpaid care and the home-based care and every other care imaginable to be doing that again is to say bring women's leadership at all kinds of levels to be part of the conversation and invest in that leadership so that women are articulating their own needs but also the needs of the communities and can be part of the leadership of the response and then I think finally the issue of state accountability a lot of resources have been mobilized from local philanthropy from local people who will are coming forward I saw the other day the government of Zimbabwe is now trying to say okay this is how much has been donated etc but already people are asking that's all very well and good but what have you done with it right so fostering public accountability as part of the emergency response is going to be very important and this is where civil society needs to come in to ensure that there is that accountability and a lot of this we know from the work on HIV and AIDS as I said a lot of this we have done before in the work on Ebola it's about engaging citizens their movements and the local leadership Thank you, thanks Iche. Lissia you're a lawyer and my question to you in relation to what to do or what not to do is are we to accept that our future is now immunity passports, technological surveillance should we just accept that this is the the future we're headed to I don't think we should just accept it without any conditions attached to it I think one of the worries that we have is as we mentioned accountability but also that comes with transparency so if we're looking at government implementing certain measures and policy we want to make sure that it's also done in the same way that it's meant to protect people health care wise it's also meant to protect their security so their privacy etc we don't want to be able to say that as long as we're working out the street they're military, they're police everywhere we're no longer free to move to have the freedom movement that we had before of course life will change as someone mentioned before this is a long term pandemic this is something that we're going to be seeing the effects for in months and maybe even years to come but the issue is accountability and transparency about how the government and how politicians within African countries communicate with local people so looking at for example one of the criticism that Angolan government has received is stating that a lot of the measures that have been implemented in COVID-19 has been looking at how to curb the spread but also looking at how is health care how is other health care communicated and how is other health care provided for people who are already in pre-existing conditions Angola has a high child mortality rate but in attached to that now we have women pregnant women who are scared to go to hospitals or even preventive to going to hospitals how would that affect the long-standing issue with one looking at other aspects of security and making sure that people are safe making sure that people still have access to the rights that they're supposed to have health care has remained an issue within African countries it's the same in Angola when we're looking at COVID-19 many speculated at the beginning of the pandemic like African countries will be ready to deal with crisis like COVID-19 because of issues like that we have dealt with before like Ebola like malaria etc but we haven't seen the mass response that we're seeing in these countries the mass government responses to implementing policies such as social distancing, isolation not preventing people to go about their daily routine and earning money that influences how we're going to be looking at what are rights so implementing national security measures we can't just accept that without having any conditions attached to it we don't want to end up living in military states and for many African countries we already feel like we're living in a military state where the government can just come in and do whatever they want so COVID-19 is definitely giving them the opportunity to implement measures that we wouldn't normally accept in other situations so I think there needs to be a very careful way of engaging the conversation about social restrictions so creating social capitals not only about making sure that we are ahead of the pandemic but also making sure that we still are accountable to what they're supposed to do to protect their citizens would you like to add anything I think the question I'm going to try to be brief but it's difficult to talk about COVID-19 in Cameroon without going back to the evidence that we have today of what we are all calling the failure of leadership now this is important because once you understand that it is easier to actually design some indicators of progress that we could use in future to make sure we don't always start where the default position is that our political leadership are going to fail because that's the problem that we've observed in Cameroon and the simple example that anybody can just think about and ignore later if that makes any sense is that all throughout the COVID-19 crisis in the modern Republic we have not had the president of the Republic speaking publicly about how the government is starting the COVID-19 even once now if you have told the Cameroonians that oh the president is sick that's different then we know that the president is not doing it because he's having trouble that's different but this is a country with a president in exercise who has not even bothered to talk to his citizens who are dying for the last two, three months this is absolutely outrageous so when we talk about failure of leadership it's not a construction it's not an interpretation of reality it's the total absence of the leader to lead the people in the moment of the terrible crisis once we go from that as something that should not be but that is right now in the case of Cameroon we must therefore think about what kind of leadership are we going to be expecting or to actually emulate in Africa learning from COVID-19 I think we need to define a number of indicators that we need to be able to look across and this is not just a political leadership that should be present as needed even though actually the default position is that political leadership should be there all the time we want leadership, political leadership that should be supportive doing things that will help the communities and the country move forward we need leadership and going from Cameroon it's all across a number of countries maybe the case of Cameroon is both worse in terms of a number of cases of COVID-19 patients that we have but also in terms of maybe being the worst leadership we have because we have a dictatorship he's been in power for nine years now so that's how bad it is but we need different of political leadership which is not just present as I've said supportive but it must be a proactive leadership where they actually interact with the communities and the civil society and they must show some minimum coordination in places of crisis the second thing that I would want to contribute which is about what else do we learn from this what else should we emulate for the future there must be sort of a better connection and collaboration with the diaspora in the case of Cameroon stronger response that is having a massive impact in the community is the work done by the diaspora in putting together a massive fund which today has you know collected more than half a million euros which is being used directly back home but there's a lot in there and we may have another time to go deeper into why this experience is really really something to look into more closely because for example let's pick something like the masks the diaspora initiatives trying to help with COVID-19 in Cameroon is saying we will use all this money to buy the masks locally to make sure we support local economy in producing this mask locally and just importing it and then pumping all of this money which is collected in Europe in the Americas back in Europe and in America they are saying no we can produce the masks locally we know the international standards for masks there is enough material locally you just need to develop a system where there is transparency you follow the international standards and that's having a massive impact because right here right now that's not just the big corporations making money out of COVID that money will actually help develop the local economy in some way so that's something that we can learn a lot from Cameroon and I think across a number of African countries there is a lot that we can learn once we again that's why I wanted to correct when you were talking I didn't want to interrupt the problem is not the politicization of what I think is essentially medical it's when it is over politicized to the point that it actually prevents us to see the economy and socio-cultural aspect that would be beneficial because of over politicization so it is the over politicization that is my problem because you cannot escape the fact that everything about COVID-19 is essentially politicized first is when you over politicize it that you start now actually dwarfing the other aspect that are important so there is a lot that we can learn from how not just the politicians and the politicized institutions but the civil society the diaspora all over Europe and the Americas and Asia is going back to help the community and there is massive lot to learn from that Thank you Seraphine so Godwin we are hearing about diaspora engagement, local philanthropy learning from previous pandemics and the sort of approaches that have been taken before around that thinking very critically around the ways in which legislation can be used as an entry point for much longer term shifts in a society if civil society engagement is not if we are not on board or really holding governments accountable in terms of the laws that are being changed now in order to help government address COVID-19. In Kenya in particular I have observed for instance the return of radio programs as part of the mechanism to teach kids who are in public schooling so there hasn't been a reliance on internet but on radio programs which is something I grew up with as a child. I have also observed for instance the fact that as a result of this you are seeing the government being forced to ensure some kind of equitable access to water in informal settlements. So my question and this is a sort of final wrap up question to the group before we open up is that are these openings things that we can sustain? Are these openings an opportunity for us to actually re-open conversations for instance around their budget declaration around 15% investment on health by governments? Is this an opportunity for us to rethink our education model in our countries? Is this an opportunity for conversations around universal access? How do we use this opportunity to expand some of this structural debates that most of you on this conversation have been having for the longest time? I think that if there is any big lesson that for me is coming out of all these developments is a question of do we own our health care systems? Okay. And I think related to that question is the second question which we have said too many times and I think we tend to forget that the state is absolutely important in the provision of health care but the state is absolutely important in the provision of basic social welfare needs of people. Many of us have wondered at what point the world will accept this simple reality and really do away with a wasteful debate that takes us into private sector, neoliberal approaches to health care, education and all these things. I think that if there is any big point that is coming up whether you are in a country like Cameroon where the state is underperforming or you are in a country where the systems are too militarized the state is too strong and authoritarian that it makes it difficult for people to operate or whether you are in countries where the systems are relatively okay. I think the big question that we have to deal with is going to be how do we use the state to define a health care system that responds to the needs of communities. At the end of the day we must acknowledge one thing that there are many African countries that do not own their health care systems and there are a whole number of countries where our health care priorities are defined by donors rather than by our governments and so at the end of the day yes, the ABUJA protocol was right on the mark but let's remember that these are protocols that were built on the basis of the Legos Plan of Action which had an emphasis on community participation which had an emphasis on the role of the state which attempted to define an African position in relation to many of the development needs that we had. So I think that the challenge for Africa is not so much that we don't know where we want to go. I think the challenge is that we've not implemented many of the agreed upon priorities that we need to and going forward I think the COVID instance is reminding us that unless and until we define our own priorities in relation to health care, in relation to schooling in relation to many of these things it's going to be almost impossible for us to manage. The radio is fine and all these things that we are doing in relation to our education system is fine but the consequence of it is that unless we are going to develop and invest in the people who actually do the teaching in the doctors who are doing this are the nurses and more importantly perhaps we haven't saved this enough investing in community health because there are many places on the continent where the only access to anything that would help you deal with the medical or health issues within communities so beginning to invest in some of these zones is going to be absolutely important for us but for us to do that first of all we need to earn our health care systems. E.J. Bryan would you like to comment on that? You know we actually need to broaden this discussion deliberately so we can what we are calling health care system is looking at the personnel and the infrastructure and the policies that govern this but one of the biggest scandals is that we privatized all our companies that produce medicines so we may end up owning these shells but importing everything that is required to keep them going so this idea of an industrialization model that's not linked to our welfare and well-being model is key and so we must answer that because it answers the question of youth employment it answers the question of industrialization the second thing the biggest scandal that's happened in Africa is that in the 80s and 90s we were talking about how to link economic and social policies so the big discussion was social policies the donors said no no no that's a nebulous concept why don't we focus on something that we can touch and feel so we went to social protection right cash what you call this cash grants payments and my address and call will tell you some of us protested and said you are treating African poverty or rather impoverishment because it's a poverty manufactured by unjust power you are treating it the same way you treat people who are broke that there is a month that comes and they'll be okay this is a structural problem if you're dealing with a structural problem so let's address it so I think that we need to have a robust conversation because when we start saying health this for all we're missing the holistic approach to social policies let me give you a sense if I live in Kibera for example you can have a functional hospital with 10 doctors with everything that's needed in the hospital I wouldn't have been able to comply with the covid requirements why because I have no decent shelter because so many of us have to share flying toilets or a pitla tree why because I can't wash my hands because there's no water why because some goons have privatized water so if I live in Daiga I'm able to get possible water out of the tap but if I live in Korobocho I have to buy water so when you ask me to be constantly washing my hands you are penalizing my poverty the burden on the poor has been heavier in order to comply with the covid so the opening that stays for us to renegotiate comprehensive social policy that will look at water and sanitation that will look at shelter education at food we import we import annually 35 billion US dollars worth of food annually now you tell me why Africa the best swells import 35 billion US dollars worth of food there are countries that have not invested in agriculture at all there are governments that have privatized the entire agricultural enterprise they have not invested at all in the small holder farmer so and it's part of resolving the question of women's access to land and other productive resources we privatize seed for good and sake and we moved into this hyper fascination with chemical fertilizers and poisoned not only the soil but we poisoned underground water sources so it seems to me that if the opportunity the real opportunity is to answer the question what kind of African development not only owned and driven by the Africans but that would be beneficial to the continent in the long term do we need to be driving how do we get an African development bank and African financial institutions to invest in a development that's inward looking that's not outward looking exporting jobs and that looks for external saviors and that is the fundamental crisis our social policy is almost non-existent and related to social policy ever choice and colleagues here we're talking about the humanitarian response and preparedness right the real opportunity at the moment is how do people become the main drivers of a response so that we are not waiting for America to save us for Europe to save us but we can save ourselves as we are seeing that the last thing is that I think the bigger opportunity and I think Gordon he talked about it and Lucia and Seraphine you know we had huge debates about public goods right those debates somehow dissipated and everything was capable of privatization where in this moment where the biggest scandal is that in the absence of public goods we can not guarantee public health or public security COVID is just one crisis where health has huge security dimensions tomorrow it may be water or something else so if we to build Africa's resilience and capacity to deal with these things I'll say I tend to public goods public leadership and public resources how do we resource our own development and how do we resource our own priorities this is the biggest policy space ever created for African governments and unfortunately as Gordon has already said because we are bound on the things that have helped us liquidity is a challenge our governments do not have enough money to generate a domestic response to COVID-19 and cancellation of debt will not provide sufficient results or sufficient resources for this and that's why the rethink an average race mentioned it earlier it's a global challenge requiring global solutions but more importantly it's a regional problem that require regional solutions and in finding the regional solutions you build on the local capacity, competence, expertise resilience, experience but you also build on the regional if you like competitive and comparative advantage that we have and for me that is it. Thanks Ej I just want to make one point and I think it's about civil society if anything else that has been good about this crisis it's to remind civil society that many of us in this call that no single issue organizing is ever sufficient we say education was the answer it was never the answer we then said I don't know women's political participation was the answer we said it was insufficient so this crisis is showing us that our tendency to take every single thing that we start working on whatever the flavor is these days it's climate but look at how climate has suddenly gone on to the edges of the conversation so we need to organize across movements we need to have an intersectional analysis and intersectional approach because this is what is needed what has always been needed because there are no magical bullet answers to some of the deep seated structural issues that our continent faces thank you so I'm going to open it up for any questions or comments from those who are participating there's a question that came up for you which is around the implications of COVID-19 for the ongoing crisis in Cameroon if you could offer some comments on that yeah I will quickly say that it has just worsen things because the crisis in Cameroon is there are two layers there's a political crisis which is about what is happening with a president who has been power for 38 years and who actually you know there's a debate so there's the main political crisis about the current government and if they are really the legitimate government but the aspect of the humanitarian crisis which is the war in two of the Anglophone provinces of the country and this has been going on for literally four years now it's not spoken about in the western media I contacted the BBC and I wanted them to provide and suddenly they didn't show any interest but you can see the numbers of the war we are talking of thousands of casualties thousands of people have been displaced into Nigeria as war refugees and those two provinces are totally permanently littered with anybody who googles the war in south west Cameroons will see horrible images that will traumatize you for quite some days and you can try that after this conversation. COVID-19 it has made things worse for the two provinces where there is war right here right now in Cameroon and this war is serious because it is not Cameroon it is not the diaspora it is not me or you who actually told the United Nations to declare Cameroon as bad as 2017 to be in humanitarian crisis and we know the criteria that leads the United Nations to declare a region in a humanitarian crisis not how many people are dying who are civilians who are victims in case of something like a war so Cameroon has been in a situation of humanitarian crisis for more than three years now and COVID-19 is only making things worse in those regions because we do not even have the data on these provinces nothing reliable so that really things are bad in the two provinces the two former English speaking provinces of Cameroon under what was known in the days as the British Cameroons so those are the two regions we are talking about I am not even going into Boko Haram and what they have been doing between Cameroon Nigeria and Chad and Niger so that is another dimension that is only getting worse with COVID-19 Thanks Seraphine somebody asks about the Madagascar drug I don't know who has been following that and whether you have any comment on that is this a potential here that we must take seriously Godwin you are smiling widely you won't offer comment on that Not really in the sense in which the question is asked because I am not in a position to comment directly on the drug but I guess the point there is what are the home grown solutions to this challenge and what infrastructure we have first of all to make sure that many of the solutions that are coming in home grown are good and number two they can be used in the context I think part of the challenge that I think we face in Africa is that every time there is you know something that comes up from our own innovations the first thing is to deal with it from a comparative perspective and begin to doubt our own capacities to find home grown solution best simply on the fact that we are used to externally imported solutions to into our so while we are not able at the moment to talk directly about this particular drug from Madagascar I think that keeping an open mind to be able to essentially begin to impress solutions that are our own would be my way of going about it and I would say that we have ways of beginning to test this and we have ways of knowing if it's efficacious and I think that the opportunity presented by this particular instance is one thing that we should work around that. Thanks there's a question from Catherine around how to hold two things at the same time there are deep structural inequalities and gaps that have been exposed by COVID-19 how do we hold a conversation on that and the need to resolve the structural inequalities whilst continuing to address the spread and manage COVID-19 any thoughts or reflections on that that the government will say too many complaints, too many critiques we need to focus on the problem at hand civil society hold your horses allow us to do our job which might therefore constrain opportunities for dialogue EJ I see you nodding do you want to take that sure again I go back to HIV and AIDS we've had experience on how to do that I think yes it's important to continue to engage with the immediate needs making sure that those needs are being met and being addressed but at the same time and this is where it gets tricky making sure that that immediate response is being done with an eye towards the future right and is being done in such a way that it tackles some of the structural issues and I think on this call we've talked to some of that so sitting as I am currently in South Africa for example you can already see where the conversation is going in the early days it was kind of like we are all in this together let's fight together but now that the interest of capital the interest of white people are the ones rising to the surface you are beginning to see those fishes and black people saying you're not going far enough the most excluded segment of the society saying you're not going far enough there is a lot more to be done and one segment of the population saying oh no no no this has gone too far now right and so that's where it's important even as we look at the practical the immediate you have an eye towards the strategic and the long term and again we know this from women's rights work there's a question from Sarah there are two questions from Sarah okay so I will save the first one for last to wrap up our conversation together so if you could just take a note of this so that I don't go through them one by one there's something about strengthening regional integration vis-à-vis nationalization and internalization so the point you made Brian earlier about the tendency for this crisis to regenerate ultra nationalist sentiments and the weaknesses of our regional economic communities so what is the work that is needed there going forward there's a question about Africa's relationship to China especially now with the rise of cases of xenophobia and racism in China and our indebtedness to some of us our countries indebtedness to China any reflections on that will that shift open up opportunities for more equitable conversations with China there is a question around Africa's capacity to resist external influence and do the kind of rethinking of the kind of Africa development we want do we have the capacity to do that what does the African Union for instance need to look like and do to enable that that's another question that you might want to take up there is a question around securitization and the violation of citizens under the guise of dealing with COVID-19 and how this therefore entrenched let's see the entrenchment of security forces into the economies of our countries through local mask production so I think the interface between capital securitization local economies and the tension that exists between these sets of dynamics in a number of our African countries let's take those and then come back to the chat in a bit China's relationship with Africa is there anything likely to shift in this particular moment? I think that there are two things that are driving the China-Africa narrative one is the usual synophobia which is driven also by the West and therefore China is the enemy of everything the second thing driving the China-African narrative is the practical objective reality and experience of Africans in China and on the continent the challenge is that up to now the Eighth Fokker which is the premise upon which the partnership is couched was literally given to African leaders by China there was no conversation no dialogue of the framing of the eight principles of the various principles in that and I think that African citizens are going to take a lot more interest in how to ensure that that framework of cooperation is subject to some set of agreed rules and also open to some scrutiny and I saw the letter by the Africa human rights defenders to the chair person of the African Union and also observed what the Ghanaian, the Nigerians and the African Union African commission said about the racism in China the biggest challenge in China-Africa relations is that it's been government to government there's never really been effective people-to-people connections between China and Africa and the attempts to establish Confucian institutes is insufficient to establish a people-to-people connection so I think that is where that connection ought to happen there are issues of accountability of Chinese corporates and other actors there are issues of violations of rights there are issues of racism there are issues of opacity in some of the agreements there are issues of illicit financial outflows there are issues of spying there are issues all sorts of criminal instances where China invests a huge amount into the continent but those investments are not accounted for by the political class because of the opacity and if Beijing really wants to be a friend of Africa and Africans as opposed to a friend of African dictators that framework of cooperation needs to be opened up to certain principles certain values and a monitoring and evaluation framework which would bring me to the conflation of what we're calling the African private sector African militaries or security sector and also the political elite and I think that we have an opportunity in this as citizens and because part of the procurement that we've seen for COVID-19 across the continent has tended to favor people who because it's been a militarized response for the most part the dominance of the military element in the procurement process business persons who are aligned to military heavyweights have been so there is a need in looking at the procurement for COVID because we can start there to raise issues of accountability and transparency and also abuse because they are using donor money to do the procurement to enrich their friends which would essentially mean if you turn this back in once and that is where the solution of a regionalized approach would work it's most unlikely that the sort of capacity and grand level corruption would be about because the local entrepreneurs who for now have been locked up under lockdown will take an interest the open bidding and competitive bidding process will take an interest I think there is something in this conversation that we must be careful of I think as though COVID will end next week or in three months time it's unlikely right so if we are in for the next year or more and the impact certainly will be much longer than that our mindset there is no short term intervention this is not cyclonic eye which has come and gone and we are living with the aftermath this is if you like a moving disaster that's growing each day because of that some of the things that ever Joyce was pointing us to is we've got to literally do hybrid interventions at the same time right intervene to solve structural issues which exacerbate vulnerability and also intervene to deal with the immediate livelihood concerns and I think that is not just the role of the state that is a state in partnership with citizens we are seeing in places small places in Zimbabwe like where business people churches civil society and everybody has come together in what is called I am for blower against COVID 19 and they are raising resources but they are also putting their doctors to use in terms of getting the medical and putting politicians across the political divide working together I saw a similar response in Senegal where we are seeing the use of faith leaders, political leaders we are seeing creative things and the diaspora the biggest influence and ironically so for that response that I am advocating for is we came up with regulations on money laundering loadable regulations and our lawyer colleagues may help us here they are making it impossible for ever Joyce locked up in Johannesburg to be moving money across to Zimbabwe right or moving goods if you are a small timer so they tend to privilege particular type of actors with particular type of access and I am sure the Cameroonian diaspora that is trying to move resources and the Eritrean diaspora the Nigerian diaspora is meeting with huge obstacles that are related to rules right we need to rethink these rules on how do we do solidarity support how do we leverage and harvest but how do we also make global demands so one of the demands is the cost of remitting money from Europe is huge and lastly global solidarity in this we are looking at the racism in China the highest number of people dying in fact I was saying to colleagues yesterday there have been more Zimbabweans dying in London of COVID-19 than there have been Zimbabweans dying in Zimbabwe officially of COVID-19 healthcare workers from the developing world persons of color in the United States so there is a global solidarity that needs to be built amongst persons of color because they are hierarchy of humanity has been recreated a hierarchy of humanity where persons of color because of historical structural issues we are going to whatever pandemic comes we are going to be the biggest victims and our victim who does not link to our skin color but to the discrimination and racism in the design of economies and social policy thank you Brian EJ there are a couple of questions around civil society mobilization movement building and how to capitalize on this moment and one that is specifically around GBB and violence against women at this particular moment if you would like to take those what can civilians to demand and ensure that conditions attached to future control are not sustained you spoke about no single issue organizing what should movements do at this particular moment are there examples that you are seeing that you would like to surface for us yeah thanks so I think one in terms of how movements are or can work together and I would just cite a couple of examples so one is already you know you've seen feminists coming together trade unions working together around issues around women's labor so not just looking at you know the former labor but also paid care which has become a big issue as we've been mentioning in this conversation I think you are beginning to see a lot more coalescing around the climate justice conversation because it's not just about climate or the atmosphere it's also about food it's about women's rights it's about humanitarian response again there's a lot of coming together there and young people have been hitting the charge as we've seen in many places so I think it can be done there are some small moves around this I don't want to make it sound like there's a lot of big ones but I think there is enough examples for us to do that deliberately and again this moment offers us that opportunity so wherever we get it's to organize to talk about the impacts of COVID we need to make sure that we are being deliberate in who is around the table who is talking to who and how do we make sure that we are all as much as possible talking to each other in the process I didn't quite get the question around gender-based violence sorry I couldn't see the chat it's around the fact that many activists and women's rights organizations have been pointing to the fact of increased violence against women because people are now locked into homes and spaces that are risky and which they don't have an opportunity to move out of is this a trend that's observed in Africa this is definitely a trend South Africa where I'm sitting that's an issue that's come up and fortunately emotionally in this place there is a system in place for tracking for keeping up with the numbers and definitely in terms of how the state is giving out information on what are the trends and what's going on that's something that information is being shared and again on Zimbabwe where I was talking to a lot of work being done by existing women's organizations an example of an organization like Massassa that has reported seeing an increase not only in the numbers but also in the needs for shelter and so again having to partner with a lot more people to make that happen so certainly yes there is a trend across many different African countries I've just given those two but I think the important issue again there to say is this is an important moment and it's an opportunity also for us to have an increase in state resources in investment in terms of making sure that there are facilities that the state itself is able to respond including the justice system etc. and this is a moment that we may not see again so it's important to make sure that we make use of this opportunity Thank you Brian might or Godwin might you have or want to offer commentary on the test kit in Senegal and whether it's being rolled out to the rest of the continent Yes Brian Not yet I think that I understand there are two types of tests that have to be done they suspect it will be ready soon for rollout throughout the continent there's the rapid test but they have another second test that you have to be able to do both to say if you like to clinically prove that a person doesn't have Covid Thank you But there are already people starting to order or inquiring about ordering from Senegal because of the price Yeah Godwin there was a question about what is it about the way in which Senegal has mobilized the religious community that has worked because in other countries somebody talked about Spain where religious groups have felt excluded from the conversation what is it that Senegal did is it just basically the fact that the country is organized around religion so there's no other way around it or was there something unique about the Senegal approach I think there's something historically unique about the Senegal approach that compared to perhaps many other places in Africa that I've lived in Senegal now for three years and one of the things that immediately strikes you living there is how much both Christian and Muslim populations live alongside each other in ways perhaps that you don't see in many other countries including my own country, Kenya and I think the right from the days of the way the levels of religious tolerance between religions but also between the state and different religious groups perhaps is much much better developed so that what you are seeing now is built on a sound basis of historic relationships built over time and I mean anyone who has lived in Senegal also will very easily notice the sense in which the state respects religious groups and organizations and the religious beliefs of people and the way in which different politicians but perhaps also really the presidents, different presidents of Senegal the way they relate to the different religious groups you ignore religion in Senegal you ignore as perhaps one of the most important singular basis of building legitimacy in politics and so I'm not surprised that it's happening now I'm actually when I spoke about social capital at the start of this discussion religion has been an important basis for building this capital in Senegal and yeah it's become a useful basis for dealing with what would otherwise have been a devastating pandemic in that country. Thank you very much it's 1531 here in London so I would like to wrap up and I want to wrap up by just offering each of the panelists an opportunity to close out with a final comment your final call messages and again just thanking everyone once again for joining us for what has been a very insightful conversation so let me start with Ulyssia final messages or closing statement my final thoughts would be like would be on how governments are interacting with COVID-19 release looking at healthcare implementations and comments that for example people in Senegal have said has the Ministry of Health become the Ministry of COVID are we just focusing solely on COVID-19 and not really looking beyond what we already mentioned during the session is what opportunities it can bring in dealing for example with malaria which is a big issue in Angola so excuse me my reservations are that we perhaps are expecting too much to come out of the responses that we can get from our African governments mostly because as Seraphine mentioned if you look at governments who are not responding at all we're not engaging with their citizens directly if you have a president who's been in power for 38 years who hasn't addressed the nation in whatever capacity when dealing with a pandemic you have to wonder what the political expectations are for people but also the political expectation for those involved in the relief so are we just doing this to say that we are taking actions and that we are trying to prevent the disease to spread even more are we doing this in the way that we think that is going to prevent the future disasters I think for Angola specifically one of the biggest motivation for the current government has been the elections in 2022 so a response to COVID-19 sets the groundwork for how people will respond to any type of engagement with the current government so making sure that governments are not only accountable but also reliable in their support and in their responses that would be my final thoughts on this making sure that we hold governments not only accountable but we can also actually rely on the implementation of positive change and long-term change Thank you. Seraphine? Yes, I mean there's a number of things that I would touch on but very very quickly first of all the whole idea that many governments are not responding because of lack of resources that must be challenged and I just give a simple example with Temarun the fund set up by the prime minister was to be amount of one million pounds the money that was asked by the same government for the party at the presidency at Christmas last year was 1.5 million pounds so the problem with even dealing with COVID-19 with the resources that African government has is about allocation of resources it's not the law of resources the second thing I want to just close with is the actually is related to the question of Tobi, Fanny, Coyote about what we have to expect from our government we must make our government accountable but based on as Brian said on our welfare we must do that nobody will do that for us so COVID-19 should get African communities aware of the necessity to have government that will be accountable but government whose agency is turned towards the citizens of Africa if we don't do that nobody is going to do it so COVID-19 is telling us that it's time to act for our interests so that's one of the key things forward because even to deal with COVID-19 now we need to take responsibility citizens, civil society the governments are lagging behind clearly in many cases with the case of Cameroon being one case in point but civil society must take responsibility scholars must have researchers more join in because that's the only way forward from what we are looking at all over the continent thank you Seraphine E.J. this is a collective problem that requires collective solutions at all levels from the national level from the community level to the national levels to the regional level to the global level as we have said secondly it's important to involve the people and talk with the people and their movements and organizations and not to talk at people because people know what the problem is they will have the solutions and if governments and civil society take the people seriously this is one of the surest ways in which we will be able to deal with COVID this is a moment in which we need to fight for public goods in particular public services health and education in particular and I want to add this is a moment particularly for countries like Zimbabwe to go back to issue based politics and not just the politics of who we like or who we dislike less than the other so our conversations online offline have to be about the basic issues that are facing many of our people today and those are issues around access and the use of public resources so that we are all able to access the help that we need particularly from the public health sector and public education finally I want to say in order to do all of this we must guard against stigma and discrimination we saw how because of stigma and discrimination we almost lost the fight against HIV and AIDS we had the same experience with Ebola and we lost so many years if not decades in which we could have responded and HIV and AIDS would not have been as catastrophic as it ended up being on our continent we have the opportunity with COVID but already signs are that there is a lot of stigma a lot of discrimination much of it being peddled unfortunately by the media and people who should know better we have to guard against stigma and discrimination and playing the blame game otherwise once again we will lose a lot of time we will lose a lot of momentum in which we could have made change happen what do we need finally in terms of leadership let me say it the kind of leadership that the world needs today it has a name it's called feminist leadership thank you EJ, thank you Godwin your closing comments and if you could say something about African universities if you can thank you thank you very much I think that if there is one big lesson that I would want to carry out from this discussion is that we need a shift in our mindsets and that shift must be a shift that allows us to put at the center of this discussion around COVID the fact that our problem is not a problem of funding our problem is not a medical problem our problem is beginning to center our priorities as a people and I think Brian did make this point and I would like to piggyback on it it's really a point about reconceptualizing ourselves in the context of our pan-African hood and beginning to see the sense in which there are solidarities that are useful we are probably making and shifting our mindsets in a way that allows us to do the right thing and the place of research is going to be absolutely important the need to invest in forms of knowledge that allow us to put those priorities African priorities at the forefront is going to be absolutely important over the last couple of these sitting in Codestria I have received numerous invitations to participate in meetings to partner with institutions to do different things and one of the things that has made it extremely difficult for me to operate has been that we hardly know in real data sense what we are dealing with in the context of this pandemic and yet we have partnership proposals that want to find solutions to that we hardly understand and so for me I think African universities have an opportunity to begin to build new forms of knowledge that would help us understand what we are dealing with not in the broad sense of the COVID pandemic but really in the broad sense of how that pandemic interacts with the different contexts that we deal with on the continent this would be a sound basis for beginning to build a knowledge base that would actually bring out the priorities that we need to and I think if there is any government on the continent that hasn't gotten the message the message is a little bit simple and clear and perhaps COVID is helping us do this it is that if you are going to continue over investing in what you call the hard sciences, the biological sciences or the social sciences, the humanities you've missed the bot if you cannot comprehend the diversities around which this pandemic is having to deal with us you have missed the bot and I think that better partnerships are going to have to bring an interdisciplinary approach that appreciates the different dimensions of the issues that we are dealing with I do not think that the infrastructure is really there from outside Africa to deal with this question. I think research institutions on the continent are going to have to do this and that is the only way that we are going to shift this mindset that I'm thinking about so the mindset shift is critical, absolutely critical to me thank you very much Thank you Brian, your final messages Sorry, sir, you can hear me? Yeah, yeah African elites who have been disconnected from African citizens and African institutions that have existed largely to service the needs of external actors and funders find themselves now in a moment where they need to align objectives because they have only each other to fight COVID-19 we may not like the state and status of the African Union and the regional economic communities but that's what we have as that blunt instrument is what we have we have only Africa CDC and our dilapidated health infrastructure and systems to fight this so in a sense all of us need to introspect and think about Africa's exclusion from global diagnostics market Africa's exclusion from global supply chains Africa's exclusion from global development finance and global governance whether it's the UN Security Council Africa's exclusion from global solidarity other than what you have seen from Jack Ma and a few people so in a sense this forces Africa to focus again on the conversation of Africa's place in the globe and how the race to the bottom where we watch the world as a single little non-fiable states is unlikely to guarantee our safety and security in the face of a pandemic any other pandemic other than COVID-19 and then number two is let's assure the things that can be assured so even in this morass even in this pain we're in the biggest threat we face is food insecurity right as for reasons that ever Joyce mentioned earlier let's in our recovery let's not copy and paste this idea that we're pouring billions of dollars into the big private sector we should be giving the local food producer sufficient resources to produce resources that we can put in grain and food banks so that Africa does not implore import a huge amount of food you know the principle that the late we did and others used to say we import we grow what we do not eat and we eat what we don't grow and as a result we are slaves of those who grow what we eat so there is an opportunity for us to deal with Africa's food sovereignty as a defense not just for COVID-19 but the other insecure the second African people I think COVID-19 exposed the extent of under investment in critical professions in our nations and also in data and statistics in so what we need to do is to look inward these are things that within six to ten years we will have started making some difference we have under invested in African institutions of knowledge in African civil society none of our governments give resources of any significant nature to civil society so as a result you have a hostility that exists between government and civil society where governments that are foreign funded see civil society which is foreign funded as an enemy and what happens to local resources they are looted by the same governments and they are banked in tax havens and overseas jurisdictions so there is a time for us to relook even African thieves need to become pan-Africanist now you know they need to realize that don't invest in the continent for your health care and your security if we have another pandemic that stops you from being able to travel you will die out of foolishness and your money will take long as has happened with Abacha's money to be repatriated back to benefit any of your people or relatives and then the other thing that we need to do is rethink security I think COVID-19 has demonstrated health as a security issue if you ask what our thoughts about security were soldiers running around with guns with tanks unfortunately those tanks and the amounts of money we spend buying that hardware is unable to defend Africa so our imagination of what security will look like going forward needs to be expanded and also what defense looks like going forward needs to be expanded we've been exposed to this and I want to end by saying it seems to me out of all this the game changer is leadership and citizenship we have the type of citizens who are willing to auction legacy, liberty and everything that matters for the sake of the tribe and for the sake of momentary satisfaction we have a leadership which is so devoid of ideas that's willing to auction whole countries to external actors for the sake of driving the latest car and drinking the latest amount but we have come to the sad moment where we realize that global racism in how you save human life does not care about the car you drive and so there's something that now joins our destinies together between the African thieves, looters, oppressors dictators, autocrats Africa's poor Africa's middle class is all of us find ourselves threatened by a preventable challenge and that threat can be countered by a leadership that looks at not only issues but that values diversity and inclusion we are dysfunctional not only because of external factors we are dysfunctional because we exclude young people we exclude women we exclude people from those faiths or ethnic groups that we don't think are valuable enough and yet we are so ready to include outsiders in couching and fashioning the things that we need for survival so the change for Africa is both a mindset change a behavioral change but a focus that says nobody will save us if we are leads that in Africa will never be crocodiles elsewhere if Africa is in a mess it doesn't matter how well educated how well spoken we are we are also part of that mess Thank you very very much this has been a wide-ranging conversation so I'm not even going to attempt to summarize the key points that have come out I think for me as somebody who slitted at source of course I'm keenly interested in questions around interdisciplinary research and the opportunities that this opens up for a broad based you know social science and humanities engagements in African universities to respond to the structural issues in the robust and holistic way that we have discussed here today this is a conversation that has been centered of course on leadership and Eva Joyce tells us the answer is feminist leadership and before you all get your knickers in a knot she said feminist leadership not women's leadership and obviously the key point here as well a final point is around the space that has been opened up for local philanthropy tapping into diaspora engagement recognizing that we have a lot of the human and economic resources to be able to rewrite the continent's narrative how we mobilize that how we ensure that that is not squandered by people in places that are effectively selfish rather than looking towards people centered engagement is one that civil society social movements that are currently thinking about responding to the crisis but also looking forward into the long term repercussions have to keep in mind I know that there are questions about what are the things that civil society should do I doubt that the speakers can offer specific answers because this really is about local context and movements and what it is that they want to use as a pivot for the ways in which they shape their action in addition to of course building on much longer histories of social movements engagement comrades Lucia, Seraphine Brian, EJ and thank you so much for agreeing to be part of this Santeni Sana and take care and thank you all for the participants and we will have the video up somewhere on the internet for those who are not able to watch it live streamfielders so we shall have that video up thanks again and take care