 Hi, my name is Ami Nyang. I teach International Relations at the University of the Vid Vadestrand in Johannesburg and I'm one of three academics behind the Declaration of African Intellectuals under COVID-19 in crisis. My two other collaborators are Lionel Zevounou who is a public law professor at the University of Paris-Nonterre and Nongo Sambacilla who is an economist based in Dakar, San Diego. The purpose behind our Declaration really is to urge African leaders to craft careful responses that take into account the specificities of African context but also to be compassionate towards African populations. As we have seen, some of the responses have been particularly unsorted and have led to more harm to livelihoods and they have saved lives in some places. In the Declaration we also urge African leaders to think about radical reforms beyond the current crisis. Africa happens to be in a paradoxical situation in the sense that even though the health impact of the pandemic is still relatively limited, the economic impact is quite dire. In fact, we are told by the IMF that we have entered a historic recession and that we may be heading to years of economic struggle and austerity. Obviously, the reason for this is partially to do with the fact that African economies have historically been integrated into the global economy as economies of extraction and in this sense the pandemic plays a role but it also magnifies what we already know about the African condition and the nature of the international order. The real question for us is what kind of continent do we want to be in once all of this is over? Do we want to go back to business as usual? Well, we think we shouldn't. We think it needs to be structural reforms in socioeconomic governance. We think it needs to be a rethinking of the terms of public accountability and more crucially, it needs to be a rethinking of the social contract between African states and societies.