The Mawazo Ideas Digest Issue 4: African Countries and Researchers Respond to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Welcome back to the Mawazo Ideas Digest!

Since our last Digest in early March, it’s fair to say that the world has changed quite drastically. But events beginning in January were already signaling that this would be anything but a normal year. On January 12th, China publicly shared the sequence of COVID-19, a new variant of the coronavirus first identified in December 2019 among patients in the province of Wuhan who appeared to be suffering from a form of pneumonia. By January 30th, the World Health Organization (WHO) would declare the novel coronavirus disease, “a Public Health Emergency of International Concern.” Through its Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the agency began urging countries, small and large, to take immediate steps against the spread of the disease.

For African countries with already weakened health care systems, the need to guard against an outbreak was particularly urgent, and the WHO was not alone in sounding the alarm. Early on, guardians of the world economy, like the World Bank, cautioned leaders in Africa to put in place as many preventative measures as possible to mitigate the potential costs of what was quickly becoming a global pandemic, as country after country began reporting infections. Many took heed, and by far, African countries have reported some of the quickest responses to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Beginning in February, many countries were conducting airport screenings for the virus, even before they had reported any confirmed cases within their borders. By March, many more countries began imposing restrictions on movement and on public life as confirmed cases of COVID-19 were reported in Egypt, followed by other North African countries including Algeria and Morocco. Currently, all 55 countries and territories on the continent have reported cases of COVID-19, with South Africa recording the highest number of infections to date. Despite this, and three months into an unprecedented global public health crisis, African countries seem to be faring better than many expected. [1] The effects of the mitigation measures put in place by governments across the continent, including flight restrictions, border closures, and the banning of public gatherings, however, have also resulted in a downturn in social and economic activity. Among those sectors hard hit, include academia and research.

Country-wide closures of schools and institutions of learning, combined with stay-at-home orders and bans on a range of activities, have meant that academic and research activities (not directly related to mitigation and containment of COVID-19), have either been shut down, or forced to go online. The infrastructural challenges these disruptions pose are already being exposed, and it remains to be seen whether African countries will have the capacity, resources, and political will to reinvent their education sectors to meet a post-COVID world. African countries will also need to ensure that research productivity, already low before the pandemic, can rebound quickly. While these are some of the system-wide issues to consider, it’s also important to understand how individuals in the academic and research sectors are being impacted by the pandemic.

In April, the Mawazo Institute carried out an online survey targeting students, researchers, and other stakeholders, and as discussed in this brief (published as part of the Africa Portal’s thought leadership series on COVID-19 and innovation in Africa), we found that the vast majority of respondents we surveyed were experiencing disruptions to classroom learning. Despite this, only 38.5% of respondents were enrolled in institutions currently offering e-learning alternatives. For those engaged in lab or field research prior to the pandemic, a majority reported that their research activities had been suspended.

Mawazo Institute Survey Report: The Impact of COVID-19 on Africa’s Higher Education System

Early-career women researchers, who make up Mawazo’s main target beneficiary group, were shown to be impacted quite differently (unsurprisingly), but we also found some interesting regional variations across East, West and Southern Africa as outlined in our findings section of the summary report, showing the need for both gender-responsive and country-specific interventions in considering how to resolve the structural challenges identified (the full survey results can be accessed here). But despite the challenges noted in our findings, we remain encouraged by the resilience of the continent’s research ecosystem.

In response to the pandemic, for instance, the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), announced a partnership with researchers from Nigeria’s African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases (ACEGID), the Broad Institute of MIT, Harvard University and other research and public health institutions to create a Sentinel project of an early warning system for the continent that will help predict and prevent emerging viral threats. At the University of Pretoria in South Africa, researchers are working with the World Health Organization (WHO) on a project that aims to discern the efficiency of antiviral treatments on in-hospital mortality, and at the University of Nairobi in Kenya, researchers are involved in several projects, including the construction of a more affordable ventilator prototype, while also participating in a national task force to oversee vaccine trials.

Entrepreneurs like Ronald Osumba, are also helping pioneer new methods for contract tracing that take local contexts into account. Osumba, who is Kenyan, is the creative brain behind the contact tracing app “mSafari”, which tracks passengers who use public transport across the country by encouraging them to pay fares using mobile money transfers, instead of cash. Inventions like Ronald’s are characteristic of a region of the world where even with limited resources, scientists, experts, innovators, and technologists continue to move the narrative forward.

For Listening

“Podcast 1: Overview on COVID-19 and Africa CDC’s response across the continent by Dr John Nkengasong” Africa CDC. 30 March 2020. https://africacdc.org/audio/podcast-1-overview-on-covid-19-and-africa-cdc-response-across-the-continent-by-dr-john-nkengasong/

Sound Africa, COVID in Africa Podcast: https://soundafrica.org/covid-in-africa/

For Watching:

“Are African countries staying ahead of the coronavirus? I Inside Story” 29 May 2020. Al Jazeera English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ot3bEm5aTwU

“Reimagining the Healthcare Systems” The Elephant. 12 June 2020. https://www.theelephant.info/videos/2020/06/12/reimagining-the-healthcare-systems

For Reading:

“Across Africa, a reliance on the informal sector threatens effective coronavirus lockdowns” 4 April 2020. Quartz Africa. https://qz.com/africa/1831785/coronavirus-citizens-in-africas-informal-economy-try-to-survive/

“DNA Day 2020: Understanding Zoonotic Diseases in the Era of COVID 19.” Mawazo Institute. 24 April 2020. https://mawazoinstitute.org/blog-posts/2020/4/24/dna-day-2020-understanding-zoonotic-diseases-in-the-era-of-covid-19-1

Mugo, Kari, Odera, Naliaka and Maina Wachira. “Surveying the impact of COVID-19 on Africa's higher education and research sector”. Africa Portal. 8 June 2020. https://www.africaportal.org/features/surveying-impact-covid-19-africas-higher-education-and-research-sectors/

Mugo Mugo, Patrick. “COVID-19 Response: What Uganda and Rwanda Got Right and What Kenya, Tanzania and Burundi Didn’t.” The Elephant. 18 June 2020. https://www.theelephant.info/features/2020/06/18/covid-19-response-what-uganda-and-rwanda-got-right-and-what-kenya-tanzania-and-burundi-didnt

Nanyingi, Dr. Mark. “Predicting COVID-19: what applying a model in Kenya would look like.” The Conversation. 30 March 2020. https://theconversation.com/predicting-covid-19-what-applying-a-model-in-kenya-would-look-like-134675

Viglione, Giuliana. “Are women publishing less during the pandemic? Here’s what the data say.” nature.  20 May 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01294-9