Africa

Africa will certainly change after the pandemic. From what can be seen and predicted so far it will not be a rosy future, but we can seize some opportunities for a radical transformation. In the last days of April in this sister land of Europe and Italy the victims of the virus were contained. But we know that, due to the fragility of public health systems, a pandemic could cause three million deaths according to WHO calculations. In fact, almost everything is missing under the health side: hospitals, doctors, laboratories and diagnostic tools. This impossibility of knowing who is sick, along with the very low average age (in Africa there are not many to age) and probably in the warm climate explains the low number of victims.

This situation is not only the result of poverty and underdevelopment, but also of corruption that afflicts the health system, of robbery of the best young brains who after specialist studies in the West do not return home to treat their fellow citizens for low wages and lack of facilities.

Another obstacle that seems insurmountable is prevention, especially in overcrowded slums without drinking water. If overcrowding is an epochal phenomenon of large cities it can instead counteract the lack of drinking water by helping people access to improve hygiene and cure so many diseases in addition to  Covid. Perhaps social distance is a privilege in huts and shacks and markets. But drinking water is not, it is a right.

Unfortunately, the forecasts of the major international financial institutions after two decades of relative development are catastrophic. Since February, the sub-Saharan area has been experiencing a continuous capital flight. The repercussions run through every sector, including services such as tourism and airlines. And the economic contagion that comes from the EU includes the predictable decline in migrant remittances, on average equal to 2.5%-3% of the entire African economy but with a much higher weight for some countries.

African states do not have the financial resources or infrastructure capacity or human resources to counteract the economic and social effects of the pandemic as European countries are doing. The richest countries in the G20 have granted the poorest the suspension of bilateral debt payments until at least the end of the year. But the international institutions that allow debt relief so that states can use those billions to deal with the pandemic, then send money to rain, disappear for corruption and continue to be addictive. Then there is the hunger emergency to be faced because probably 250 million people will not be able to feed themselves with crops cut by climate change, the record swarm of locusts and now the problem of lock  down. We will face other waves of migration with tragedies, deaths, exploitation and walls in Europe. But the dramatic picture also provides an opportunity for Africa to rethink its future, no longer by competition between states but in a unified way.

It's the great lesson of the pandemic. There have also been good practices on the part of the population. In the Tigrai refugee camps. In Ethiopia as in so many countries, for example, solidarity initiatives have been made to make masks, distribute soap, create fountains inthestreets and to washtheir hands, to raise awareness of good hygiene practices, distribution of food kits. In Kenya, two young men using car parts built a pulmonary ventilator. Only a more politically compact and sympathetic Africa can renegotiate alliances with China and with Europe. And it can overcome the great challenges of sustainable development, public health, malnutrition and access to water. Corruption will take more time and an alliance with European civil societies. But this path seems inevitable.