Reading a December 6 release from Southern African Development Community, SADC Chairperson, President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera of Malawi on the recent travel bans slapped on Africa by Europe and America in a bid to control the spread of Omicron, the new SARS-Cov-2 variant, I shrank in shame how in that release Southern Africa grovelled at the feet of Asia, Europe and America.
Not that I had expected an otherwise reaction from the Community, as I know that the relations between the black continent and the other two has often taken the unequal master-servant form influenced by the dynamics of colonialism, race and ethnicity (see the book Unequal Relations by Augie Fleras). That said, I found something cringeworthy in that release, especially, in the last but one (or say second to last) paragraph where SADC inter alia, said:
“We call upon all countries that have imposed travel bans on Southern Africa to rescind their decisions to avoid further economic damage to our region and elsewhere and to avoid further hampering multilateral efforts to end this global pandemic.”
Now, Southern African Development Community, SADC, mindful that such bans come not only with health but equally economic toll heavy for the sub-region’s shoulder, urges Europe and America “to rescind their decisions to avoid further economic damage to our region…”, as the statement read in part. For Africa, south or north of, it does not require taking the path of reciprocity or what we know as “diplomacy of consequence,” since Africa hardly have any option it can leverage to its advantage in such unequal relations; far from the much-talked-about “soft power” in international relations!
Ebola Virus and recently Coronavirus both have showed how Africa is perceived by the West, including the need for her autochthonous institutions to be strengthened. Africa needs to raise the scales given these recent experiences than merely lament. I could not process the fact that even when globally the index case of Coronavirus was reported in Wuhan of Hubei Province, China, the same China was by the last quarter of 2020 treating Africans as originators of the pandemic which left one wondering what would have been her fate had the disease emanated from Africa!
At this rate, Africa would only keep getting barrage of bans from the West, including from Asia, if it does not look inward regionally to devise means out of this cringefest, because available facts about the virus show that through mutation many variants and strains could be in the offing. A recent data showed that Africa at the moment still produces only 1% of the vaccines used in the continent while the rest, 99%, comes from outside! The goal, the source further said, was to increase that figure by 60% through a multi-year project by 2040, before Africa’s 2063 agenda. The meaning of having other continents supply 99% of the drugs and vaccines for her is that Africa’s life and survival is at the mercy of Europe, America and Asia. This is why vaccine nationalism has dealt a blow on Africa’s vaccine need, creating a vaccine gap between the world’s rich (haves) and poor (have nots), even when the WHO, through Covax initiative, aims at having billions of vaccines shipped to the black continent. The alternative, going forward, now lies at the door of Africa Centre for Disease Control, Africa CDC to strengthen regional health institutions and ensure transnational and multilateral partnership that provides the much-needed therapeutic breakthrough.
Vaccine nationalism? In a moment!
India’s Serum Institute, producer of AstraZeneca vaccine, also a major contributor to the WHO-backed Covax initiative recently suffered a huge setback following India’s domestic policy requiring vaccines to be piled up (hoarding?) should another wave of the virus hit the nation. In this, Africa, alongside other low income countries (LICs), is the most stricken. Again, nations like America, Canada and the UK, who have African nations today in their red list, have all acquired vaccines enough to inoculate their citizens and populations five times over in most cases, meaning that instead of shipping these vaccines to a continent with vaccine need, these nations prefer to play what I may call “vaccine beggar-thy-neighbour.” It does not go to say that these nations by protecting their nationals are totally wrong either, but that the cost of such policy comes with hard-hitting consequences for the so-called developing world.
I read the release from UK’s Mission in Nigeria where the High Commissioner, Catriona Laing said the reason for the ban on Nigeria and other countries was to allow Britain time to better understand everything about the virus, which is a new variant. Indeed, like other variants before it (Alfa, Beta, Delta and Gamma, all named using Greek alphabets as approved by WHO’s taxonomy), the molecular structure and behaviour of the new Omicron variant of the virus need to be scientifically decoded. But the moral questions served on us today are: Why was it that Omicron, which was only recently named this November after South Africa reported the variant, is being treated as “African disease/variant” whereas we know the history of Wuhan, the mother of all variants? Why, one may ask, is a nation like Netherlands which is seriously affected by Omicron not in any nation’s red list? How do we deal with the fact that in the SADC release cited hereinabove, there was no talk of sub-regional cooperation to defeat the monster that is Omicron, instead a plea for Europe, America and Asia to reconsider their stance?
You see, it is not in talking tough or threatening sanctions that solutions to any human problems are found. This goes to Lai Mohammed, Buhari’s information minister. Lai, in his press conference, berated Canada, UK, Indonesia and Singapore over the travel ban he said was “discriminatory” and vowed to reciprocate in equal measure, almost belabouring the point. Nigeria’s problem, like that of SADC and by extension other African nations, lies in the area of weak institutions and dysfunctional leadership. Lai, ironically, was issuing his statement the same time the Nigerian media spaces – both traditional and social – were awash with news of how ₦9billion Covid-19 war chest (intervention fund) given to NCDC, the institution and Centre charged with the mandate of controlling the spread of transmissible and communicable diseases, got diverted to personal accounts of staff of the Centre with no care or respect for our procurement laws and due diligence!
Nigerian travellers today are required to go through series of tests, including PCR test, at entry points of other countries, even after having been declared Covid-19-free back home. This speaks to the fact that the West is not unaware of Nigeria’s corruption, including inefficient management of her Coronavirus regime. A nation whose authorities hoarded palliatives the West and other donors sent her from her starving poor during lockdown cannot be trusted to come clean with vaccination by the same West; it’s no more than the nation deserves. Though the odds appear stacked against her, Nigeria can still better and beat the record she set in 2014 when during Ebola outbreak she earned the respect of WHO as a result of her competent handling of that regime in West Africa.
There is a need now for Nigeria and Africa to begin to think and take seriously the issue of locally sourced and produced vaccine, for during the first wave of the virus, Nigeria lost her young and senior citizens, including top government dignitaries and political has-beens, to Coronavirus-related ailments. The fact, also, that the global lockdown – during which time the world got broken into isolated tiny dots with travel restrictions leaving Nigerian and African elite trapped at home, unable to access foreign healthcare, dying in most cases – should have allowed Nigeria and Africa an ample space to build her defences leveraging that intervening period before the measure was eased remains a regret in hindsight. Yet Africa missed and learned nothing. The worst thing, and I lamented it during that era, was that while Oxford University and AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals Ltd. combinedly embarked on a research project that birthed a vaccine, Nigerian universities were on strike over issues of nonpayment of salary arrears to lecturers. Times like this should teach us the need to strengthen our own institutions, focus more on ourselves, for how we treat ourselves is how the West, and by extension Asia, will treat us. Period.
How Nigeria made it to the travel ban list of the United Kingdom being the only West African nation among other eight (8) South African nations like Malawi, Lesotho, Eswatini and others gave me a lot to worry about. The AU, ECOWAS, CENSSAD, SADC and other such African regional and sub-regional bodies must come together to change this narrative, also should Africa’s rich men and women endow universities or institutes with funds the same way the West is doing and getting results and breakthroughs like: PFizer, BioNTech, Johnson and Johnson, Moderna and the like. Organisations such as Commonwealth, EU and the rest may not do much for Africa like the WHO is trying now because the virus is still plaguing and ravaging them. After all Singapore, United Kingdom and Canada who have restricted their routes and spaces to Nigeria today are all members of British Commonwealth with Nigeria.
More should be done to reduce the prevalent vaccine hesitancy which corruption like that ₦9bn scandal plaguing the NCDC would only heighten as people tend to believe that the virus does not exist and therefore is just a conduit for politicians to syphon funds. Education should be sustained and researches increased. The rejection of her travellers by the West and Asia should not leave Africa wallowing and lamenting, she can turn it to her advantage. It was here in Nigeria, West Africa that Augustine Njoku Obi found cholera vaccine which the WHO said was “efficacious.” What, in the world, will happen if Africa found her own cure of the virus today? What, I simply ask?
Omicron is here and while we wait our fate with UK ban review by December 20, let me ask: quo vadis, Africa?
