HISTORICALLY, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.
The sly virus! A second wave! A second economic wringer! An influence; hidden and oblique, never mentioning the flu by name.
Reticence! This experience searing in the subconscious will emerge indirectly.
Loud silence! The flu waves are not only deadly but also inducing a kind of silence, a collective amnesia, as if it’s not happening because, as historically, life goes on.
Historically, also, pandemics bring impacts that last far longer than the virus itself. One hundred years after the Bubonic Plague, the "Black Death” of 1347–1350, Europe’s population was smaller than it was before. This shattering impact had incisive economic consequences creating labor shortages, higher wages, and the rise of European middle class. The famous Spanish flu of 1918 infected 30 percent of the world’s population, putting to sleep between 3 and 6 percent. Children born were found to have lower education consummation, higher rates of physical impairment, superlative to lower incomes when compared to cohorts not born at this time.
In Africa, it remains misty and inexact what the long-term economic consequences are. What appears on the cards is the economic ramification of COVID-19 could last much long-drawn-out than the sly virus itself.
Understanding the pandemic waves in Africa requires a skillful grasp of its diverse impacts, ASAP. The number of infections in early December 2020 ranged from as low as 8 (Tanzania) to as high as 19,673 (Cape Verde), a difference of 2,500-fold. How countries are affected economically are in part related to how they are fazed epidemiologically.
Macro-economically, The African Union parcels economic impact into exogenous(within) and endogenous(without). The exogenous effects are related to trade between continents; declines in remittances, reduced foreign direct investment-FDI, reductions in official development assistance-ODA, etc. Endogenous effects directly associate with the spread of COVID-19 in Africa, including the morbidity and mortality of Labour, as well as limit access to local trade.
The World Bank, 2020, extrapolated that the global economy would grow by 2.5 percent. By June of 2020, that projection had changed to -5.2 percent. African nations are equally standing akimbo.
These declines will not be immediately reversed with the introduction of a vaccine and the end to lockdowns.
Deficit, Deficiency, Debt: Numerous countries faced a high debt to GDP ratio going into the pandemic; Eritrea (189 percent), Cape Verde (124 percent) and Mozambique (104 percent).
South Africa has benefited from an IMF debt moratorium. They will amount to approximately $4.2 billion and will need to be repaid 40 months after the first disbursement. Nigeria is projected to receive $3.4 billion of funding while Ghana is projected to receive $1.0 billion. Overall, IMF financing could reach $16 billion.
Health: African countries face several health impacts indirectly related to COVID-19, predominantly because people are unable or unwilling to access essential health services. One study in Kenya estimated that a suspension of tuberculosis services would result in 24,700 additional tuberculosis cases and 12,500 deaths over the next five years, a 36 percent malaria rise with between 20,000 and 100,000 deaths. Global analyses projects two million additional women being unable to use modern contraceptive methods and an additional 15 million cases of Gender Based Violence (GBV).
Poverty. According to the World Bank, these waves could push up to 150 million people globally into extreme poverty by end of 2021. For many African families, economic progress is determined in large part by changes in income. Are families earning more or less than they were the previous years? The results appear to indicate significant losses in income. Data is worrying. Already impoverished households may be incurring impacts that are pushing families further into poverty.
Education. A harsh context for myself and 99 percent of students in low- and middle-income countries. While the closure of schools has a direct impact on children and their ability to become educated, it also has an impact on their nutrition, the ability of parents to work, and the protection against GBV that being in school provides, especially for girls and young women.
It is going to be hard to go back to normal, especially now that we are constantly informed that we cannot go back to normal.
—Lionel Shriver, Spiked (May 11, 2020)
Derick B. Wesonga is a medical student passionate about policy.
The views expressed in this article are of the author.
derickb.wesonga@gmail.com