Keywords

The chapters in this book have examined the implications of the Covid-19 pandemic and the early containment and support measures by governments to respond to its projected impacts on the fortunes of African economies, societies, and democratic politics. They also consider the implications for the livelihoods of working people, poverty, and inequalities. While the studies were preliminary, they enable us to draw some conclusions on a range of issues. This conclusion discusses a few of the key findings and notes their implications for policy. These include (a) the need to pay attention to pre-existing economic weaknesses and structural inequalities; (b) the importance of policy sovereignty; and c) the need to build stronger and more effective democracies and social policy institutions and infrastructure.

Pre-existing Economic, Social, and Political Conditions Cast a Long Shadow

As the African Union and other commentators noted, the Covid-19 pandemic was a health crisis with profound socioeconomic consequences for countries and their populations in Africa (African Union, 2020). The twelve studies presented in this book, which have focused on the first year of the pandemic have demonstrated that the degree of the impacts on sectors of the economy and people depends on pre-existing socioeconomic conditions prevalent in a country. Similarly, countries’ responses to the crisis also closely derive from their resource base and are contingent on the nature and state of government institutions in these countries. This demonstrated clear interlinkages between structural conditions and responses to pandemic impacts.

Of the twelve countries, only four—Ghana, Tunisia, Kenya, and Nigeria are lower-middle income, while the other eight are low-income countries. Most of the twelve countries, in keeping with the situation in Africa are primary export commodity-dependent and agrarian and therefore have been exposed to the global market turbulence blamed on Covid-19-related trade disruptions. In addition, the services sectors contribute substantially to the GDP of countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Tunisia, and Uganda. These are also countries with substantial informal economies which concentrate largely precarious forms of work. Thus structural informality is the norm in most study countries, with Tunisia as an outlier which has a bigger formal economy. These economic factors generate social issues which have been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and policy responses.

On the question of institutional capacity, the studies found that a few countries such as Rwanda and Tunisia had more robust data and targeting systems, while others such as Ghana and Nigeria had deficits in the availability of data. Rwanda’s decentralisation structure and robust datasets enhanced social protection targeting. The lack of robust datasets and national social registers had an adverse effect on Covid-19 responses. However, the Rwanda case also demonstrates that data while important, is not sufficient. Although programme delivery has been efficient due to existing robust data used for social protection and the decentralisation of implementation at the village level, the excessive use of preventive measures did not compensate for the heavy impacts on vulnerable social groups.

The state of politics and democracy in a country was also an important dimension of Covid-19 management. Politically, Covid-19 represented a crisis within a crisis with heightened security threats related to Islamic insurgencies of different degrees of severity in countries such as Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali, Mozambique, and Nigeria. Other countries were facing different types of insecurities. Ethiopia was on the brink of civil war while political instability arising from the Arab Spring had unsettled Tunisia. In Ghana's case, elections in 2020 heightened partisan tensions and partisanship and distrust of government. These political challenges affected citizens’ engagement and compliance with pandemic containment and support measures.

Why Policy Sovereignty and Democratic Politics Are Important

The twelve country studies found that many countries were prompt, proactive, and zealous in some cases in their responses to the Covid-19 outbreak. As well, country responses were quite common across the board in that they consisted of containment measures such as social distancing, face mask-wearing, restrictions on mobility, and sanitary and hygienic practices, among others. The measures were remarkably similar. This was not surprising given the influence of Africa CDC, WHO, and donors on policymaking in Africa. Country lockdowns were on a continuum between severe and long-duration lockdowns such as those experienced in Rwanda and selective and shorter lockdowns in Ghana and Benin.

Given the lack of resilience of economies and institutions, and the poor state of health sector infrastructure across Africa, the Covid-19 containment measures adopted by governments are understandable since the fallouts from high rates of infection could be devastating. However, in their excessive zeal, States paid scant attention to human rights and human dignity, and in some cases, there were serious human rights abuses, particularly concerning curfews in Rwanda, Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria.

Related to this, citizens in some countries such as Rwanda modelled high levels of compliance with Covid-19 regulations while in Ethiopia and Tunisia, compliance with restrictions was more mixed. Despite the differences in the severity of contaminant measures and mixed levels of citizen compliance, there were no marked differences in levels of infections and success with containment.

The structure of Covid-19 policy decision-making is a common thread in the studies, which found that centralisation and top-down approaches remained the norm. This excluded the voice of the people, CSOs, and other groups from the policy space. The concentration of decision-making power and information asymmetry deepened citizens’ mistrust and distrust of the State creating a distance between the people and their government. Given the dire data situation, the lack of consultation with wider segments of society could not have helped the observed lapses in targeting beneficiaries of assistance in several countries. Even when the government used its information systems, as in Rwanda, there have been concerns about patronage and the misuse of local government power to exclude certain categories of persons.

The fact that almost all study countries experienced some form of pandemic-related protests (see Tsikata and Torvikey, 2022) and non-compliance with protocols is an expression of dissatisfaction and disenchantment with the handling of the pandemic by State. The pushback from citizens resulted in some countries such as Niger reconsidering their measures while others such as Nigeria and Rwanda used lethal force to quell resistance and force compliance. These findings point to the importance of paying attention to differences in context and involving citizens in crafting responses to crises in order that government actions do not squander the goodwill of citizens and threaten the democratic dispensation.

Responses to COVID-19 Were Poorly Targeted and Biased in Favour of Certain Social Groups and Spaces

The studies found that pre-existing class, gender, spatial and generational inequalities, weak social protection programmes, and weak social data required for intervention planning and targeting affected the outcomes of responses to the pandemic. There were structural biases in responses that shaped the effects of preventive measures and access to support measures.

In countries such as Ethiopia and Rwanda, Covid-19 prevention-centric measures increased the vulnerability of many people without adequate compensatory support measures. There have been ambiguities, contradictions, and ambivalences of measures and their outcomes for social groups that have widened inequality and worsened the precarious material conditions of certain groups. In Ghana, for example, the authorities intercepted young vulnerable female head porters travelling to their home region to contain the spread of COVID-19 and brought them back to Accra. This exposed them to more vulnerabilities as they were also targets for harassment by city authorities on suspicion that they were vectors in the spread of the virus. Land border closures were common in all countries, and they proved damaging to food security and the livelihoods of small traders.

Furthermore, the public and education authorities adjudged school closures to have been premature, too long and damaging in accentuating inequalities in access to certain kinds of e-learning media and depriving poor children of the benefits of school feeding programmes.

The studies have shown that the pandemic responses in the health sector which included the construction, refurbishment, and conversion of existing health facilities, undermined the capacity of the health sector to undertake non-Covid-19 health interventions. This was the case in Uganda and Kenya where the neglect of equally important health crises increased the vulnerabilities of people who most needed other health care services. In addition, Covid-19 centric health measures did not put measures in place to protect groups with pre-existing health conditions that were most vulnerable to Covid-19 infections.

In sum, preventive protocols failed to take account of the informality of spaces and work and therefore deepened the vulnerability of informal workers. Thus, women, rural dwellers, urban poor, workers in the informal economy and ununionised or unorganised workers were the mostly adversely affected by the pandemic and its containment measures. Paradoxically, these categories of people benefitted less from social support programmes than formal unionised workers. Few countries such as Tunisia and Ethiopia took proactive measures to protect workers’ rights with measures such as the suspension of layoffs. Benin implemented measures targeted at artisans. However, these measures targeted formal workers, and not those in the informal economy.

In relation to mitigating and support measures, the country studies highlighted the use of universally applied support measures such as utility subsidies. However, the structural inequalities in the provision of infrastructure that supports these services meant that they benefitted the wealthy instead of the populations most in need. This is because there are existing rural–urban divides and poor and non-poor gaps in access to services. Even support measures, such as business stimuli which target businesses, exclude the very poor and those operating without a modicum of formality such as registration and tax identification number ownership. Many of these sectors are traditionally dominated by women. In addition, during the period, several governments gave tax waivers. As many of these were on consumption, they benefitted the rich more than the poor.

Since the pandemic also had implications for livelihoods and the larger economy, governments instituted mitigation measures such as social support for the poor and the most adversely affected and economic stimulus packages for businesses in many countries. The country studies have shown in many ways how such support measures deepened inequalities since governments policies did not take into account the gaps in the ownership of specific infrastructure such as electricity and water metres, which shape access, and terms of condition and procedures of access.

Several of the research countries expanded social protection programmes numerically or enhanced the social packages. Nigeria for example, increased the eligible numbers on its national social register while Ghana enhanced cash transfer access conditions. However, the overwhelming conclusion was that these programmes were inadequate and so left out many vulnerable social groups. The inadequacy of the support measures has been a common finding of the country studies. Even countries with more robust social protection programmes faced challenges. Tunisia, which was already addressing inequalities through mass social protection programmes before Covid-19, had to confront issues of bureaucratic red tape which restricted access for vulnerable groups, and budgetary pressures which cut short useful programmes. Not surprisingly, Covid-19 has generated many discussions about social protection and the role of the state in social provisioning in health, education, food security, and protecting livelihoods.

In sum, while mitigation and stimulus measures were appropriate, they were poorly targeted and implemented. They showed biases against rural and informal economies and women and therefore exacerbated structural inequalities against those just above the poverty line. For example, in Tunisia and Rwanda, it was itinerant workers had to suffer some of the consequences of the mobility restrictions. In Ghana, it was against certain regions such as the poor north and rural and informal workers.

In conclusion, tackling poverty is different from tackling inequalities. Tackling inequalities requires measures that respond to the structural basis of inequalities, and not to the immediate pandemic effects. The fact that many countries identified urban areas as being the most affected and threw resources at them shows the structural biases and the delinking of urban economies from the rural ones. Apart from the incorrect assumptions about how to reach the poorest of the poor involved in the choice and method of application of these measures, the measures were short-term and ignored pre-existing structural inequalities such as regional, rural–urban, income, and gender, among others. As a result, beneficiaries of both economic and social protection measures were only a minuscule proportion of those suffering dislocation and the opportunity to address inequalities was lost. The pandemic raised new awareness about the need for robust social policies and effective protection programmes for the vulnerable in society which must be part of the systems in place to address structural inequalities and poverty.