COVID-19 across Africa: Colonial Hangovers, Racial Hierarchies, and Medical Histories

Abstract

Abstract In the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, few journalists or scholars in Europe and North America paid much attention to how people or governments were responding to SARS-coV-2 anywhere in Africa. As the pandemic progressed, in fact, key agencies—from the World Economic Forum to the Economic Commission for Africa to the Global Health Security Index—all predicted or implied that there would be catastrophic fatality rates in African countries. Two French scientists shared these assumptions, going on live television on April 1 to discuss whether the BCG tuberculosis vaccine might protect people from the worst effects of COVID-19 and proposing new BCG vaccine trials in “Africa” because, they alleged, protections would be minimal and infection rates high, offering ideal conditions to test their theories. This article takes the controversy that stemmed from the French scientists’ comments as a point of departure, connecting it to African medical and imperial histories, on the one hand, and more recent histories of randomized controlled trials and global (health) governance on the other. Between January and November 2020, African nations, peoples, and pan-African organizations did better with COVID-19 than any other region of the world. Yet, there are understandable—if insidious—reasons why the continent’s success stories have not reached wider audiences: they run so contrary to (outside) expectations and belie the implicit predictions of different country rankings in global health. This kind of strategic erasure gets reproduced time and again within global institutions, creating semipermanent obstacles to African nations’ (therapeutic) sovereignty and (medical) self-determination.

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