Pandemic within pandemics: racism, hunger, and insecurity in Africa

Abstract

The paper reveals that strengthening the social protection system is an essential prerequisite for increasing the resilience of populations against COVID-19, racism, hunger and insecurity. Basic social safety net programmes designed to fight poverty and chronic vulnerability must therefore be popularised on a larger scale and be more targeted. At the continental level, covid-19 racism has manifested mostly as the articulation of scepticism and condescension by the West against Africa and Africans in a fashion that blurs the artificial geographic fissures between North and African countries. The pandemic has had a direct and indirect impact on the protection situation of the most vulnerable populations and an exacerbation of the number of people with nutritional deficiencies. With COVID, populations face a physical (closure of markets, disruption of distribution chains, etc.) and/or financial (loss of income, rise in food prices) inability to access healthy and diverse food. Vulnerable populations are more affected in terms of access because they are more dependent on the market for their supplies to meet food and nutritional needs. Security forces, including police and the army, were deployed to enforce the restrictions, sparking deadly confrontations in some parts of Africa. The restrictions of movement during the COVID-19 resulted in the upsurge in cases of rape and other sexual and gender-based violence in
Nigeria. It emphasized further that, while it has become crucial for governments to enforce lockdown measures during the pandemic, the rights of citizens must be guaranteed in accordance with national laws and international human rights conventions. Insecurity involved extra-judicial killings, Boko Haram and ISWAP insurgency, cult-related clashes and farmers-herdsmen clashes. Many security personnel were also lost to the pandemic and terrorist attacks. Security forces should be more proactive in taming the scourge of terrorism, banditry and kidnappings that has threatened many vulnerable communities. Conflict resolution processes and peacekeeping should be re-prioritised in order to achieve sustainable development. To this end, different official documents, research articles, archives, and other online reportages related to COVID-19, racism, hunger, and insecurity in Africa were reviewed to achieve the objective of this paper. Priority must be given to actions that would ensure renaissance, recovery and resilience in post-coronavirus era.