Health Effects Of The Covid-19 Pandemic In Africa

While Africa has, so far, been spared from the worst public health effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the subsequent economic shutdown has brought Africa’s economic deficiencies and structural vulnerabilities into sharp focus. As a resource-rich continent, Africa has the capacity to provide a decent quality of life for all of its inhabitants.

Africa is capable of offering universal public services, such as healthcare and education, and guaranteeing employment for people who want to work, while ensuring a decent income support system for those who cannot work. However, decades of colonial and postcolonial socioeconomic dislocation exacerbated by market liberalization have forced African countries into a vicious cycle involving several structural deficiencies, characterized by:

• a lack of food sovereignty

• a lack of energy sovereignty

• low value-added manufacturing and extractive industries

This unholy trinity produces a very painful downward pressure on African exchange rates, which means higher prices for imports of vital necessities such as food, fuel, and life-saving medical products. In order to protect people from this type of imported inflation, African governments borrow foreign currencies in order to artificially keep African currencies ‘strong’ relative to the US dollar and the euro. This artificial ‘band-aid’ solution forces African economies into a frantic mode of economic activity focused exclusively on earning dollars or euros to service this external debt.

As a result, Africa’s economies have been trapped into an austerity model, often enforced via conditions set by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as the constant pressure from other creditors to protect their political and economic interests, which further encroaches on the economic, monetary, and political sovereignty of African countries. Conditions imposed by the IMF and international creditors usually focus on five problematic and unfruitful policy strategies:

(1) export-oriented growth

(2) liberalization of foreign direct investment (FDI)

(3) over-promotion of tourism

(4) privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs)

liberalization of financial markets

Each one of these strategies is a trap disguised as an economic solution. Export-led growth increases imports of energy, high value-added capital equipment and industrial components, and encourages the grabbing of land and resources, but only increases the exports of low value-added products. And, of course, not all developing countries can simultaneously follow such a model.

If some countries want to achieve a trade surplus, there must be others willing to run a trade deficit. FDI-led growth increases energy imports, and forces African countries into an endless race to the bottom in order to attract investors via tax breaks, subsidies, and weaker labor and environmental regulations.

It also leads to financial volatility and significant net resource transfers to rich countries, with some taking the form of illicit financial flows. Tourism increases both energy and food imports, while adding substantial environmental costs in terms of its carbon footprint and water use. Most SOEs were privatized in the 1990s (e.g. telecoms, electric companies, airlines, airports, etc.). Further privatization will devastate whatever little social safety nets remain under public control.