WHY HAS AFRICA FARED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE REST OF THE WORLD WITH COVID-19?

 AFRICA IS BEST:

MY BROTHER Ntong Victor Sunday HAS PUT ME TO THE QUESTION: WHY HAS AFRICA FARED SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE REST OF THAT WORLD WITH COVID 19?

By:

Gilbert Morris

The African region is the best performing region in the pandemic. Africa’s total deaths are less than 10% of the United State’s daily deaths.

But what are the structural reasons for Africa’s superb performance?

1. SWIFT ACTION: In February 2020, a number of African nations - like Lesotho - shut down public institutions immediately, whilst implementing social protocols. Students of strategy should not see this as merely a decision to act quickly. Instead, it must also be seen as a tactical understanding of the implications of low facilities capacity and financial resources. Understanding these facts about their status, led African governments to act to prevent even the “best case scenarios”.

2. YOUNG POPULATION - I have written that the future belongs to Africa because its the youngest of all regions of the world. It turns out that this is also crucial for Covid 19 infections, since (at least initially), Covid 19 attacked the elderly disproportionately to younger persons. Africa has an added benefit: it does not “warehouse” its elderly. Africa and Japan - followed by the Caribbean - are the zones in which the elderly enjoy a near sacred deference; though in the Caribbean, we are beginning to copy American and European models of parking the elderly in ‘death barns’.

3. POPULATION DISTRIBUTION - Most African nations are arranged and operate on the “city-village” dynamic. As such, the elderly tend to live in the village, whilst younger people crowd to cities. This means the most vulnerable demographic were largely outside the hotspots for Covid 19 infections.

4. COMMUNITY vs. COMMERCIAL HEALTHCARE: Africa - for the most part - does not have large commercial healthcare systems, as in the US and Europe. It turns out that these commercial systems are not very flexible and could not react swiftly to the onslaught of the virus spread. They were limited in capacity, manpower and resources. In Africa, 90% of healthcare is delivered by small clusters of community clinics and a large volunteer sector. This produces a complex local information ecology, but one which can metabolise the best in formation quickly and adjust immediately at the community prevention and treatment levels.

5. EXPERTISE: Africa has a growing number of experienced medical personnel, (like Dr. Denis Mukwege, Dr. Stella Immanuel and beloved Dr. Evan Atar Adaha), who worked (suffered) through AIDS, Ebola, West Nile, Malaria, Dengue and a host of other maladies. Those physicians - as in Senegal - are amongst the most seasoned medical professionals in the world. In fact, they face a conundrum: come together to collect those skills and knowledge or remain in their communities where they are most effective. What is more important, they must not try to adopt Western Institutional models, which failed miserably in this pandemic. Even in countries like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea or New Zealand, which have the best performance records outside of Africa, those nations followed the same decentralised script as African nations.

6. LOCAL KNOWLEDGES: My favourite aspect of the Africa pandemic story is the local knowledge. In Liberia in 2013-15 International Organisations found themselves not only defeated, but found their medical professionals dying in droves in Liberia in the heat of the Ebola outbreak, which spread to Guinea and Sierra Leone. THEN CAME THE GRANDMOTHERS: quietly, they put the men and boys outdoors on cots under trees and in tents, sanitised the entire homesteads, open the little hovels in which people lived to fresh air, and made everyone stay off the streets, such as they were and cooked soups. This broke the spread to nearly nil. (I THOUGHT THESE WARRIOR GRANNIES DESERVED THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR 2014 and 2015, but they are forever in my heart). This exhibition of local knowledge particularly in places like Monrovia and Bensonville, Liberia (one of my favourites), demonstrated a high degree of “social trust”, the same social trust exhibited in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and South Korea for their nationals governments.

7. CLIMATE: It is now well-established that SAR-CoV2 - the Coronavirus that caused the pandemic Covid 19 retreats in heat and expands in cooler temperatures. It is also interesting to note that in larger segments of Africa, Covid 19 emerged near the end of their Summer and into the Fall. As such, by time as Winter fell, in South Africa for example, three months ago - social practices had hardened already and populations had been well-schooled in the proper protocols, which they followed reinforced by local systems.

These are the major reasons for the low count in Africa of both infections and deaths compared to the rest of the world. I do not doubt there are anomalies in record keeping, categorisation and other statistical integral systems. However, its been 11 months and likely those anomalies would have collapsed by now. I am concerned about the new strains in Britain and South Africa - an unusual distribution pattern - because a virulent strain that replicates the ‘superspreader’ would be deadly, not only in Africa, but worldwide.

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Did Marcus Garvey fail?

Was Marcus Garvey Preaching to The Wrong People?

BY MICHAEL A DINGWALL:

WHEN Marcus Garvey was urging us black people to take charge of our own destiny and become great, almost a century ago, some admired him, while others thought he was some sort of quack.  In this season of Emancipation and Independence, one has to ask: Was Garvey preaching to the wrong people?

At the time when he was preaching, my race, the black race, was the most insignificant on the planet.  Africa was under the control of Europe.

We blacks in the West were totally dependent on the great white powers for our very existence.  Garvey didn't think that black people should be at the bottom of the barrel — being so insignificant and dependent.  In this respect, he was one very unusual black man indeed.

I strongly suspect, though, that Garvey would have still felt the need to preach the same message today, almost a century later.  Though we blacks have made some progress, we still have a very long way to go.  While some of that progress has been had through the efforts of other peoples, other things haven't changed at all.

Take black Africa today.  While preaching, and even before, Africa was controlled by the Western powers.  Her natural resources were being maximised to the fullest to the glory of these powers.  Africans on the continent were either powerless to alter the then situation or willingly gave away these resources.

The same is true today.  These days, it is China that is maximising the resources of Africa to create a Chinese superstate.

Just as it was in the days of slavery, when we gave away our own for trinkets, we are still doing the same today.  The trinkets then were used kitchen utensils, old clothes and even cats; while today, they are cellphones, laptops and shiny new cars.  Garvey would have buried his head in shame at the way his message has been ignored.

We in the West also really didn't give two cents about his message either.  Our island nation-states in the Caribbean are too insignificant to influence any global issue, except entertainment.

Maybe Garvey meant we should be great entertainers; as that is the only area in which we seem good.  Nothing great in governance, science and technology can be truly attributed to us black people -- as we keep our exploits to ourselves, or sell them still for trinkets. Garvey would be very disappointed indeed.

We demonstrate how contrary we have been to his message by our actions.  We think our own universities are worthless.

As such, we crave for the Oxfords, Cambridges, Harvards, and MITs.  We think our music is good only when it is validated with an American Grammy.  We see our societies as totally hopeless — which explains why we fight so hard to get visas to live in the white paradise of North America and Europe.  What was that "Africa for Africans" message again?

I said before that Garvey would have been disappointed, but I sometimes wonder.  In the end, it seems, even he became a realist and realised that he may have been preaching to the wrong people after all.  When the time came for him to retire, he didn't choose his Jamaican homeland or his African would-be homeland.  No, looking at things realistically, he decided that the best place for him after all was Britain.

Maybe the reason he failed to convince us black people that we can be a great people is not only because we think he was nuts — maybe he never really believed his own message either.

July 30, 2013

Jamaica Observer

Can The Youth Save Africa From Neo-Colonialism?

AFRICANGLOBE – In his book, “Neo-Colonialism : The Last Stage of Imperialism, (page11) Kwame Nkrumah cautioned:

‘So long as Africa remains divided, it will therefore be the wealthy consumer countries who will dictate the price of its resources’.

I told you so! This appears to be the bitterness boiling up in the hearts of many Pan-African revolutionaries across the world as Africa gradually sinks into the pit of poverty while its resources are being fleeced for peanuts on a daily basis.

Today, the dangers of Neo-colonialism have become so evident in Africa to the point where no further explanation is necessary. Africa, a continent which claims to be independent has allowed herself to be ordered around, always dancing to the tune of foreign “aid”. This is despite the fact that Dambisa Moyo, a renown Zambian economist and author of the book ‘Dead Aid: Why Aid Is Not Working and How There Is a Better Way for Africa, has clearly demonstrated to our leaders that ‘No nation has ever attained economic development by aid.”

African leaders have over the years obeyed every instruction from the West, yet Africa and its people are no better for it. We’re still indebted to the World Bank and the IMF more than it was 20 year ago. In spite of this, African leaders are not ready to change the old ways of doing things.

To allow a foreign country, especially one which is loaded with economic interests in our continent, to tell us what political courses to follow, is indeed for us to hand back our independence to the oppressor on a silver platter, (Kwame Nkrumah, ‘Consciencism’ pg.102).

The fact is, our founding fathers foresaw the dangers that come with our resolve to rely on the non-Africans to solve all our problems for us. This problem has been compounded by the lack of unity among the African nations.

After 50 years, this statement has become the sad truth. There is not a single African raw material that is traded on the international market which price is determined by Africans. It is now evidently clear that many of our African leaders don’t care whether the solutions to our economic challenges have been well-documented by our founding fathers or not.

It is therefore time for the African youth to step aside these traitors for failing to act in our collective interest as African people.

A new generation of leadership is needed to rise up from among the youth with a determination to save mother Africa from the firm grip of neo-colonialism, political incompetence and corruption which is currently becoming the hallmark of modern African leadership.

Action Plan One: The Role Of the Youth

Earlier in life, I had discovered that if you want something, you had better made some noise. - Malcolm X

It is clear that Africa still remains under-developed because many of the youthful talents that can transform the continent have been ignored for far too long. Nevertheless, this is not a reason for them to give up. It is time for the youth to start making some noise else the status quo will never change. Gather yourselves in front of the parliament buildings and in front of the various African embassies. March in your numbers towards the the stations of the various TV networks.

Whiles you’re there, continue to make noise and Rest Not until their voices are heard and your concerns addressed.

Finally, I therefore put forward an action plan which must be followed in order to ensure that our search for a new generation of incorruptible leaders for the continent becomes a reality within the shortest possible time for the benefit of Mother Africa.

• The African youth must first organise in small groups and create the platforms for dialogue and exchange of ideas.
• The groups must identify and nominate highly incorruptible members as their leaders.
• The groups must have power to remove from office, leaders identified to be corrupt.
• Leaders of the various youth groups must coalesce and draw up a common agenda for the Youth Liberation Movement. All such agenda must focus on youth empowerment including a protest to remove the age-restricted political portfolios from our constitutions.
• The Youth Liberation Movement must remain vocal in their communities, highlighting the challenges of the youth on any given platform.
• It is ideal that the Youth Movement forms a political party solely dedicated to the needs of the youth.
• Leaders of the Youth Movement can thus venture into the political terrain and stand up for the right of the youth. We need more young ones in parliament.
• Where possible, no youth must vote for the old men but rather a candidate nominated from the political parties formed by the youth and dedicated to the youth.

If this is done, the youth can begin to make impact in African leadership and help wrestle power from the old men. It is time for the youth to begin ignoring the old men in elections and rather concentrate on such leaders born out of the Youth Revolutionary Movement who truly have the welfare of the youth at heart. This process if well implemented can help send a strong signal to the world that Africa is now ready for a new generation of revolutionary leaders dedicated to end corruption once and for all.


By: Honourable Saka

The writer is a Pan-African analyst and the founder of the Project Pan-Africa, an organisation established with the sole purpose of unlocking the minds of the African youth to take Africa’s destiny into their hands. He can be reached on e-mail:honourablesaka@yahoo.co.uk.

May 16, 2013

African Globe

While we keep searching for Africa, we are losing our African roots

By Hudson George


Sometimes I wonder what we really know about Africa, since we live in the Diaspora as people of African origins. Since our ancestors were taken from Africa by force, we the children of oppressed slaves have become creolised and, although we dream about Africa as our home, we have lost the true ingredients of African culture.

In this western world, we have been Christianised and those among us who reject Christianity have jumped on some versions of other ideological teachings without looking at the historical facts. For example, some black folks embrace other religious ideologies that are not indigenous to Africa, as a means of emancipating themselves from mental slavery, but in reality the new religions they embrace have no connection with African spirituality.

The dream of returning to Africa will always remain in us as a sort of utopia, as some famous blacks in the United States and the Caribbean advocated that we must go back to the motherland, while they too were creolised and did not understand the complexity of African people and society. Great Pan Africanists such as Sylvester of Trinidad and Tobago and later on Marcus Garvey of Jamaica, who preached back to Africa.

However, these two great black Caribbean activists could not see the bigger picture, why Africans on the continent are so disunited. Additionally, they could not analyse the power and control of African people by the colonisers was more forceful and ruthless than in the Americas, due to the great wealth and resources the African continent possesses that the colonisers want.

In my youthful years I experienced the Bob Marley era and the Rastafarian movement that advocated repatriation of Africans in the Diaspora back to Africa. The Rastafarian movement spread the message of back to Ethiopia and they praised former Ethiopian Emperor King Haile Selassie as the God-sent saviour of African people.

As a youth I enjoyed the reggae music, but I never accepted the Rastafarian teachings about Africans in the Diaspora going back to Africa. At an early age I had an understanding of African and Caribbean history and the geographical location of the slave trade from the west coast of Africa to the Americas. Therefore, I always had the suspicion that we black people in the western world did not come from that special African country, Ethiopia.

In addition, I observed the Rastafarians’ diet, which is vegetarian, and I began to do my own research to find out if there are in tribes in Africa that are vegetarians, and I could find none. Continental Africans eat a lot of wild meat because they have a long history of centuries hunting buffalo, deer, antelope and other wild animals as a source of food. As a matter of fact, Africa has the largest species of wild and domesticated animals and meat as a protein diet is always available for Africans to eat.

The advocacy of smoking marijuana as a holy herb also had me puzzled. Based on oral tradition history handed down to us by our parents and grandparents, they never told us that our ancestors participated in smoking marijuana. However, my parents told me at an early age that marijuana was used by East Indians when they were brought to the Caribbean to work on the sugar plantations. The East Indians used marijuana as a form of ritual when they worshipped a particular Hindu god. However, black people were never involved in Hindu worship.

As we black people in the Americas continue to search for greater connection to Africa, some among us seem to embrace the teaching of Islam, without reading and doing any research to see there is a parallel between Islam and Christianity, as religions used by foreign colonisers to control and conquer land and resources on the African continent. Being as we are a creolised people searching for our African roots, culture and identity, many among us grab at ideologies that seem to be anti-western culture, without understanding the real living experience of the other foreign cultures we embrace.

Now that the Rastafarian movement and teachings have spread widely throughout the western world, it has not really make a big impact on the lifestyle of continental Africans, because they are grounded in some forms of indigenous culture that we blacks in the Americas lost during slavery and colonisation in the past centuries. For example, blacks in the western world do not have any idea how palm wine taste. We never chew khat as some Africans on the Horn of Africa do on a daily basis. Yet still, some blacks among us smoke marijuana and praise Africa with the hopes of repatriation in the future.

Unfortunately, as we continue to dream about going back to Africa and to be more Africanised, we are basically destroying the African culture that remains within our society. The majority of young blacks in the Americas today do not participate in the old Negro spirituality as our grandparents did. They lack the knowledge of the African spirituality that our grandparents held on to during the days of colonisation, when black people used to congregate and pray in one voice, with one goal, for the same cause.

Today as I look around, I see my black sisters wearing artificial straight hair, while covering the beautiful coarse curly African hair they are genetically born with. Some young black youths have rings pierced in their nose, lips and eyebrows. In addition, they have tattoos all over their body without a clue why they are piercing their skin with life-lasting marks that one day they might greatly regret.

Unfortunately, as we people in the western world dream about going back to our African roots, the further we are distancing ourselves from mother Africa. It is a shame. It is sad but that is a fact. While we keep searching for Africa, we are losing our African roots.

June 07, 2012

caribbeannewsnow

The Africa-Caribbean connection

by Bevan Springer:

Following recent visits to Africa and the Caribbean, more and more the Africa-Caribbean connection appears to me to be worth serious exploration.

I always felt this during my educational pursuits in North America and remain indebted to my West African brothers and sisters for teaching me so much about the French language, not to mention helping me pass my examinations!

After an incredible visit to the mother continent, I invited my media colleague Ogo Sow and tourism executive Aziz Gueye - both from Senegal - to the Caribbean for a taste of West Indian hospitality after they so graciously hosted yours truly and a group of media and travel representatives in Senegal a month earlier.

The ease with which my African brothers assimilated into Caribbean culture while attending the Caribbean Media Exchange on Sustainable Tourism (CMEx) meeting in St Lucia this month was heartwarming, but even more so was their collective will to promote tourism to the region and encourage more Caribbean nationals to set foot in the land whence we came.

So just how do we do promote cultural exchanges between the Caribbean and Africa, or America and Africa? How do we explore trade opportunities? How do we create new communications links among media organisations and the more contemporary social media platforms? How do we trace our roots and let our children and grandchildren understand the richness of our African heritage?

Well, New York native Gregg Truman, considered an honorary West Indian after spending numerous years working for Air Jamaica, now spearheads the marketing charge at South African Airways (SAA) and he is clearly making a difference.

Truman, SAA's Vice President of Marketing, said the African-American and Caribbean-American Diaspora are critical to the airline's overall strategies for success and in promoting the airline's routes throughout Africa. "The rich cultural diversity of both West Africa and South Africa provides members of the Diaspora an opportunity to experience the continent in extremely personal ways," he said.

The multilingual Amat Kane of Africa Connection Tours educates visitors to the historic Gorée Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in Senegal.

Truman, who accompanied us on our recent Senegal sojourn, was impressed with what the West African nation offered to visitors. "In addition to Gorée Island and the Slave Houses - an incredibly touching experience - the ability to go off-roading on massive sand dunes and enjoy a wonderful Caribbean-style beach holiday allowed us to appreciate some of what Senegal has to offer," he said, adding that the wide ranging hotel product - from Club Med to Le Méridien and the new four-star TERROU-BI Dakar, positions Senegal as a great choice for a unique holiday.

Like all of us, Truman was impressed with the art and music in Dakar, which provided "an amazing backdrop for a rich vibrant vacation where one can spend some time on the beach, but can also appreciate a truly cultural experience and gain a better understanding of the human condition."

It is certainly helpful that Senegal is only seven and a half hours from Washington DC's Dulles Airport, offering daily non-stop flights which depart in the late afternoon and get visitors to Senegal early the next morning. SAA also has two daily flights to South Africa, including a non-stop flight from New York City's JFK airport to Johannesburg.

With SAA providing friendly infrastructure to connect the Caribbean and America with Africa, the sky's the limit for the exploration of new linkages.

December 31, 2009

Col. Qadhafi Calls For Compensation For Africa At UN

CaribWorldNews, UNITED NATIONS, NY, Thurs. Sept. 24, 2009: On Wednesday, in his first speech at the United Nations, Libyan Leader Colonel Muammar Al-Qadhafi, used the opportunity to call for compensation for Africans for colonization.

Qadhafi, in a 90-minute long speech that touched on many different subjects before a packed General Assembly, insisted that Africa deserved compensation, amounting to some $77.7 trillion for the resources and wealth that had been stolen in the past. He also said the African Union should have a permanent seat at the UN.

`Colonization should be criminalized and people should be compensated for the suffering endured during the reign of colonial power,` said the Libyan leader, while adding that Africans were proud and happy that a son of Africa was now governing the United States of America.

It is a great thing, said the controversial leader who was met by protests outside the UN. `... a glimmer of light in the dark of the past eight years.`

But Col. Qadhafi complained about the trouble some diplomats and their staff had in securing visas from the United States Government.

The Libyan leader also attacked the Security Council, insisting it practices `security feudalism` for those who had a protected seat.

`It should be called the terror council,` he said, underscoring that terrorism could exist in many forms.  `The super-Powers had complicated interests and used the United Nations for their own purposes. Qadhafi also said he was not committed to adhere to the Council`s resolutions, which were used to commit war crimes and genocides.  And he reiterated that the Council did not provide security and the world did not have to obey the rules or orders it decreed, especially as it was currently not providing the world with security, but gave it `terror and sanctions.`

Meanwhile, Qadhafi was denied the right to stay at his country`s compound in New Jersey while his tent on Donald Trump`s property was dismantled and his application to pitch in Central Park denied. The Libyan leader will now stay at his country`s Permanent Mission to the UN, which is an office and does not have residential facilities.

 

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