Written amidst the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, this edited volume draws on the expertise of social scientists and humanities scholars to understand the many ramifications of Covid-19 on societies, politics, and the economies of Africa. The contributors examine measures, communicative practices, and experiences that have guided the (inter)action of governments, societies, and citizens in this unpredictable moment. Covid-19 tested governments’ disaster preparedness as well as exposed governments’ attitudes towards the poor and vulnerable. In the same vein, it also tested the agency of the African populace in the face of containment measures and their impact on everyday social, cultural, and economic practices of ordinary people. In this vein, our concern is to understand the relationship between growing vulnerability on the one hand, and ingenuity of agency on the other, and how both were embodied, narrated and discoursed by the African poor, university students, religious entities, middle-classes, and those who bore the major brunt of the lockdowns.
The volume is thus a useful resource for scholars of Africa, policy makers and those who want to understand Covid-19 in Africa. It provides a multiplicity of perspectives of the pandemic and African responses at different levels of society, economy and the political spectrum. The continental focus of this volume gives room for broader comparative analyses. Lastly, this interdisciplinary work benefits from the input of medical historians, anthropologists, sociologists, linguists, political scientists, literature scholars, urban planners, geographers and others.
Table of Content
1: Introduction: Experiencing Covid-19 in Africa.- Part 1: Discoursing and Narrating the Pandemic.- 2: “So Much Fear and Unanswered Questions”: Discourses on Covid-19 in Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon.- 3: Wrathful Gods: Ethnography of Religion, Myths and Interpretations of Coronavirus in Nigeria.- 4: Poetic Verses on COVID-19: Hausa lyricist’s expressions on the pandemic.- 5 : The University of Niamey during Covid-19 : popular perceptions, containment measures and managing Muslim worship.- Part 2: Experiencing and Coping with the Pandemic.- 6: Inequalities, Exclusion and Covid-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa.- 7: Covid-19 and Intersectional Discrimination in Nigeria.- 8 : Islam and Digital Media in Côte d’Ivoire : Countermeasures and Reinvention of Religious Practices during Covid-19.- 9: Social Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic in Uganda.- 10: The Informal Sector and the Fight Against COVID-19: Insights from Commercial Bus Drivers and Petty Marketers in Lagos, Nigeria.- 11 : Social and economic implications of Covid-19 containment measures in the gold mining industry in Burkina Faso.- Part 3: Pandemic(s) and the Ethics of Care.- 12: ‘Staying with the Trouble’: Decolonial Care and Intersectional Responsibility in Knowledge Production in COVID 19 Times.- 13: From Colonial Violence to Bare Life in South Africa: Sexual Violence and Care Ethics.
About the author
Susan Arndt is Professor of Literature at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. She has published widely on intertextuality, intersectionality, and critical race studies, focussing on British and Anglophone African literatures.
Banhoro Yacouba is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the University Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Burkina Faso. He has published on medical histories of Africa. He is the Director of the Joseph Ki-Zerbo’s African Cluster Centre, which is part of African Multiple.
Taibat Lawanson is Professor of Urban Planning and Co-Director of the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. She researches on social complexities, urban realities and spatial justice.
Enocent Msindo is Dean of Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa. He is a social and political historian with publications on ethnicity and nationalism, information policy, medical history, and others.
Peter Simatei is Professor of Comparative Literature at Moi University, Kenya. He publishes in the fields of postcolonial studies, Anglophone literature, and Diaspora studies.
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