This is the sixth week since East Africa’s — and Africa’s — first lockdown to stem the spread of the new coronavirus (Covid-19) went into effect on March 19, when Rwanda became the first sub-Saharan Africa country to impose a total lockdown. Others followed days — and for some, like Burundi and South Sudan, weeks — later.
There has been loss of lives and devastating blows to economies and, particularly, livelihoods of citizens who live from hand to mouth.
Despite the justified anger that rages daily about government failures in dealing with the pandemic, on the whole, the region has done relatively well. This could have been far worse — and might still be, if the much feared second wave hits.
Taking a continental view, there have been runaway stars, like South Africa and Senegal. As of the writing of this column on Tuesday evening, South Africa had the most confirmed cases on the continent, 4,973, with 90 deaths.
However, it is way ahead of the pack in testing, having done nearly 180,000. Its other responses have been in a class of their own relative to others on the continent — including deploying 67 mobile units and training 30,000 community health workers.
Senegal has been the clever one, developing one of the world’s first tests that could return results for Covid-19 in under an hour, and lately the world’s cheapest testing kit for $1 (Sh100) a pop and $60 (Sh6,000) 3D-printed ventilator.
While, perhaps for reasons of climate, and the upside of living with a heavy disease burden, Africa has been lucky and dodged the bullet (so far) on Covid-19, there now is an increasing recognition that it has actually got a few things right — its shambolic healthcare systems notwithstanding.
In an environment still replete with prejudices about a “dark continent” and a deeply ingrained pessimism among Africans about their possibilities, it is easy to miss the insights we saw in a story on the Deutsche Welle (DW) website, from Gavin Churchyard, chairman of the Aurum Institute, a South African healthcare institute.
Churchyard said keeping distance and infection control are not new concepts for Africans due to the long-standing fight against the lung disease tuberculosis (TB).
He added that even existing educational materials on TB and HIV/Aids can be used in the fight against Covid-19, with slight modifications.
Most significant is his observation: “In contrast to some industrialised countries, African countries have opted for scientifically sound solutions. We have seen leadership emerge in African countries like nowhere else.”
It’s not a stretch, in a crisis where leaders of superpowers have slipped into bizarre suggestions of injecting people with disinfectant to kill the virus, and coronavirus denialism.
Apart from early cases where Tanzania’s President John Magufuli and Burundi’s Pierre Nkurunziza suggested that God would deal with Covid-19, the approaches of the leaders have been remarkably rational, and deferred to the advice of health experts.
The East African Community numbers tell the story. As of Wednesday night, Tanzania topped the EAC with 480 confirmed cases and 16 deaths. It had done at least 18,089 tests. Kenya followed with 384 cases, 15 deaths; and had done 18,597 tests.
Rwanda has 212 cases and zero deaths. It had done about 6,795 tests. Uganda had with 79 cases, zero deaths, and was the regional leader in testing with 27,432.
Looking at Uganda and Rwanda’s cases, some Kenyans have suggested that this crisis needs “military men” in charge, and that ‘democratish’ countries like Kenya are unsuited to dealing with it effectively.
While Kenya’s management has been more porous, there is no clear evidence that governance types determine effectiveness of crisis management.
In fact, the most successful cases of managing the pandemic has come from liberal democracies like New Zealand.
Kenya’s 15 deaths are still several times smaller than past single horrid incidents. For example, the September 10, 2018 bus crash on the Londiani-Muhoroni road in which 50 people died, or even worse, the July 12, 1992 road accident at Mikuyuni River, Machakos, which killed 96.
If governance system, size of the economy and factors like national temperament are not explainers, what then is?
Uganda is a special case, with its history and experience with HIV/Aids (it was the first to dramatically roll back the infection) and Ebola, which has created a lot of knowledge but also sucked in many smart and public-spirited doctors into its public health.
But Kenya, and significantly Rwanda, have actually had to rebuild their healthcare systems; the former from the second democracy wave that ousted Kanu in 2002, the latter from the ashes of the 1994 genocide.
Tanzania, which hasn’t had upheaval, is laden with elements of the old system, leaving it with one foot still caught in the mud.
Mr Onyango-Obbo is curator of the Wall of Great Africans and publisher of explainer site Roguechiefs.com. @cobbo3
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