COVID-19 Lockdown: Lessons For African Leaders

Covid-19 caught the world totally unprepared, and with no proven and available medical response. Ad-hoc cocktails and learning-by-doing constitute the strategic package.

In most western countries, the cocktail of response has included a coterie of defensive measures including: border closure; prepare isolation centres and mobilize medical personnel/facilities; implement “stay at home” orders or lockdowns except for food, medicine and essential services; campaign for basic hygiene and social distancing; arrange welfare packages for the vulnerable; and also economic stimulus packages to mitigate the effects on the macro economy.

Many African countries have largely copied the above template, to varying degrees. Piece-meal extensions of “stay at home” or lockdown orders as in many western countries have also been copied in Africa. But the question is: can Africa really afford lockdowns, and can they be effective?

Given the social and economic circumstances of Africa and the impending ‘economic pandemic’, can Africa successfully and sustainably defeat Covid-19 by copying the conventional trial-and-error template of the western nations? In confusion and desperation, the world seemed to be throwing any and everything at the pandemic.

Recall President Trump’s assertion that hydroxychloroquine “might help”? The evidence so far (from limited sample) is that it probably actually worsens the disease. The trial and error have left huge human toll and economic ruins, and there is still no solution.

No one can blame African policymakers for the initial panicky copy and paste response some weeks ago. No public officer wanted to be blamed for doing nothing or not doing what others were doing. After these initial pilot schemes, it is now time to ask the deep question: Is this the right approach for Africa?

All lives matter and African governments must do everything to protect or save every life from the pandemic. The challenge is how. Africa faces two unsavoury options: the conventional template, including lockdowns versus heterodox (creative local) approaches without lockdowns. Both have risks and potential benefits. Sadly, people will still get the disease and die under both approaches. People will differ on the choice, depending on what is on their decision matrix: data, resources, subjective preferences, and interests, etc. I focus on which option (on a net basis) is achievable in the short to medium term, consistent with our social and economic realities.

Our thesis is that lockdowns in Africa suffer time-inconsistency problem without a credible exit strategy; is unaffordable and could potentially worsen the twin pandemic—health and economic—in Africa.

We call for Africa to press the reset button now, mainstream its collective, simple, smart learning-by-doing solutions that could, in the end, be the African solutions for export to the world. Covid-19 won’t be the end of techno-economic disruptions or health pandemics even in this decade: this is an opportunity to think without the box—to engender greater self-confidence in our capacity to think through our problems, with authentic sustainable solutions.

Let me illustrate why I believe that a strategy that includes lockdowns/border closure is the worse of the two options given our social and economic realities. Recall that China isolated Wuhan, and kept Shanghai, Beijing, and other major economic engines open, and today, China supplies the world with medical equipment, face masks, etc and raking-in hundreds of billions of dollars.

The idea of a lockdown and border closure implies that you will continue to do so with extensions until such a time that you are satisfied that the spread of Covid-19 has been arrested or on the decline with the possibility of imposing another round of lockdown if new infections surge. That is the catch: lockdown for as long as required to stem the spread.

The length of time required for such lockdowns to ensure “effectiveness” in arresting the spread would make it near impossible in much of Africa. If the strategy is to lockdown until infections stop/significantly decline or so, then we would have a suicidal indefinite waiting game.

First, monitoring the spread requires effective testing, and Africa cannot afford effective testing of its 1.3 billion people. New York State, with a population of 20 million and a budget of $175 billion, is pleading with the US Federal Government to assist with testing kits and facilities. Check out the number of testing centres and facilities in each African country relative to their populations..

Furthermore, social distancing in most parts of Africa will remain impractical. From the shanties in South Africa’s townships to the crowded Ajengule or Mararaba in Abuja/Nasarawa, or Cairo or Kinshasa to the villages and poor neighbourhoods in much of Africa, social clustering, not distancing, is the affordable, survivalist culture. Communal living is not just about culture, it is a matter of economic survival. Hence, the statistics on infections will be coming in fits and stats: shall we be locking down and unlocking with each episode of surge as there may probably be several such episodes.