Development

The Financial Times recently reported that the European Union is preparing a proposal for the incoming Biden Administration that envisions a comprehensive strengthening of transatlantic cooperation aimed in part at countering China’s global influence. Clearheaded thinking about how to coordinate efforts and pool resources to present more meaningful development opportunities to African partners should find space on that agenda.  While countering China should not be the central organizing principle for U.S.-Africa relations, there is no doubt that U.S. influence—and therefore U.S. capacity to achieve various foreign policy goals—suffers when China’s investments in the tangible, visible infrastructure of African prosperity appear to dwarf U.S. development efforts. Addressing this reality amid the economic constraints of the COVID-19 era will require far more cooperation with like-minded partners that share an interest in an economically vibrant, free, peaceful, and internationally engaged African continent.  Earlier this year, the EU proposed a new Africa strategy [PDF] with five primary areas of focus: a “green transition” and energy access; digital transformation; sustainable growth and jobs; peace, security and governance; and migration and mobility. That broad framework includes ample areas of overlap with Washington’s own priorities; the task for policymakers will be to focus financing efforts on specific projects and opportunities that can create jobs and improve sustainability, especially in Africa’s rapidly growing cities.  This requires moving well past donor coordination mechanisms, which too often devolve into box-checking exercises that allow diffuse or redundant efforts to continue while aligned only in spirit and intention. It also requires all the cumbersome realities of real cooperation, which introduces constraints and compromises that might not otherwise exist. But if the United States and Europe are serious about building their influence and relevance in a region of increasing global importance, those headaches are a small price to pay. 

Thus far, COVID-19 has been far less devastating in Africa than observers had feared, including this blogger. It is true that there has been much less testing for the disease in Africa than elsewhere (perhaps one percent of the population, while the United States has conducted over one hundred million tests), and African statistics tend to be weak. But there have been only a few reports of mass deaths anywhere on the continent, such as were seen in Ebola outbreaks. Africa has a population of 1.2 billion people. There have been 1.4 million cases of COVID-19, with less than 35,000 deaths. The United States has a population of an estimated 331 million. There have been 7.1 million cases of COVID-19 and about 205,000 deaths. Despite its obvious shortcomings, the public health and medical infrastructure in the United States is far superior to that of Africa. How to account for the apparent lesser severity of COVID-19 in Africa than in the United States?  Matshidiso Moeti, World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Director for Africa, advances a credible explanation. Summarizing, its most important elements are: Africa's population is youthful; only 3 percent is over sixty-five years of age, while in the United States it is 15.2 percent, almost 50 million. In Africa, 90 percent of cases have been among people under sixty years of age; in the United States, in August, it was about 80 percent. Even though the continent is urbanizing fast, its population density is lower, and even in urban areas people live and work outdoors to a greater extent than in the developed world. It seems clear that COVID-19 spreads more rapidly in enclosed spaces.  Poorly developed infrastructure, especially roads and airports, results in fewer people traveling, reducing the spread of the disease. Some African states, notably South Africa (then ground zero for the disease), locked down early. There are estimates that the South Africa lockdown will save some 16,000 lives by the new year. The bottom line: Africa would appear to confirm that COVID-19 is most dangerous among elderly people living closely together.  

Farouk Umaru, M.Sc., MBA, Ph.D., is Director of Global Public Health Laboratory Programs at U.S. Pharmacopeia. When the African continent's first reported cases of COVID-19 surfaced in February, the African Union and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) quickly devised their strategy to contain the pandemic: rapidly diagnose and isolate patients, and temporarily quarantine their contacts. Since then, as nations across Africa implement a patchwork of different approaches – from imposing strict lockdowns to declaring the pandemic's end and resuming business as usual – it has become clear that most countries lack the data needed to effectively respond. Although testing efforts have detected over 1.3 million cases of COVID-19 across Africa, experts agree that limited testing capacity has masked the full extent of disease spread and hampered control efforts. To scale up testing, health sectors must not only find ways to procure more test kits, but also dramatically increase the continent's laboratory capacity to process tests, as delays allow the virus to spread.  Progress is already being made. The Africa Joint Continental Strategy for COVID-19 Outbreak identified equipping, training, and strengthening public health laboratories for quality-assured diagnostic testing as one of its key pillars. Within the first two months of COVID-19 touching down in Africa, sub-Saharan Africa went from having two laboratories equipped for testing – in South Africa and Senegal – to creating some testing capacity in all countries by adapting labs that previously focused on diagnosing HIV and tuberculosis (TB). Work to scale up clinical laboratory capacity across Africa is needed not just for COVID-19 but also for other endemic and emerging diseases, and the pandemic offers the impetus to accelerate efforts. A group of partners convened by Africa CDC – including the African Society for Laboratory Medicine, WHO-AFRO, UNITAID, United States Pharmacopeia (USP), and others – is working to increase access to quality diagnostics through the Africa Collaborative Initiative to Advance Diagnostics (AFCAD).  Both quantity and quality of diagnostics are major priorities. If data produced by diagnostic tools are not reliable, treatment decisions and prevention measures won't be, either. Poor-quality testing that produces inaccurate results would undermine public confidence in the health system at a time when trust in healthcare and medical products will be essential to ending the pandemic. USP – an independent scientific organization that sets quality standards for medical products that are used in over 150 countries and integrated into the laws of more than 40 governments – has collaborated with 34 countries to strengthen more than 90 laboratories, enabling them to assure quality of medical products and vaccines and increase capacity for clinical diagnosis. USP is supporting select national laboratories in Ghana, Ethiopia, and Nigeria to strengthen clinical laboratory capacity for HIV, TB, malaria, and COVID-19, including through strategic planning, emergency preparedness, and building capabilities in laboratory testing and quality management systems. USP is also supporting these labs to ensure that poor-quality test kits – such as falsified tests peddled by criminal networks looking to profit from the crisis – don't reach patients and compromise the pandemic response. Scaling up these efforts to meet the substantial challenges posed by COVID-19 will require urgent and sustained investments from governments; donors that have already made substantial contributions in this area such as USAID, the Global Fund, the World Bank, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; and new funders. It will be well worth the effort. To achieve the African Union's Agenda 2063 toward a prosperous, healthy, self-reliant continent, being able to successfully address disease outbreaks through state-of-the-art medical science is essential. Continuing this rapid scale-up of laboratory capacity across the continent, while ensuring the quality of test results, will allow African health workers and decisionmakers to understand the disease dynamics essential in informing control and prevention measures, not only for COVID-19, but also for other ongoing epidemics and emerging diseases.

Nkasi Wodu is a lawyer, peacebuilding practitioner, and development expert based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.  For multi-national companies (MNCs) operating in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, doing business can be a daunting prospect. The problems are numerous, and many solutions have been offered and implemented with varying degrees of success across the nine Niger Delta states. In a context characterized by rising unemployment and underemployment above the national average, rising poverty levels, a growing youth population, a history of perceived marginalization, weak political and institutional governance, and an infrastructural deficit, MNCs operating in the Niger Delta must invest significant proportions of their profits in corporate social responsibility (CSR) interventions. They have come to understand that they must also secure the social license that allows them to operate in local communities. These CSR interventions take the shape of building health centers and schools, and construction of roads, bridges and other infrastructural projects.  Already operating in an environment with structural weaknesses and rising demographic pressures, MNCs also must confront these conflict dynamics. These include a mix of criminality, gang, election, ethnic, and communal violence, all of which feed into and are exacerbated by a culture of militancy. According to reports by the PIND Foundation, this conflict landscape is further defined by political patronage, ethnic rivalry, clashes between cult groups, and a general competition for resources – including land. All of these factors taken together drive conflict in the region. Some MNCs have responded to these systemic weaknesses and subsequent conflict risks by establishing and funding community structures to meet the infrastructural and welfare needs of their host communities. These strategies are intended to facilitate host community projects, and secondarily, also act as conflict management structures in an attempt to address drivers of insecurity. Unfortunately, in many instances, the indigenous actors that take up positions in these community structures are often the very same patrons or beneficiaries of various criminal networks that drive the conflict dynamics in the region to begin with. The implication of this is that the responsibility of maintaining “peace and security” in these communities is often left in the hands of conflict actors themselves. In other words, the mere presence of an MNC in local communities can actually be a source of conflict.  This then begs the question of: Whose business is it, anyway, to maintain peace? An argument can be made that MNCs as business enterprises are not responsible for building peace in the communities where they operate. To paraphrase Milton Friedman, the only social responsibility [there is] is to make profit. However, contemporary literature in the field of business and peace has evolved significantly since Mr. Friedman’s thesis. For one, the United Nations has reinforced the role of the private sector in contributing to the actualization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially SDG 16, which focuses on the building of strong and peaceful institutions. MNCs need to broaden their perspective of “peace,” and become more conflict sensitive. MNCs occupy a pivotal position as major contributors to the economy in a complex and dynamic context. They are faced with competing demands from communities and ethnic or socio-political groups, and cannot afford missteps that could characterize them as favoring one group over the other. MNCs need to improve their understanding of the socio-political context in which they operate, and based off of that understanding, develop relationships with local peace actors and invest in building their capacities for conflict mitigation, to better respond to emerging dynamics. For MNCs, contributing to a stable environment also has huge economic gains. It is beneficial in securing their assets from disruptions, ensuring the safety of their staff, and fostering cooperation with communities in addressing problems that could adversely affect the company. This is certainly good for the bottom line. There are rarely any “quick wins” for MNCs in fragile and conflict affected environments like the Niger Delta, but the long term benefits of investing with foresight and knowledge, and coming equipped with the proper tools and relationships, can have the long-term benefit of contributing to local and regional economies and potentially lifting millions out of poverty and insecurity. This is something worth investing in. 

Tareian King is a former intern with CFR's Africa Program and a student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. She is also the founder of Nolafrique, an e-commerce platform that enables artisans in African villages to have global exposure and opportunities for scale up. African Americans are in a financial position to start businesses in Africa, and they should. In 2018, businesses owned by African Americans grew more than 400 percent. Since a storm of protests against racial inequality, interest in supporting Black-owned businesses has soared. From May 25 to July 10, there have been more than 2.5 million searches for Black-owned businesses on Yelp, compared to approximately 35,000 over the same period last year—a 7,000 percent increase. This year, corporate America has also made more commitments to support black-owned businesses. Google, Coca-Cola, ExxonMobil, AT&T, Walt Disney, and Capital One, among others, have participated in the “In This Together” initiative, a campaign to invest $1 billion dollars in Black businesses. As encouraging as the current wave of support is, it must contend with the cruel reality that Black-owned businesses in America have long lacked access to large amounts of capital. For example, within the first year of business, only 1 percent of Black business owners are approved for a bank loan compared with 7 percent for white-owned firms. Consequently, it is difficult for Black businesses to hire employees in important sectors, such as marketing, consumer relations, and business development, and many owners must use personal wealth or income to fund their businesses. Although Black businesses have become increasingly successful, even though they are experiencing an unprecedented wave of political and economic support, they still confront longstanding financial inequality in America. Therefore, they might turn to Africa for economic opportunity. Africa is home to many developing economies that have a higher return of interest than developed economies. The amount of money required to start a business in most African countries is relatively small. Notable examples include five entrepreneurs in Africa who started what are now million-dollar businesses with less than $300. In Kenya, an entrepreneur turned $116 into a transportation business that generated $1.5 million dollars in revenue; an entrepreneur in South Africa turned $100 into a pig farming business that generated $2.5 million dollars in revenue; and an entrepreneur in Nigeria turned $250 into a digital marketing business that generated $6 million dollars in revenue. If Black business owners invested in Africa instead of America, maybe they too could be a part of the continent’s notable examples. Though investing in Africa can be tough as the continent has a complex business environment, many African countries are trying to make it easier, and several have favorable investment environments. Ghana is the lead example, creating special investment programs that make it easier specifically for African Americans to invest, but Rwanda, South Africa, and Senegal are also countries with favorable conditions and investment protections. If Black business owners invested in Africa they could take advantage of these programs, gain profits, and help Africa’s entrepreneurs. Since American capital goes much further in Africa than in America, Black business owners can invest in Africa and support many cash strapped entrepreneurs. Many young entrepreneurs in Africa have innovative ideas but not the financial means to carry them out. Therefore, Black business owners already have prospective business partners on the continent who can help orient them on Africa’s business environment. If Black business owners invested their capital into Africa’s entrepreneurs and created joint ventures, they could profit from businesses in Africa without having to physically be present. While Black businesses are booming in America, they could perform even better in Africa. Africa offers Black business owners more affordable and diverse business opportunities, and a young entrepreneurial population who would make great business partners.

CFR Senior Fellow for Africa Studies Michelle Gavin interviews Founder and President of the African Center for Economic Transformation Dr. K.Y. Amoako.

Tareian King is an intern with CFR's Africa Program and a student at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. She is also the founder of Nolafrique, an e-commerce platform that enables artisans in African villages to have global exposure and opportunities for scale up. The year 2019 marked four hundred years since the first enslaved people from West Africa arrived in the United States. The president of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo, declared the anniversary the Year of Return. It celebrated the resilience of African Americans and encouraged them to return to Africa, visit, apply for Ghanaian citizenship, and take advantage of investment opportunities. Festivities included naming and healing ceremonies, trips to heritage sites, musical performances, lectures, investment forums, and relocation conferences. According to the minister of tourism, the initiative generated $1.9 billion in tourism revenue. Although all members of the African diaspora—both recent immigrants and descendants of the transatlantic slave trade living predominantly in the Americas—were included, the primary focus was on African Americans. The connection between African Americans and Ghana is not new. In 1957, Ghana became an inspiration for African Americans when it became the first sub-Saharan African country to win independence from a colonial power. Ghana’s independence also gave momentum to the Pan African movement, which, among other things, encourages solidarity among all African diaspora ethnic groups to obtain political and economic power. Martin Luther King traveled to Ghana to celebrate its defeat of colonization, and Malcolm X and Maya Angelou worked in Ghana during the presidency of Kwame Nkrumah. W.E.B. Dubois died in Ghana as a Ghanaian national and today, there is the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Center for Pan-African Culture in Accra. Marcus Garvey, the famed Jamaican Pan-Africanist, advocated for the return of African Americans to Africa. He founded the Black Star Line to help blacks return to Africa, which is the origin of the black star on the Ghanaian flag and for name of the national football team. Ghana’s Year of Return initiative sought to not only carry on this relationship, but expand it. The initiative is a part of a larger strategy to make Ghana less reliant on aid by drawing on, among other things, business and investment from African American. The goal of President Akufo-Addo’s broader development agenda, called “Ghana Beyond Aid,” is to achieve self-reliant growth and to break out of the mindset of dependency. According to Akufo-Addo, Ghana does not need foreign aid; instead, it needs the African diaspora to return, build, and invest. The United Nations Sustainable Development Partnership (UNSDP) adopted his agenda as part of its plan for African development. Ghana is well-positioned to become less reliant on aid. In 2017, Ghana received $1.25 billion in official development assistance (ODA). This was only 2.1 percent of Ghana’s GDP of $59 billion in 2017. (ODA is government aid that promotes and specifically targets the economic development and welfare of developing countries; it excludes military and anti-terrorism activities.) Moreover, Ghana already attracts substantial investments from abroad. For example, the value of French foreign direct investments in Ghana in 2017 was $10.5 million for a total stock amounting to $1.7 billion, and China will have begun work on $2 billion worth of infrastructure construction in Ghana. But, African Americans will have programs specifically created for them. As part of “Ghana Beyond Aid,” the president announced the launch of "Beyond the Return: The Diaspora Dividend,” a multi-million dollar fund to attract investment from members of the African diaspora. It will consist of special diaspora investment programs, Sankofa Savings accounts, and diaspora housing schemes. The ministry of finance stated that the African diaspora will be able to invest in "tourism infrastructure, agriculture value addition, real estate, music, culture, and retirement homes.” In Ghana, African Americans have no language barrier and the country has a transparent legal system and a business environment that makes it a secure and reliable destination for investors. Ghana is also the only country to provide people of African ancestry the legal right to stay in the country indefinitely through its Right to Abode law. During the Year of Return, Ghana waived a number of bureaucratic hurdles and granted one hundred African Americans citizenship based on their African ancestry alone. At a memorial ceremony for George Floyd, Ghana’s minister of tourism, Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, told African Americans to “come home, build a life in Ghana.” Ghana’s courtship of African Americans has grown from one based mostly on solidarity in the face of black oppression to one also based on business and investment. Ghana hopes to attract investors with an interest in its development, while some African Americans can profit personally from the relationship. With available business opportunities, a welcoming environment, and an opportunity to leave behind racism and police brutality, some African Americans may accept Ghana’s invitation.

Nkasi Wodu is a lawyer, peacebuilding practitioner, and development expert based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.  For more than two years, northwestern Nigeria has faced devastating attacks from armed bandits, particularly in the states of Zamfara, Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, and Sokoto. Such attacks are driven by many overlapping factors, including cattle rustling, the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, illicit artisanal mining, youth unemployment, poverty, and inequality. This is further compounded by the weakened, stretched, and demoralized security services, who are deployed in thirty-five of Nigeria’s thirty-six states and will soon enter the second-decade of their war against Boko Haram, one of Africa’s deadliest terror groups. It is estimated that many of the armed bandits are of Fulani origin, as are many of the victims. Banditry, which includes armed robbery, murder, rape, and cattle-rustling, is present in Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, Senegal and Mali.  According to a report [PDF] from the West Africa Network of Peacebuilding (WANEP), from January to December 2019, armed bandits were responsible for more than 1,000 civilian deaths in the Northwest. According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, this is greater than civilians killed by Boko Haram over the same period (though not greater than all those killed, which includes soldiers and Boko Haram members). The impact of these deaths have ripple effects across communities that will last generations. A committee set up to investigate the menace of armed banditry, headed by Mohammed Abubakar, a former inspector general of police, reported that in Zamfara state between June 2011 and May 2019, 4,983 women were widowed; 25,050 children were orphaned; and more than 190,000 people were displaced as a result of armed banditry.  The Nigerian security forces initially responded to this issue by increasing the deployment of the military and police to the troubled zones. These deployments were under several code names such as "Operation Puff Adder," "Diran Mikiya," "Sharan Daji," "Hadarin Daji," "Thunder Strike," and "Exercise Harbin Kunama III."  But these operations have produced mixed results. While the security forces have successfully pushed back bandit attacks, destroyed several hideouts, and killed or arrested hundreds of bandits, attacks have continued. Against this backdrop, the governors of Katsina, Sokoto, and Zamfara, agreed on a peace deal with the armed bandits in 2019. According to Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina, negotiation was the best way to achieve lasting peace. The agreement involved disarmament, the release of kidnapped victims, and an amnesty for the bandits. But the agreements did not last. While there was a lull in attacks toward the end of 2019, attacks have picked up again in 2020. One state governor recently admitted that the bandits had reneged on the terms of their agreement. Following the apparent failure of the governors’ peace deal, Nigeria’s chief of army staff, Lieutenant General Tukur Buratai said recently that dialogue is “not a good military option for tackling banditry, kidnapping, and other heinous crimes currently bedeviling the North-West.” General Buratai’s admonition is telling. Whether it is dispersing protests, responding to separatist agitations or, as in one particularly brutal case, responding to the obstruction of General Buratai’s convoy, the penchant that violent problems require violent solutions is ingrained in the psyche of the Nigerian security forces. The resort to shallow and poorly conceived peace deals is an age-old failure of the Nigerian security and political establishment. To truly achieve peace, the government must start by building trust with local communities vulnerable to attacks by bandits. They should set up early warning and response systems, working with vigilantes and community leaders on the ground. And they should begin to address the structural inequalities that drive people to violence, like poverty, a lack of education and opportunity, and government mistreatment. The military in particular should redirect its attention to controlling the trafficking in small arms and light weapons, specifically by patrolling porous national borders. Banditry is not a problem that will be solved through the barrel of a gun.

Conventional wisdom is that Africa's rising middle class is the engine for economic and social development, that its trajectory has been positive, and that the COVID-19 pandemic has seriously compromised the success of the middle class. However, on a continent of 1.3 billion people resident in more than fifty countries, this trope, much of it based on feel-good anecdotes, may obscure more than it illuminates.  What is Africa's middle class, how large was it before COVID-19, and was it growing? Media reports that Africa's middle class is made up of about 170 million people, and that COVID-19 could push some 8 million out of it and into poverty. This would imply a common understanding of what middle class is. But that does not exist. There appears to be no, real credible definition generally accepted. One estimate, from the World Data Lab, defines middle class as those households that spend per capita a range of $11 to $110 per day. Such a huge range reflects the diversity of the African continent but otherwise it is not helpful. Perhaps more helpful on a continent where statistics are weak are definitions of middle class status by behavior or lifestyle. For example, a South African economist distinguishes the middle class from the poor by the ability to earn a steady income. Even within countries, there can be different definitions of middle class: in South Africa, Blacks who own an automobile, no matter what the state of repair, may be regarded as middle class. Among whites, however, the attributes and consumption patterns of the middle class are similar to those in other parts of the developed world.  Has the African middle class been rising? What is the evidence for it? Certainly, there has been a telecommunications boom, more obvious in Kenya and a few other countries than elsewhere. However, in Nigeria, while cell phones and internet access are common—about 60 percent of the country is online—that positive development must be balanced by the fact that the country is home to the largest number of severely impoverished people in the world, surpassing in 2018 India, which has a population six times as large. In some places, a middle class has indeed played a transformative role. The continent is in the midst of a population boom; a corollary is that the number of people in the middle class—however defined—is growing. But as a percentage of the overall population? The answer is not clear.

The movement against anti-Black racism has made reparations an important element of the conversation on race relations, both in the United States and in Europe. Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., for example, sold slaves it owned to plantations in Louisiana in 1838, and the founders of Brown University, established in 1764, were involved in the slave trade. Both Georgetown and Brown, as well as other U.S. institutions of higher-learning, established funds or sought to raise money for various initiatives to address their role in profiting from slavery. Identifying those institutions that profited or benefited from slavery is an important first step in then calling for these institutions to provide reparations. But, often in the United States those institutions and companies still in existence that participated in slavery are identified after self-led, internal initiatives, as was the case for Georgetown and Brown. In the United Kingdom, identifying beneficiaries of slavery may be easier, thanks to Legacies of British Slave-ownership project at University College London. When it abolished slavery throughout the British empire in 1833 (after abolishing the slave trade in 1807), the British government paid compensation to the owners of the freed slaves. Records of the amounts paid and to which companies, individuals, and institutions have survived and are now accessible.  Two of those beneficiaries were the insurance giant Lloyd's of London and the brewer Greene King, identified by university researchers. Their link to profits from slavery were via their founders and early leaders. Both companies have announced initiatives to address their role in slavery and public scrutiny and public opinion may drive other such companies to follow suite. Neither Lloyd's nor Greene King has announced the details or the cost. However, it appears that reparations will involve affirmative action and support for certain non-governmental organization working for racial equality. Though the ostensible beneficiaries of these programs will be in United Kingdom, the victims were often slaves owned thousands of miles away on estates and plantations in British colonies in the Caribbean. Why not privately funded development initiatives in Dominica, Montserrat, and St. Kitts, for example, from Lloyd’s and Greene King? With added public scrutiny and pressure, it is likely that links to slavery of more and more companies and institutions will come to light. These companies will take the first steps toward addressing the ill-gotten wealth from which they benefited. In making amends, they should not lose sight of who suffered from slavery and colonialism. In the United States, they are primarily Black Americans and Native Americans. In the United Kingdom, and elsewhere in Europe, they consist of people—including those who are descendants of slaves—in post-colonial states, many of which still suffer from their calamitous experience with European colonialism.

Steve Schmida is the chief innovation officer of Resonance, a global development and corporate sustainability consulting firm, and author of Partner with Purpose. Emily Clayton is a senior manager for sustainability at Resonance. The UN is sounding the alarm on a looming disaster in Malawi brought on by the global coronavirus pandemic. Last week, Maria Jose Torres, the UN resident coordinator in Malawi, warned, “Even a fairly low number of cases could overwhelm the health system, cause food shortages, and reverse the progress the country has seen in recent years.” Malawi will need to focus on weathering the current storm with the help of international donors, but it should not return to the fragile status quo afterwards. One of the poorest countries in the world, Malawi is vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic on a number of fronts. It has a high population density and many of its citizens have underlying health conditions, which will likely increase rates of transmission and lethality. Its health system is weak and faces critical shortages of frontline health workers and personal protective gear. Worse still, the pandemic is poised to exacerbate Malawi’s already severe food security challenges. About 80 percent of the country’s population is engaged in subsistence farming, and the changing climate is making growing seasons less predictable. Severe flooding last year caused by Cyclone Idai wiped out crops and left 90,000 homeless, while decades of deforestation have degraded the soil and worsened droughts. Adding to the challenges, the country’s economy is heavily dependent upon a single cash crop—raw tobacco—which makes up nearly 71 percent of agricultural export earnings. A majority of tobacco growers are smallholder farmers who also face food insecurity, most commonly the result of drought. As tobacco use declines globally—a trend that the COVID-19 pandemic may well accelerate—Malawi faces the loss of a critical source of export earnings. To manage the immediate impact of COVID-19 amid the already fragile state of affairs, Malawi will need significant international assistance. While the World Bank has already pledged $37 million to support the COVID-19 response, more will be needed to ensure that the pandemic does not lead to a food security crisis. COVID-19 will not be the last disaster to come to Malawi, so the country should endeavor to build back better, rather than revert to the status quo ante. The agriculture sector that underpins the economy should be the starting point for this effort. First and foremost, the country needs to move away from tobacco as its primary cash crop. Promising alternatives include paprika, chili, groundnuts, and soybean. This transition can build on the robust tobacco supply chain that already exists, utilizing its agricultural extension services and access to market for other commodities. Much needed agriculture diversification will help increase farmer incomes and improve nutritional outcomes as well as help Malawi become more resilient to external shocks. Such a transition will not be easy and it is not something Malawi can tackle on its own. International donors as well as agricultural companies and investors must partner with the Malawian government to promote a systems-level change across the farming sector to improve the policy and regulatory environment, increase access to finance, and assist farmers in the transition from tobacco contract farming to high value horticulture and other crops. In responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, donors and Malawi’s leaders should look to the future. By building a more robust agricultural system post-COVID-19, Malawi can grow its economy and be better prepared for future crises.

The coronavirus pandemic is a major setback for efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

These are still early days for coronavirus in Nigeria, whose first case was reported on February 25. As of the morning of March 24, Nigeria had forty-two confirmed cases and one confirmed death, according to coronavirus tracking by Johns Hopkins University. But an outbreak of Lassa fever, caused by a more common virus, has been active in Nigeria for the past few months and has even prompted calls for the declaration of a national health emergency. Between January 1 and March 15, the Nigerian Center for Disease Control reported 161 deaths of Lassa fever patients, with 3,735 suspected cases and 906 confirmed cases, across twenty-seven of Nigeria’s thirty-six states. For the same period in 2019, Lassa killed 114 with 1801 suspected cases and 455 confirmed cases across twenty-one states, but the 906 confirmed cases for 2020 is already greater than the 810 confirmed cases for all of 2019. Lassa fever is known to have a case fatality rate as high as 23 percent, much higher than the 3.4 percent estimated by the WHO for COVID-19 as of March 5. There have even been calls for the Nigerian government to declare a state of emergency for Lassa fever. Explanations for the rising number of Lassa fever cases since 2015, when there were just sixty-four confirmed cases, includes both better diagnosis and increasingly poor sanitation and living situations. Thus far, there is no evidence of a link between the two diseases.  Lassa fever is named after the Nigerian town where it was first identified in 1969. It is an acute viral disease of animal origins with early symptoms similar to malaria and COVID-19. It is now found in other West African countries. Epidemics have historically occurred during the dry season, which runs roughly from November to April. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease control, during various periods, Lassa fever patients accounted for between 10 and 16 percent of hospital admissions in parts of Sierra Leone and Liberia. Though crude, such estimates help illustrate the potential impact outbreaks of Lassa fever can have on West African health systems.  In Nigeria, as elsewhere, the disease is disproportionately found among younger adults, between twenty and thirty years of age. The most devastating consequences of the disease can be deafness. The most common vector for the disease is the urine and feces of the multimammate rat, a rodent found in rural areas that colonizes areas where people live and where food is available. The disease can be transmitted from human to human through contact with bodily fluids, but not as easily as Ebola or coronavirus. Lassa can be treated with an antiviral drug and by supportive care. Its victims in hospitals are typically isolated, so that they may compete for space with coronavirus patients.  The spread of coronavirus has led to the World Health Organization, African governments, and non-governmental organizations to publicize the underdeveloped public health systems in most African countries and to request international assistance. There has been already some international response. But for many Africans, the coronavirus, like the much deadlier Ebola or HIV/AIDS epidemics, are seen in the context of more common diseases that sicken many more people, have high mortality rates, but that do not receive sustained attention from outsiders. Indeed, many observers are concerned that the appearance of the high profile disease caused by coronavirus, COVID-19, will divert precious resources away from the more commonplace killers. This season’s outbreak of Lassa fever—the worst such outbreak in years—is a case in point.