COVID-19 AND POLITICAL MODERNITY IN AFRICA: CITIZENS' ENGAGEMENTS AND STATES' RESPONSES

Abstract

COVID-19 is an unprecedented pandemic in human history. Its impacts have continued to be felt differently in all areas of human endeavour. States' interventions to it have also been divergent and legion. While its epidemiological distributions––infection and mortality rates––have defied initial anticipations and predictions, global responses to this pandemic have however, reflected the dynamics of North-South relations. Developed economies like China together with matured political democracies like Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States of America have been efficient––in deploying palliatives, policies and solutions to it. Unfortunately, given the context of corruption, predatory rule and other failings underlining their incapacities, the states across Africa have exhibited disappointing responses to this emergent experience. While this pandemic has opened up new opportunities for benefitting from foreign aid assistance from Europe and North America by these states, their developmental capabilities and demographic-distributional reach have remained constrained and undemocratic. How are the states in Africa contending with COVID-19 economically, epidemiologically and politically? What are the impacts of the continued state-led responses to the pandemic for the democratic, demographic and developmental transformations of the states in Africa? Drawing on Nigeria, this article addresses these questions