Africa: Take your future into your hands, fight or perish: Lessons from COVID-19.

“Global vaccine apartheid is unfolding. People’s lives must come before profit” screamed a headline blog by the head of UNAIDS, Winnie Byanyima.

Ms Byanyima is challenging the ideals on which post World War II was founded on. Promote western capitalists ideals. Sorry my sister you are right, profit come before People’s lives”

I am not about to re-publish Ms. Byanyima’s blog, after all it is on UNAIDS website. But for UN agency’s boss to express such frustration it says a lot. And when that prominent person is an African, It hits into our spine. Haven’t we heard the bushing of the Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus health organisation vis a vis COVID -19.

What does this tell Africans? We can have our sons and daughters in very important positions into world bodies, but we are yet to fully participate into world opportunities.

So, well said Ms. Byanyima, how the world deals with COVID-19, is the same way it dealt with apartheid; the same way it dealt with decolonization.

 Kinyarwanda (the language spoken by all Rwandans), is often expressed in proverbs and riddles. And so Banyarwanda say: “ akumuhana kaza imwura ihise”. Figuratively meaning, “no one in your neighborhood, will be rained on to come and help you. It is only when the rain has stopped that they come to you.

Our proverb ancestors,   also stated that : utera uburezi arabwibanza” meaning that he who is in charge of dispensing fortune, dispenses first and foremost to him/her self.

And they also say: “Iyo amagara etewe hejuru buri wese asama aye”. Roughly translation “when every one’s likelihood of live or die is at stake, they all rush to save their survival chance”

So is with Covid-19, it is the survival of the fittest. There are very few capable countries that will save your lives before they save theirs. That is by the way, one area where we can give former president Donald Trump some credit when he said “America first”! At least he did not tell us lies.

So when Ms Byanyima talks about “vaccine apartheid” and that “People’s lives must come before profit” she is really telling us nothing new. What she is doing is dare to say it as it is, despite her being head of a UN entity .And let us face the fact, UN was not created with Africa in mind. It is a post second world war creation, in which we Africans fought on whichever side that had colonized us. And quite often we were “carrier corps”. We were porters for our colonial army. Not equal combatants! Yet visit a number of African cities named after this enslavement. Yet with pride! And so in Nairobi, Kenya, there  is “ kariakor” so important former American President Barack Oboma quotes mentions “ kariakor” in his book.

More than a year of COVID-19 in Africa and our relationship with the wealthy west.

Let us face the facts: normalcy will return first to wealthy countries with plenty of test-and-trace resources, vaccine doses, and capacity to administer them. probably by mid 2021, their live will be back to normal,  schools will  reopen and social facilities will function, restaurants bars and gyms name them all.

It is not their fault that they will be treating their citizens, but the fact is due to function of history, we are indirectly subsidizing their success.

Where do we stand:  Poorer countries most of them on The African Continent; will struggle to catch up and will face repeated waves and flare-ups until they get the support required for good control.

I hate to use the expression “until they get the required support”. For heaven’s sake why must we wait for the “required support”?

Post-colonial Africa is on the average 60 years old. Modern China is only 70 years old. Why should we in Africa be waiting for Mana from heaven? And by the way that is our biggest problem. Can Africans decide to have a say in world affairs? Of course not. Our selfish political leaders are still tied to the umbilical cords of their former colonial masters, or colonial affiliates such as USA, Canada, never colonizers but big conspirators to neo-colonialism.

As the late Kenyan president Daniel Arap Moi, loved to say in Swahili, “Upende usipende” meaning like or not,’   the story of global health is design to serve the rich. It is part of the   Capitalist political order profit comes before morals. No political party in the USA, Canada, France, Germany and other western so called democracies, will win votes because the party has facilitated COVID-19 vaccine to Africa.

The west will help us as long as we are likely to infect them. Once we cannot infect them we are on our own. And I don’t blame them. it is our responsibility to look after our selves. History has shown that once problems that are managed and then quickly forgotten by the rich parts of the world, such as measles, mumps, rubella, tuberculosis and polio, remain major, continuing problems in the poorer parts of Africa.

Western pharmaceuticals are there to make money not save lives. It is more profitable to manufacture ARVs than get a cure for HIV. Who cares about malaria vaccine?

Thanks to COVID, it hit where it matters most, and they are getting a solution.  Africa wake up, we have the biggest natural resources, but we are still tied to the colonial umbilical cord. Let us at minimum decide on who our useful partner is. Check which rich countries were the first to join COVAX facility. As I have said before I am not in the business of comparing US and China. But once again to use Moi’s famous phrase “ tupende tusipende” these are world two richest countries, no matter how much we burry our heads in the sand, the comparison is inevitable.

China joined COVAX facility way back in October 2020. And challenged other countries that have the capacity to do the same. “We are taking this concrete step to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines, especially to developing countries, and hope more capable countries will also join and support COVAX,” foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying  challenged the haves to help the have-nots.

Mweusi Karake, is veteran journalist, and former Head of Public Relations/Corporate Communication at the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, (COMESA), currently based in Kigali, Rwanda.

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