From HIV/AIDS through Ebola to COVID-19: The Unlearnt Lessons from Epidemics in Africa- A Personal Perspective

Abstract

Within the four decades spanning the 1980s to the year 2020 and counting, the continent of Africa has witnessed many deadly epidemics, notable among which are HIV/AIDS, Ebola, and COVID–19. For anyone in Africa who has lived through these epidemics and critically observed their impacts on the continent, it is evidently clear that the lessons that should be learned from them have not yet been fully learned. These unlearned lessons are related without being limited to the political, economic, healthcare, and ethical domains. The events accompanying COVID–19, globally and on the African continent, have underscored these lessons that must be learned, or else the continent has no future except as an entity of colonial and global exploitation. In this article, I propose to highlight and briefly discuss some of these lessons that should be learned, failing which we, Africans, need to be studied as a strange species of human beings, completely devoid of rational self–interest, inhabiting the most endowed continent on planet Earth, without being aware of it.