Decolonising pandemic politics: a view from North Africa

Abstract

The coronavirus pandemic coincides with and exacerbates a multifaceted global crisis: political, economic, social, environmental and climatic. In other words, we are currently experiencing a crisis of a patriarchal, racial capitalist system, which will have grave and disproportionate impacts on the vulnerable and marginalised groups, especially in countries of the Global South. Moreover, the pandemic is not merely a health issue; it is also an environmental one. In fact, the emergence of the coronavirus is linked to the capitalist destruction of eco-systems through intensive agribusiness and industrial animal farming as well as the commodification of nature through extractivism, land grabbing, deforestation and loss of habitat (Wallace et al. 2020). Basically, we cannot consider this pandemic as an isolated event unrelated to the global ecological crisis. What we are living now is a taster of worse things to come if we do not take the necessary measures and implement just solutions to the unfolding climate crisis. Before I delve into some details from North Africa, I would like to make a few preliminary points. The endeavour to decolonise pandemic politics needs to take into consideration two important elements: