THE STRENGTH OF WEAK CITIES? DECONSTRUCTING COVID-19 IN URBAN AFRICA.

Africa was once expected to be the heartland of COVID-19 cases and deaths—a monumental disaster waiting to happen. Yet, while Africa accounts for 17.2 percent of the world population, it thus far accounts for only 4 percent of COVID-19 deaths and 2.7 percent of cases globally. What does this appreciable disparity reveal or occlude about the management of public health emergencies in African cities? This essay explores lessons learned from addressing the COVID-19 pandemic in urban Africa, ranging from early and aggressive responses to community-led initiatives and sound public health policies derived from longstanding experience with infectious disease such as the Ebola epidemic. COVID-19, I argue, opens a critical space for defamiliarizing commonsense representations of African cities. We must move beyond the default assumption that “cities in Africa just don’t work” and instead pay critical attention to hybrid and adaptive governance systems emerging across urban Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]