Covid-19: A Closer Look at Emerging Trends in Africa

As of September 8, 2020, seven months after the first Covid-19 case was officially reported in Africa on February 14, 2020, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) reports show that the entire continent recorded 1,306,157 cases, with 31,494 deaths. These are thousands of deaths too many, but a far cry from the catastrophe analysts and health professionals had projected in relation to the continent. When the number of new coronavirus cases began to spike globally in March, gloomy predictions expected that Africa would become the epicenter of the pandemic. The reasons were obvious; foremost among them were the weak health-care systems in most countries on the continent. However, six months later, compared to cases and figures from other regions of the world, Africa continues to defy all these pessimistic predictions, a trend that requires critical examination for explanatory and other purposes.