Good Day Mr President
YOUR Excellency, President ED Mnangagwa. Clearly, it is not sufficient to merely articulate the lack of collective agency facing the African continent and its diaspora with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. We must proffer solutions that address both “what” should be done and “how” it could be accomplished.
The work to be done on the African continent
Several strategic initiatives can be executed to assert Africa’s agency in the fight against the COVID-19. These efforts require prioritisation, sequencing and a detailed implementation matrix anchored by a monitoring and evaluation framework. An inexhaustive list of what Africans and their brothers and sisters in the African diaspora should immediately do on the continent include the following:
1) Clinical trials on local remedies such as zumbani/umsuzwane (Lippia javanica) and moringa (moringa oleifera) to demonstrate drug safety, efficacy and side effects (if any) leading to professional packaging of medicines with specific clinical dosages. Clinical trials to establish the impact and limitations of natural solutions such as steaming, culminating in the development of technical guidelines for the interventions.
2) Clinical trials of human formulation of the “wonder drug” Ivermectin for use in prevention and treatment of COVID-19 to establish drug safety, efficacy and side effects among African populations.
3) Development of laboratory capacity to test the safety, efficacy and side effects of all the COVID-19 vaccines — without exception — being brought into the continent. Africans must independently do this evaluation before using any of the externally developed vaccines. As the first batch of vaccines arrived in South Africa on February 1 2021, it will be prudent to adhere to this philosophy. We must ensure this testing and verification capacity is available throughout the African continent.
4) Development of manufacturing capacity, so that we can partner with owners (from the global north) of the already developed COVID-19 vaccines