Abstract

The COVID-19 global pandemic has so far not resulted in apocalyptic deaths in Sierra Leone or other countries in the subregion, despite an exponential rise in positive cases. Western views of massive COVID-19-related deaths in Africa have largely come from colonialism and the long-held Western narratives of Africa as the continent of poverty, disease, backwardness, weak health-care infrastructure, and dependent bodies in need of foreign aid and “white” saviors. Sierra Leone was among the last of the African countries to record the COVID-19 disease, and along with Liberia and Guinea have a powerful Ebola experience that few countries in the world enjoyed. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed serious weaknesses in its epidemic preparedness, health-care infrastructure, public health system, and the overall political economy. Why then have Sierra Leone and the Mano River Union (MRU) countries with Ebola experience not displayed global leadership in the face of the global pandemic? This article argues that the ineffective response to the COVID-19 epidemic in Sierra Leone, despite the country’s huge Ebola experience, may be linked to an entanglement among social, economic, and political factors within the political economy and deep, dense structural distal factors of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, and economic and cultural dependencies. These distal factors have largely dictated the approach and modelling of COVID-19 in Sierra Leone and other MRU countries.

Résumé

La pandémie mondiale du COVID-19 n’a jusqu’à présent pas entraîné de décès apocalyptiques en Sierra Leone ou dans d’autres pays de la sous-région, malgré une augmentation exponentielle des cas positifs. Les opinions occidentales sur les décès massifs liés au COVID-19 en Afrique proviennent en grande partie du colonialisme et des récits occidentaux de longue date peignant l’Afrique comme continent de la pauvreté, de la maladie, du retard, de la faiblesse des infrastructures de soins de santé et des corps dépendants qui ont besoin d’aide étrangère et des sauveurs « blancs ». La Sierra Leone a été parmi les derniers pays africains à ětre touché par COVID-19 et, avec le Libéria et la Guinée, a une grande expérience du virus Ebola que peu de pays dans le monde possèdent. Pourtant, la pandémie COVID-19 a révélé de graves faiblesses dans sa préparation à l’épidémie, ses infrastructures de soins de santé, son système de santé publique et son économie politique en général. Pourquoi la Sierra Leone et les pays de l’Union du fleuve Mano (MRU) ayant l’expérience d’Ebola n’ont-ils pas fait preuve de leadership mondial face à la pandémie mondiale? Cet article soutient que la réponse inefficace à l’épidémie de COVID-19 en Sierra Leone, malgré sa grande expérience du virus Ebola, peut ětre liée à un enchevětrement entre des facteurs sociaux, économiques et politiques au sein de l’économie politique et à des facteurs distaux structurels profonds et denses de l’esclavage, du colonialisme, du néocolonialisme et des dépendances économiques et culturelles. Ces facteurs distaux ont largement dicté l’approche et la modélisation du COVID-19 en Sierra Leone et dans d’autres pays MRU.

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Notes

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