Covid19: Ensuring sustainable and inclusive resilience of communities in a context of health emergency and beyond! Publication date May 4, 2020
Contributing to the fight against the COVID 19 health crisis also means protecting your rear bases. This pandemic spares no continent. According to the WHO, some 188 countries are infected out of the 198 recognized by the UN (as of May 25, 2020).
In developing countries, particularly in Africa, measures aimed at limiting the rate of spread of COVID 19 expose local communities to the risks of destroying popular dynamics of wealth creation and food security. Thus, this pandemic, through its impacts, has finally demonstrated the vulnerability of health and economic systems and, at the same time, opened up an avenue of new forms of solidarity.
While the vaccine is found to save the planet, the measures at hand must be strengthened with the involvement of all stakeholders in a surge of collective solidarity. Among its measures we can cite:
1- The massification of awareness for health awareness materialized by the spontaneous and daily application of barrier measures (carrying masses, hand washing, etc.) for each citizen.
2- Strong impetus from local governments for the application of community strategies specific to each context with strong involvement of young people and opinion leaders.
However, beyond its negative impact, this health crisis offers opportunities for transition from small economic units to medium-sized businesses or industries. Because more than 90% of jobs created in Sub-Saharan Africa come from the informal sector. Thus, the lasting resilience of communities strongly depends on popular job creation dynamics.
It is for this reason that ENDA is working on alternative solidarity solutions to enable these job providers for the poorest to develop their capacity to absorb the effects of the health crisis to recover from the shock and become part of a dynamic of transition.
