The coronavirus pandemic lays bare that which well-to-do middle classes in African cities have so far refused to confront. In the past 10 years, various media, intellectuals, politicians and international financial institutions have clung to an idea of an Africa on the move, of Africa as the new frontier of capitalist expansion; an Africa on the path to “emerging” with growth rates that are the envy of northern countries. Such a representation, repeated at will to the point of becoming a received truth, has been torn apart by a crisis that has not entirely revealed the extent of its destructive potential. At the same time, any prospect of an inclusive multilateralism—ostensibly kept alive by years of treaty-making—is forbidding. The global order is disintegrating before our very eyes, giving way to a vicious geopolitical tussle. The new context of economic disaster leaves countries of the global South stranded. Once again, we are reminded of their perennial status in the world order in-the-making: that of docile spectators.

The COVID-19 pandemic threatens to shatter the foundations of states and institutions whose profound failings have been ignored for too long. It is impossible to list these, suffice it to mention chronic under-investment in public health and fundamental research, limited achievements in food self-sufficiency, the mismanagement of public finances, and the prioritization of road and airport infrastructures at the expense of human well-being. All of this has in fact been the object of abundant specialized research, except that it seems to have escaped attention in spheres of governance on the continent. The management of the ongoing crisis constitutes the most glaring evidence of this gap.