Governance, Containment and the Covid-19 Pandemic

The challenge of Coronavirus, aka Covid-19, has shaken global economies and ruptured pre-existing social support systems. With their already fragile economies as well as social structures that were not underwritten by efficient and adequately supportive governments, most of the African populace experienced various forms of vulnerabilities. This chapter provides an overarching framework within which this volume is grounded, focusing not only on the multi-layered vulnerabilities of citizens in the face of Covid-19, but also on their ingenuity and agency. It draws on the collective work in this volume to demonstrate how religious entities; university intellectuals; ordinary people; small-scale business players (e.g. artisanal miners and petty commodity traders) and others navigated in several ways the challenges of Covid-19 on the African continent.