The prevalence of global pandemics has been timeless and universal. In 1918, the Spanish Flue grounded Spain and her neighbours. In 1997, 2014 and 2020, the Ebola virus wreaked havoc in West Africa in the same manner that polio had ravaged the globe. Since 2019, the Coronavirus has forced most economies onto a downward spiral. Despite concerted global attempts at observing World Health Organization guidelines, the Coronavirus has been changing peoples' lives, forcing most economies onto their knees, endangering lives and livelihoods, making a mockery of global medicine and causing the widespread despair and helplessness that has come to be known as 'the new normal'. Unlike the other pandemics, the mayhem, complexities and dialectics caused by Covid-19 have been matchless, requiring a systematic study and necessitating a volume like this one. The volume's 16 well-researched chapters argue that despite Covid-19's enormous lessons and predictions about even greater future pandemics, humanity can ill-afford to relent in its determination to conquer the pandemic in the same way that human resolve has defeated past pandemic. As such, the volume provides hope and direction to the global community on how best to deal with Covid-19 and pandemics of similar or even higher magnitude in the future.

The prevalence of global pandemics has been timeless and universal. In 1918, the Spanish Flue grounded Spain and her neighbours. In 1997, 2014 and 2020, the Ebola virus wreaked havoc in West Africa in the same manner that polio had ravaged the globe. Since 2019, the Coronavirus has forced most economies onto a downward spiral. Despite concerted global attempts at observing World Health Organization guidelines, the Coronavirus has been changing peoples' lives, forcing most economies onto their knees, endangering lives and livelihoods, making a mockery of global medicine and causing the widespread despair and helplessness that has come to be known as 'the new normal'. Unlike the other pandemics, the mayhem, complexities and dialectics caused by Covid-19 have been matchless, requiring a systematic study and necessitating a volume like this one. The volume's 16 well-researched chapters argue that despite Covid-19's enormous lessons and predictions about even greater future pandemics, humanity can ill-afford to relent in its determination to conquer the pandemic in the same way that human resolve has defeated past pandemic. As such, the volume provides hope and direction to the global community on how best to deal with Covid-19 and pandemics of similar or even higher magnitude in the future.

This book examines the legal and security threat posed by pandemics in Africa and beyond. The authors propose that to effectively counter pandemics, it is necessary for states to transcend beyond a realism approach and to adopt security policies that reflect the multidimensional nature of state authority and functions.

This book explores the extent to which the COVID-19 pandemic is poised to be a permanent fixture in the modern world which in contemporary times will be thought of in terms of before and after the pandemic. It looks at how the pandemic has brought to the fore the question of the appropriate ethics, politics, and spirituality and highlights the present condition of humanity and the need to rethink alternative planetary futures. It argues that the pandemic has existential and epistemic implications for human life on planet Earth, and a post–COVID-19 future requires a fundamental transformation of the present economic, political, and social conditions. Drawing on empirical case studies on the COVID-19 pandemic from Africa and beyond, contributions in this book challenge the reader to rethink alternative planetary futures. It will be a useful resource for students, scholars, and researchers of African studies, citizenship studies, global development, global politics, human geography, migration studies, development studies, international studies, international relations, and political science.

What happens at the interface between Afrocentricity and COVID-19 is cause for wonder in a world that is anxious to short circuit global solidarity by trampling Pan-Africanism. Revolutions, including the Fourth Industrial Revolution, are rarely contextualised within the framework of Pan-Africanism and Afrocentricity even when they are celebrated as beneficial to the world. Interfacing Afrocentricity, COVID-19, Pan-Africanism and the Fourth Industrial Revolution, this book teases out the profound challenges of the 21st century. Calling for African solutions premised on African solidarity, the book critically engages the contemporary technological solutionism and technological evangelism that undergirds the Fourth Industrial Revolution and efforts to find vaccines for COVID-19. Unflinchingly interrogating these issues, the book is useful for scholars and activists in education, African languages, sociology, social anthropology, political science, history, religious studies, development studies, communication, medical sciences and legal studies.

Has South Africa ‘done well’ at limiting illness and deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic? Academic and political commentator, Steven Friedman, thinks not. While the country’s mainstream media believes it has, in his view the evidence tells another story. South Africa has experienced by far the most cases and deaths in Africa – at one point as many as the rest of the continent combined. One Virus, Two Countries: What Covid-19 tells us about South Africa offers a searing analysis of government and expert scientists’ responses to the pandemic. Friedman argues that South Africa is two societies in one – a ‘First World’ which resembles Western Europe and North America, and a ‘Third World’ which looks much like the rest of Africa or South Asia. The South African state, the media and the scientific community have largely tried to deal with the virus through a ‘First World’ lens in which much of the country was either invisible or a problem – not a partner. Friedman argues this approach prevented the country from responding in a way which would have protected most citizens. This is why case numbers and deaths are so high: South Africa has done worse than the rest of Africa not despite the fact that it has a ‘more developed’ health system, but because it does. One Virus, Two Countries is a controversial book that will rouse much needed debate about South Africa’s health and economic system in a context of serious inequality.

This book provides the theoretical and historical context of the practice, guidelines, and tools for covering health, pandemics, sanitation, education, and development in Africa. It will appeal to public health-based communicators in public health and advocacy degree programs, media students, citizen journalists, and teachers of health/pandemics, development, and sanitation communication/journalism. In addition, the book will assist Ministries of Communication, international development agencies interested in working with journalists in matters of health, and sanitation, and non-governmental health practitioners like Doctors without Borders.