COVID-19 pandemic threatens millions in war-torn Libya and Syria

Kumaran Ira

With well over a million infected and the number of dead soon to reach 100,000, the worldwide spread of COVID-19 threatens the lives of millions worldwide. In particular, it is threatening warn-torn countries like Libya, Syria and Yemen, where imperialist-backed wars have led to devastating humanitarian crises and destroyed critical health infrastructure. Millions of refugees, many living in crowded and unsanitary refugee camps, are desperately vulnerable to the virus.

Libya and Syria, both targeted by wars launched by the NATO imperialist powers after the outbreak of the Egyptian revolution in 2011, are desperately trying to avert a devastating mass outbreak. While Libya has 19 confirmed COVID-19 cases so far, including one death, Syria has 19 cases and two deaths. However, their shattered health systems are in no position to properly monitor the outbreak, let alone treat and halt it.

The health catastrophe facing Libya and Syria again expose the fraudulent “humanitarian” pretexts that pseudo-left academics and parties like France’s New Anti-capitalist Party used to justify their support for these imperialist wars. They presented NATO military interventions as wars for “democracy” and to protect the population of these countries from their dictatorial governments. In fact, these wars of plunder shattered the lives of tens of millions and now could cost hundreds of thousands more lives lost to COVID-19.

Treating the COVID-19 pandemic requires an internationally coordinated campaign to deploy critical food and health supplies to Libya, Syria and other war-torn countries around the world. This requires the mobilization of the mass anti-war sentiment in the working class internationally, as such a coordinated response is impossible under the domination of imperialist powers still intervening to fan the flames of war in these countries.

In Syria, the NATO imperialist powers armed various Islamist terrorist militias and later backed ethnic-Kurdish militias as proxies in a bid to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The war has claimed more than 500,000 lives and displaced up to 10 million internally while over 3 million fled abroad. NATO-backed militias looted pharmaceutical factories during the war and attacked hospitals, leaving Syria’s essential health infrastructure in ruins.

The confirmed cases in Syria are the “tip of the iceberg,” said UN aid official Mark Lowcock in a briefing to the UN Security Council last week. “Judging from other places, that is the tip of the iceberg. The virus has the potential to have a devastating impact on vulnerable communities across the country,” he warned. “Syria’s health services are extremely fragile. Only around half of its hospitals and primary healthcare centers were fully functional at the end of last year.”

Without a massive international inflow of resources to allow for social distancing and proper hygiene, a disaster threatens. More than 11 million people inside Syria require humanitarian aid, including nearly five million children; and nearly eight million lack reliable access to food. “We are for example seeing increased rates of stunting—a consequence of child malnutrition, from which it is rarely possible fully to recover,” said Lowcock, who added that 30 percent of displaced children in northwest Syria suffer from it. “They will live with the consequences for the rest of their lives.”

Thousands of refugees live in overcrowded camps in horrific conditions in Idlib province, where Syrian government forces are fighting NATO-backed Islamist militias to retake the area. As many as 10 people reportedly share small tents—sleeping, eating and living together at close distance, with no access to clean water and only a small number of toilets.

As for Libya, it is, according to the Global Health Security Index report published last month, one of the 27 countries “most vulnerable to emerging outbreaks.”

NATO’s bombing of Libyan cities in the 2011 war was followed by a devastating civil war since 2014 between the UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj in the capital, Tripoli, and warlord Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army (LNA) to the east. Fighting has intensified since Haftar launched an offensive last April on Tripoli. Essential services are unavailable in Libya, whose oil industry has collapsed, devastating its economy.

Cash shortages in every part of the economy mean that Libya cannot purchase medicines to keep hospitals running or pay the salaries of medical staff, of which there is an acute shortage. Before the war, Libya had foreign doctors and nurses from Egypt and the Philippines, but they left the country starting in 2011, and especially after 2014. Last month, Badereldine al-Najar, the head of the Libyan National Center for Disease Control (NCDC), told Reuters: “In light of the lack of preparations, I now consider Libya not in a position to confront this virus.”

War has left Libya with “limited financial resources and shortages of basic equipment,” while the “pandemic represents an additional challenge,” the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) declared.

In recent years, Libya has become a hotspot for immigrants desperately trying to reach Europe.

The United Nations has warned that the pandemic constitutes a “truly catastrophic” danger for the internally displaced people and about 700,000 refugees and migrants in Libya.

In a bid to stop refugee flows, the European Union (EU) has financed the construction and upkeep of prison camps controlled by the rival militias inside Libya. In those camps, reports by CNN and UN officials have revealed that refugees are subject to horrific torture, rape, murder and sale into slavery. Detention centers and prisons are reportedly overcrowded with unhygienic and inhumane conditions, while suffering shortages of food and drinking water.

These immigrants are at a great risk of being contaminated by the virus. Tarik Argaz, a spokesman for the UNHCR in Libya, told Al Jazeera: “Detained asylum seekers are particularly vulnerable and exposed. They are staying in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions [in detention centres] and have access to very limited health assistance. Many centres are located in areas close to fighting.”

Al Jazeera cited Amira Rajab Elhemali, national field operations assistant for the International Organization for Migration (IOM), saying “The conditions are dire. Hundreds of people are locked in crowded hangars with no access to proper sanitation facilities. Many of them have been detained for months or even years. Worry is all they know.”

The COVID-19 pandemic now ravaging the imperialist centers of America and Europe is an urgent warning. The wars in Libya and Syria must be ended, the imperialist powers’ supply of weapons and financing to their proxies cut off, and social resources mobilized to fight the pandemic, not to fight wars. Fighting the pandemic requires the provision of tens of billions of euros of international emergency assistance, including for the purchase of food and medical supplies.

German government expands war operations despite coronavirus pandemic

Johannes Stern

The dramatic spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, which threatens the lives of millions of people worldwide, has done nothing to change German war policy. On the contrary, the ruling class is using the crisis to push ahead with its foreign policy offensive and Germany’s return to an aggressive foreign and great power policy.

When Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) announced on Thursday on the ARD morning show the largest deployment of the Bundeswehr (armed forces) at home in post-war German history, she made it clear that the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions will also continue unabated. “We must also ensure that the core mission we have, namely alliance and national defence, the provision of external security, but also our international obligations are safeguarded. The missions continued as normal” and “in all missions, in all international areas, our performance is maintained.”

Indeed, in recent days, the grand coalition of the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats has extended and expanded numerous war missions in Africa, the Near and Middle East and Central Asia.

On March 25, the Bundestag (federal parliament) decided to “supplement the deployment of armed German forces” in Syria and Iraq. The new mandate provides for Bundeswehr A400M transporters from the Jordanian airbase al-Azraq to continue to refuel the fighter aircraft of the so-called anti-IS coalition. In addition, the transport aircraft are now also to be used for flights to Iraq. In addition, the deployment of air surveillance radar in Iraq is also planned. The training mission of German soldiers in central Iraq is to be placed under the command of NATO rather than the US-led Operation Inherent Resolve.

On March 13, the Bundestag had already extended the NATO-led “Sea Guardian” military mission in the Mediterranean and the “Resolute Support” mission in Afghanistan by a further year in each case. Above all, the mission in Afghanistan, where thousands of German soldiers have been stationed since 2001, shows the sinister tradition to which German imperialism is returning. On April 2, Kramp-Karrenbauer issued an order of the day for Kunduz province on the tenth anniversary of the so-called “Good Friday Battle,” which states:

“These were not the Bundeswehr’s first and not the last battles in Afghanistan. But with the events of this day, it became visible for many citizens in Germany for the first time that the soldiers of the Bundeswehr must also kill and can die in combat. For the Bundeswehr, this day illustrates what ultimately defines the profession of the soldier: the ability to survive in battle. And also, the willingness to risk one’s own life for the mission that the German Bundestag gives the Bundeswehr.”

This is the language of German militarism. Contrary to official propaganda, the Bundeswehr’s foreign missions are not about “peace” and “democracy,” but defending geostrategic and economic interests with war, annihilation and death.

This also applies to “Sea Guardian” and the naval mission “Irini” off the Libyan coast, which was decided by the EU at the end of March. The missions in the Mediterranean, in which the German armed forces are involved with warships, reconnaissance planes and hundreds of soldiers, serve to seal off Fortress Europe against refugees from the war zones in the Middle East and from Africa and to prepare new neo-colonial incursions on the resource-rich continent.

Last week, the federal government declared its support for an expansion of the French-led war offensive in the Sahel. A newly formed “task force” would be integrated into the command of Operation Barkhane under the name of “Takuba” and “would be composed mainly of European special units, supported by the main commanders and offering a high degree of autonomy,” according to an official statement by the French Ministry of Defence.

The explicit goal of the offensive is to combine all previous missions, in which Germany is already involved with over a thousand soldiers, into one comprehensive war mission. The new task force will “advise, support and accompany the Malian armed forces in coordination with the G5 Sahel partners, the UN mission (MINUSMA) and the EU missions (EUTM Mali, EUCAP Mali and EUCAP Niger).”

Additional war missions are already being prepared behind the backs of the population. In an interview with the news portal t-online.de, Lieutenant General Martin Schelleis, who as territorial commander of the Bundeswehr is leading the “Corona mission” in Germany, emphasised, “Training and basic operations must also be maintained at least to the extent that operational readiness does not suffer in the long term. After all, we do not know where the Bundeswehr might soon be in demand for further foreign deployments as a result of the corona crisis.”

As in Germany itself, the ruling class, especially in the less-developed countries, fears revolutionary uprisings due to the dramatic effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

“The situation is dramatic, because with a delay of two months, the virus is now arriving in developing and emerging countries,” warned Development Minister Gerd Müller at the weekend in an interview with the Augsburger Allgemeine newspaper. In Mali, “with its 18 million people,” he said, “there are only four ventilators.” And “the economic consequences of the worldwide corona shock” are already leading “in many countries to mass unemployment. The structures are collapsing.” He “is very concerned that unrest will break out in fragile states, including civil wars. The impact on us would be incalculable.”

Instead of respirators and medical equipment, Germany and the other imperialist powers are sending weapons and soldiers to oppress the impoverished masses. In return, the astronomical sums already spent on armaments and war will be further increased. Last Thursday, before a NATO meeting, Foreign Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) reiterated his commitment to the military alliance’s 2 percent of GDP spending target. “As far as the two percent target is concerned, what we have said so far applies. We have increased our defence spending by 45 percent since 2014 according to NATO criteria,” he boasted. “We also stand by our commitments and we prove it every day.”

British Queen appeals for national unity across an unbridgeable class divide

Laura Tiernan

On Sunday night, an estimated 28 million people watched a prerecorded speech by British monarch Queen Elizabeth II on the coronavirus pandemic.

The four-minute speech, broadcast on BBC One, ITV, Channel 5, Channel 4, Sky News and the BBC News Channel, was the Royal Family’s appeal to “Keep Calm and Carry On” faced with a global social crisis ravaging millions.

Speaking from Windsor Castle, amid the gilt rococo surrounds of the White Drawing Room, the stony faced and immaculately coiffed 94-year-old monarch invoked a mythical spirit of shared sacrifice. The personal embodiment of hereditary privilege and obscene wealth—who is “worth” an estimated £1.6 billion—lectured working people on the need for “national unity,” “self-discipline” and “restraint.”

The Queen delivering her address at Windsor Castle

Queen Elizabeth, who decamped from London weeks ago with Prince Phillip to the Berkshire countryside, surrounded by a retinue of servants in the world’s largest occupied castle, described the pandemic as, “A time of disruption in the life of our country: a disruption that has brought grief to some, financial difficulties to many, and enormous changes to the daily lives of us all.”

Her speech sought to paper over the explosive social divide revealed by the pandemic—a truly impossible task. Carefully crafted, her address featured cut-away shots of National Health Service (NHS) nurses, doctors and paramedics, supermarket warehouse staff, and construction workers building the NHS Nightingale field hospital in London’s Docklands which may soon hold thousands of patients.

“Together we are tackling this disease, and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it,” she declared.

Expunged from the Queen’s narrative was any hint of the mounting public fury over horrific conditions endured by NHS staff—deprived of masks, gloves and other essential personal protective clothing, and of ventilators to treat the dying. Of bus and train drivers, warehouse and delivery workers, whose lives have been needlessly sacrificed to the criminal incompetence, negligence and greed of the political and financial elite.

Instead, the Queen sought refuge behind the outpouring of public support for the NHS, claiming, “The moments when the United Kingdom has come together to applaud its care and essential workers will be remembered as an expression of our national spirit; and its symbol will be the rainbows drawn by children.”

Not since Margaret Thatcher invoked St Francis of Assisi on the steps of Number 10 in 1979 has there been such a cynical invocation of social harmony. In reality, the only “symbols” remembered by millions in the months and years ahead will be of body bags, doctors and nurses forced to wear bin liners and homemade goggles while intubating patients lucky enough to access a ventilator, empty supermarket shelves, and graphs charting the daily rise of pandemic victims. While the Queen’s 71-year-old son Prince Charles received immediate testing and the very best treatment imaginable for “mild symptoms” of coronavirus, NHS doctors and nurses in repeated contact with those wracked with disease have been denied testing and succumbed themselves—to date at least a dozen have died.

These are the symbols of an entirely preventable global pandemic, repeated across Europe, the United States and Asia.

Notably, the Queen made no reference in her speech to the Prime Minister. Like his mentor Donald Trump, Boris Johnson personifies the ignorance, incompetence and indifference to human life of the capitalist class. He has now been hospitalised, a victim of his own reactionary policies of “herd immunity.”

According to BBC royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell, the Queen’s decision to deliver Sunday’s address was made “in close consultation with Downing Street.” The Guardian reported, “A senior No 10 official said the palace and the prime minister, Boris Johnson, ‘have been speaking throughout’ about the timing.” Just one hour after the Queen’s speech, Number 10 announced that Johnson had been admitted to hospital after being diagnosed with coronavirus 10 days previously and showing signs of worsening health.

The entire media was on hand to promote the Queen’s call for national unity. The night before, Channel 5 televised “The Queen Mother’s Blitz,” a documentary showing “The Queen Mother’s efforts to improve the British people’s morale during the Second World War” and “how her personality and determination made a remarkable difference to the war effort.” Needless to say, the BBC omitted any reference to the royal family’s support for Hitler.

By Monday morning, Britain’s media had declared with one voice that the Queen’s speech was an historic masterstroke. “‘We will meet again’: Queen urges Britons to stay strong” (Guardian); “Queen’s coronavirus speech: ‘Ambitious’ words ‘to reassure and inspire’” (BBC); “Better days will return. We will meet again” (Telegraph); “The Queen’s address has lifted our spirits” (Telegraph); “As ‘mother of the nation’ her words spoke volumes” (Telegraph); “Brits unite in awe of Queen’s speech: ‘Nobody could have rallied the country, the world the way she did’” (Evening Standard).

Why is this nauseating blanket of sycophancy necessary? In the face of a crisis of the entire social order, the political and moral authority and legitimacy of capitalism has been shattered. Yesterday’s Financial Times editorial warned of “social unrest” unless governments act quickly to reduce the death toll from coronavirus, introduce widespread testing and containment, and provide hospitals with resources to deal with the surge in patients.

The Queen, who has weathered nearly a century of global class struggle as a conscious representative of the oldest and most experienced ruling class on the planet, sought to preempt an emerging social eruption. BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond noted, “There was no talk of fighting, of struggle, of conflict. Instead she spoke of more peaceful national traits—‘self-discipline,’ ‘quiet, good-humoured resolve’ and ‘fellow-feeling.’”

Standing at the apex of the British state, the Queen was issuing orders to its underlings—the working class, the producers of all wealth—that it must do as it is told, accept the situation and above all not question the existing social order. She even suggested that self-isolation was “an opportunity to slow down, pause and reflect, in prayer or meditation”!

This message was warmly endorsed by Labour’s new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who tweeted Sunday night, “The Queen speaks for the whole country and our determination to defeat coronavirus.”

Starmer’s Twitter account was immediately inundated with angry replies. “Being ‘holed up’ at Windsor Castle with hundreds of rooms and acres galore and not having to worry about running out of loo paper or vital supplies doesn’t really speak for me!” wrote Julie Ambrose.

“Did she give up the crown jewels to benefit the food banks? Did she open up Buckingham Palace to the homeless to be safe whilst on her isolation trip? No, I didn’t think so,” wrote Stevelkeys. “Did she mention if she too has been forced to sign a DNR [Do Not Resuscitate] order, like others her age?” wrote another.

Social reality cannot be fixed by a royal sticking plaster, even one administered by the Queen herself. Her desiccated nationalist appeals to the memory of the Blitz and the “British spirit” are a ridiculous anachronism and pure political fiction. The coronavirus pandemic is a global crisis and requires a global solution, based on the unification of the world’s working class in the struggle for socialism, i.e., a social and economic order that prioritises human need not private profit.

The concluding lines of the Queen’s speech invoked the lyrics of Vera Lynn’s World War II song, “We’ll Meet Again,” which promised soldiers a future “sunny day.” In her own speech on Sunday, the Queen also told working people, “We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return.”

Better days for whom? The working class should reject the Queen’s demands for endurance, delivered in the lap of luxury. One day the film of her speech will be a museum exhibit—demonstrating to future generations the stupidity, irrationality and hypocrisy of the Royal Family and all it represents.

Fiction, reality and the global crisis of capitalism

Joseph Kishore & David North

On Monday there seemed to be two different worlds: one based on reality and the other on fiction.

In the real world, the COVID-19 pandemic continued its deadly rampage within the United States and around the globe. The news was dominated by reports of overcrowded hospitals, exhausted doctors, nurses and support staff, and sick and dying patients.

But in the fictional world of global stock exchanges and finance, a mood of uncontrollable euphoria prevailed among investors, who, as if staging an orgy at a funeral, poured billions into equities and drove the Dow Jones Industrial Average up by nearly 7.5 percent. Substantial gains were also recorded by the German DAX (up 6 percent) and the British FTSE (up over 3 percent).

What motivated this shameful and shameless celebration?

On Monday, the US death toll surpassed the 10,000 mark. Despite a very slight decline in the daily total of new deaths in New York City on Sunday, there is no clear evidence that the virulence of the pandemic has peaked in this critical urban center.

Moreover, it is absolutely certain that other major urban centers and, more generally, large portions of the United States, are still to experience the full force of the pandemic. The level of testing remains so disorganized and primitive that there exists no objective data upon which reliable predictions can be made about when it will be possible for workers to return safely to their jobs.

The economic situation is dire and is deteriorating. Former Federal Reserve Chairperson Janet Yellen said in a CNBC interview on Monday that the US is in the midst of an “absolutely shocking” downturn. Unemployment is as high as 13 percent, Yellen estimated, and the overall contraction of the US economy is already at 30 percent.

Yellen’s views were seconded by JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who, in his annual shareholder letter released on Monday, wrote that he expects a “bad recession.” According to Dimon, the gross domestic product could fall as much as 35 percent in the second quarter, and the downturn will probably last through the rest of the year.

Large sections of the global economy, beyond the US and Western Europe are in free fall. India, home to 17 percent of the world’s population, remains in lockdown, threatening global supply chains and food production. Former Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan said yesterday that the country faces “perhaps its greatest emergency since independence.”

In Japan, a dramatic rise in coronavirus infections has finally compelled Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to declare a state of emergency, which will result in a shutdown of large portions of the country’s economic activity.

To the economic and health care crisis is added a deepening political crisis. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having been infected by the coronavirus, was hospitalized and placed in intensive care on Sunday evening. Almost simultaneously, the 93-year-old Queen Elizabeth grimly addressed the entire country in a televised speech for only the fourth time (outside of the annual Christmas event) in her 68-year reign.

One might have expected that the hospitalization of an extremely sick prime minister in London, the financial center of Europe, would have sent the stock exchange into a tailspin when it opened for business on Monday morning.

But nothing of the sort happened. Investors plunged into the market with gusto and did not pause for even a minute to shed a tear for their ailing prime minister.

How can one explain the exuberance in global markets amidst such tragic and threatening conditions?

First, whatever anxiety Wall Street may have about the spread of the pandemic is offset by the expectation that the US government will continue to support its speculative activities with countless trillions. In fact, the direct transfer of resources into the markets, particularly by the Federal Reserve central bank in the US, is well underway. The Federal Reserve balance sheet increased last month by $1.6 trillion, approximately equal to the entire monthly gross domestic product of the United States. Every day, tens of billions are being digitally manufactured to buy up assets and debt from banks and corporations.

In other words, the policies that were implemented following the crash of 2008 are being taken to a new level. For more than a decade, the speculative mania on Wall Street has been financed through the infusion of cash from the US Federal Reserve in the form of “quantitative easing” (money printing) operations and low interest rates. In the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, the Fed added $4 trillion to its balance sheet by buying up mortgage-backed securities and other assets held by the banks.

To this was added the unending stream of money plowed into the markets in the form of corporate stock buybacks. The Wall Street Journal writes in an article published over the weekend:

Corporate buybacks, in fact, have been the only net source of money entering the stock market since the financial crisis in 2008, according to Brian Reynolds, chief market strategist at research firm Reynolds Strategy. Buyback programs, through which companies repurchase their own shares on the open market, can help boost share prices by reducing the amount of stock outstanding and lifting a company’s per-share earnings, though not its overall profit.

Since the beginning of 2009, Mr. Reynolds estimates, buybacks have added a net $4 trillion to the stock market. Contributions from all other sources—including exchange-traded funds, foreign buyers, pensions, hedge funds and households—netted out to roughly zero, he concluded, based on the Federal Reserve’s quarterly flow funds reports. The S&P’s 500 market value is $20.9 trillion.

To sum up, through the mechanism of buybacks, the price of shares could be endlessly driven up even without an increase of profit levels. The new intervention of the Federal Reserve, following the bill passed by Congress, has reassured Wall Street that there will be endless liquidity available to support rising share values under conditions of severe economic contraction.

The Fed is already buying up corporate debt, and Yellen raised yesterday the possibility that it might begin direct purchases of stocks for the first time in history. Yellen also indicated that officials at the Federal Reserve, with whom she remains in contact, are thinking about purchasing very risky corporate “junk bonds.”

The second factor behind Wall Street’s rise is its enthusiastic reaction to the international campaign by the political establishment and the media for a speedy return to work.

In the final analysis, the edifice of fictitious capital—wealth created through the massive and inflationary expansion of credit and debt—cannot be entirely liberated from a real productive process involving and requiring the exploitation of the labor power of the working class. If that real process stops, for whatever reason, the structure of fictitious capital collapses.

This is why the calls for a return to work—regardless of the state of the pandemic—have been taken up internationally by the capitalist media. The prospect of an early return to work, under conditions of intensified exploitation, generated Monday’s euphoria.

Of course, the euphoria may not last long. Reality, not fiction, determines the course of events.

The class conflict and the logic of the opposing classes are starkly posed: For the ruling class, it is a question of securing its wealth, returning the workers to the job under unsafe conditions, and tearing up whatever remains of social programs. For the working class, it is a question of saving lives, stopping all nonessential production, and restructuring economic life on the basis of social need, not private profit.

The one path leads to authoritarianism, the other leads to socialist revolution. This is the irrepressible social and political logic of the fundamental reality of our epoch: the global crisis and death agony of world capitalism.

Joint Japan World Bank Group Scholarship Program 2020/2021 for Students in Developing Countries

Application Deadline: 23rd April, 2020

About Scholarship: The Joint Japan/World Bank Graduate Scholarship Program (JJ/WBGSP) is open to women and men from developing countries with relevant professional experience and a history of supporting their countries’ development efforts who are applying to a master degree program in a development-related topic.
After earning their degree, developing country scholars commit to return to their home country to use their new skills and contribute to their countries’ social and economic development.

Type: Masters

Selection Criteria: Eligible applications are assessed according to three main factors: academic excellence, professional experience, and relevance of program of study. Priority is given to candidates from the public sector with a high potential to impact the development in their own countries after completion of their studies

Eligibility: Details on Eligibility Criteria for each call for applications are provided in that call’s Application Guidelines, and these detailed eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.
Broadly speaking, Developing Country nationals must:

• Be a national of a World Bank member developing country;
• Not hold dual citizenship of any developed country;
• Be in good health;
• Hold a Bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree earned at least 3 years prior to the Application Deadline date;
• Have 3 years or more of recent development-related work experience after earning a Bachelor’s (or equivalent) degree;
• Be employed in development-related work in a paid full- time position at the time of submitting the scholarship application.  The only exception to this criterion is for developing country nationals from a country that will be on the updated list of Fragile and Conflict States provided to applicants in the Application Guidelines for each call for scholarships.
• On or before the Scholarship Application Deadline date, be admitted unconditionally (except for funding) for the upcoming academic year to at least one of the JJ/WBGSP preferred university master’s programs and located outside of the applicant’s country of citizenship and country of residence listed at the time the call for scholarship applications open.
• Not be an Executive Director, his/her alternate, and/or staff of any type of appointment of the World Bank Group or a close relative of the aforementioned by blood or adoption with the term “close relative” defined as: Mother, Father, Sister, Half-sister, Brother, Half-brother, Son, Daughter, Aunt, Uncle, Niece, or Nephew; *Please note: All eligibility criteria are strictly adhered to. No exceptions are made.
• Eligibility criteria WILL NOT change during an open call for applications. However, this information is subject to change between the close of one application process and the opening of the next.

Number of Scholarships: Several

Scholarship benefits: The JJ/WBGSP scholarship provides annual awards to cover the cost of completing a master’s degree or its equivalent. The awards are given for one year and, provided that the academic program is longer than one year, may be renewed for a second consecutive year or a portion thereof, subject to satisfactory academic performance in the first year and the availability of funds.
The scholarship provides benefits for the recipient only, covering:

• economy class air travel between the home country and the host university at the start of the study program and one return journey following the end of the overall scholarship period. In addition to the ticket, scholars receive a US $500 travel allowance for each trip;
• tuition and the cost of basic medical and accident insurance usually obtained through the university;
• a monthly subsistence allowance to cover living expenses, including books.

Duration: The proposed program of study should start during the academic year 2020/2021 for a maximum duration of two years.

Eligible Countries: Developing countries

To be taken at (country): One of the preferred universities (see in Program Webpage Link below)

How to Apply: Applicants are strongly encouraged to use the online application form available in  English, French, or Spanish.
It is very necessary to go through the instructions in ALL application documents before applying.

Visit the Program Webpage for Details

Mest Africa Challenge 2020 (Win up to $50,000 equity investment)

Application Deadline: 18th April 2020

Eligible Countries: Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Cote d’Ivoire, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda.

About the Award: Calling all tech start-ups in Abidjan, Accra, Addis, Kigali, Dakar, Dar Es Salaam, Lagos, Nairobi, and Johannesburg!
The MEST Africa Challenge is the African tech startup pitch competition for early-stage companies based in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Rwanda, Senegal, Ethiopia or Tanzania.
Winners of each country’s semi-final competition will compete in the Challenge finals at the MEST Africa Summit 2020. Finalists will compete on a global stage in front of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate partners and ecosystem players for the chance to win $50k in investment from the Meltwater Foundation, and the opportunity to join the MEST Africa incubator community.

Type: Entrepreneurship

Eligibility:

1. Pre-seed or seed-stage (have raised $100k total or less cumulatively since inception)
2. Currently generating revenue
3. Can demonstrate traction in one or more of the nine MAC Markets (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Rwanda)
4. Has been in operations for 2 years or less
5. Tech-enabled (software company)
6. Industry agnostic
7. Any business model (B2B, B2C, B2B2C, B2G etc…)
8. *Francophone applicants must pitch in English

Number of Awards: 10

Value of Award: Finalists will compete on a global stage in front of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate partners and ecosystem players for the chance to win $50k in investment from the Meltwater Foundation, and the opportunity to join the MEST Africa incubator community.

Duration of Programme:  May 1 – May 22

How to Apply: 

• Apply here for the 2020 MEST Africa challenge.

• It is important to go through all application requirements on the Programme Webpage see link below) before applying

Visit Programme Webpage for Details

Cuba’s Promising Approach to Cancer

Cesar Chelala

In 1991, I headed a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) mission of Latin American physicians to evaluate a national Cuban project involving the use of interferon to treat inoperable lung cancer. At the time, there was a rumor that Fidel Castro had lung cancer and had a particular interest in the research about it. Castro showed his interest, in part, when he came to visit us and discussed the findings. At the time, interferon didn’t seem to have a significant effect, but Cuban doctors have now developed a new treatment for lung cancer that offers promising results.

In September of 2011, the Chinese press agency Xinhua reported that Cuban doctors had produced the first therapeutic vaccine for lung cancer called CIMAvax-EGF. It was the result of a 25-year research project at Havana’s Center for Molecular Immunology. Although the vaccine doesn’t prevent lung cancer from developing in new patients, it turns later-stage lung cancer, specifically non-small-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) into a controllable chronic disease.

The vaccine contains a protein called epidermal growth factor (EGF). This substance stimulates the growth of cells and causes the tumors to multiply and grow uncontrollably. The vaccine contains EGF and a protein from the meningitis bacteria which enter into the bloodstream of patients and encourage their immune system to produce antibodies that suppress the effects of EGF.

As a result, the vaccine doesn’t eliminate the tumors but prevents them from growing and spreading to other parts of the body. The vaccine is given to people who already have lung cancer and where the traditional treatments have proven to be ineffective. For these types of patients, the vaccine could be a life saver.

The vaccine, which is now available in Cuba, Colombia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Peru and Paraguay, is relatively cheap to produce and store, and produces only very mild side effects such as nausea, chills, fever, and lack of energy. There are now agreements to test it in the United States, Japan, and some European countries.

Initial trials have shown a trend towards longer survival among vaccinated test subjects. Also, a direct correlation has been found between the level of antibodies that a vaccinated patient has produced against EGF and survival. Other trials have shown that those under 60 benefit the most in terms of survival. However, researchers caution that some early positive results to date have been found in relatively few cancer patients who were carefully selected and given special oncology care. They may not represent all the patients who could benefit from this vaccine.

Trials are currently being planned in the United States, Japan, the European Union and Serbia. In late October 2016, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorized the Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center in Buffalo, New York, to conduct a Phase I/II clinical trial of CIMAvax in patients with non-small cell lung cancer. “The chance to evaluate a vaccine like this is a very exciting prospect,” declared Candace Johnson, President and CEO of Roswell Park.

The same epidermal growth factor (EGF) acting on the lungs could play a role also on prostate, breast, colon and pancreatic cancer, thus opening a vast array of practical applications. Kelvin Lee, an immunologist at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center indicated that all these organs could be potential targets for this vaccine.

During several trips to Cuba on UN public health-related missions, I have had the opportunity to work with several Cuban physicians and have become aware of their high commitment to public health. As Dr. Kelvin Lee has said, “The wonderful thing about working with our Cuban colleagues is that they really believe, in their heart of hearts, that medical care is a human right.”

The collaboration between the Cuban doctors and those at the Roswell Cancer Center is a promising one. But there are still several hurdles to overcome in large part because of the U.S. embargo on Cuba. Clearing the path to an effective collaboration may result in one of the most important advances to combat cancer in our time.

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism

Richard Wolff

The desperate policies of panic-driven governments involve throwing huge amounts of money at the economies collapsed in response to the coronavirus threat. Monetary authorities create money and lend it at extremely low interest rates to the major corporations and especially big banks “to get them through the crisis.” Government treasuries borrow vast sums to get the collapsed economy back into what they imagine is “the normal, pre-virus economy.” Capitalism’s leaders are rushing into policy failures because of their ideological blinders.

​The problem of policies aimed to return the economy to what it was before the virus hit is this: Global capitalism, by 2019, was itself a major cause of the collapse in 2020. Capitalism’s scars from the crashes of 2000 and 2008-2009 had not healed. Years of low interest rates had enabled corporations and governments to “solve” all their problems by borrowing limitlessly at almost zero interest rate cost. All the new money pumped into economies by central banks had indeed caused the feared inflation, but chiefly in stock markets whose prices consequently spiraled dangerously far away from underlying economic values and realities. Inequalities of income and wealth reached historic highs.

​In short, capitalism had built up vulnerabilities to another crash that any number of possible triggers could unleash. The trigger this time was not the dot.com meltdown of 2000 or the sub-prime meltdown of 2008/9; it was a virus. And of course, mainstream ideology requires focusing on the trigger, not the vulnerability. Thus mainstream policies aim to reestablish pre-virus capitalism. Even if they succeed, that will return us to a capitalist system whose accumulated vulnerabilities will soon again collapse from yet another trigger.

​In the light of the coronavirus pandemic, I focus criticism on capitalism and the vulnerabilities it has accumulated for several reasons. Viruses are part of nature. They have attacked human beings—sometimes dangerously—in both distant and recent history. In 1918, the Spanish Flu killed nearly 700,000 in the United States and millions elsewhere. Recent viruses include SARS, MERS and Ebola. What matters to public health is each society’s preparedness: stockpiled tests, masks, ventilators, hospital beds, trained personnel, etc., to manage dangerous viruses. In the U.S., such objects are produced by private capitalist enterprises whose goal is profit. It was not profitable to produce and stockpile such products, that was not and still is not being done.

Nor did the U.S. government produce or stockpile those medical products. Top U.S. government personnel privilege private capitalism; it is their primary objective to protect and strengthen. The result is that neither private capitalism nor the U.S. government performed the most basic duty of any economic system: to protect and maintain public health and safety. U.S. capitalism’s response to the coronavirus pandemic continues to be what it has been since December 2019: too little, too late. It failed. It is the problem.

The second reason I focus on capitalism is that the responses to today’s economic collapse by Trump, the GOP and most Democrats carefully avoid any criticism of capitalism. They all debate the virus, China, foreigners, other politicians, but never the system they all serve. When Trump and others press people to return to churches and jobs—despite risking their and others’ lives—they place reviving a collapsed capitalism ahead of public health.

The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today’s disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.

A worker-coop based economy—where workers democratically run enterprises, deciding what, how and where to produce, and what to do with any profits—could, and likely would, put social needs and goals (like proper preparation for pandemics) ahead of profits. Workers are the majority in all capitalist societies; their interests are those of the majority. Employers are always a small minority; theirs are the “special interests” of that minority. Capitalism gives that minority the position, profits and power to determine how the society as a whole lives or dies. That’s why all employees now wonder and worry about how long our jobs, incomes, homes and bank accounts will last—if we still have them. A minority (employers) decides all those questions and excludes the majority (employees) from making those decisions, even though that majority must live with their results.

Of course, the top priority now is to put public health and safety first. To that end, employees across the country are now thinking about refusing to obey orders to work in unsafe job conditions. U.S. capitalism has thus placed a general strike on today’s social agenda. A close second priority is to learn from capitalism’s failure in the face of the pandemic. We must not suffer such a dangerous and unnecessary social breakdown again. Thus system change is now also moving onto today’s social agenda.

Indian Economy unlikely to Recuperate Quickly under Double Whammy of COVID-19 Lockdown and Global Economic Meltdown

Sushant Kumar Singh

Covid-19 which originated in China’s Wuhan city has taken the shape of pandemic all over the world calling for severe medical emergencies world-wide. The world has no vaccine or a drug to control it medically, as such the World Health Organisation (WHO) urges all the nations to implement complete lockdown in their country, which is the only available strategy that can effectively minimize the spread of disease and save more lives. A major part of the world is presently observing complete lock-down which has led to the halt of all economic activities worldwide. In the wake of increasing Corona infected cases, India has also declared 21 days complete lock-down of all social, political and economic activities except the supply of some essential services like groceries, health, banking transaction, petrol pump and LPG gas for a limited period of time each day. India’s 1.3 billion people are strictly decreed to stay at home.

India being the 5th largest economy in the world, locking down of such a large economy will have huge cost towards both global and domestic transactions. If this lockdown continues for a longer period of over one month then it will wreak havoc in the Indian economy. Indian economy is going to be affected not only by the termination of their domestic economic activity but also by the global lock-down scenario. World’s top two economies in terms of both PPP and Nominal GDP, China and US are also suffering due to the Corona virus lock-down. Both the countries aggregately constitute 36% of world GDP (in nominal method) and 24% of global trade. China and US are also the top two leading trade partners of India. As such slowdown of these two huge economies will definitely have negative consequences for Indian economy like decrease in exports and standstill of exporting industries, which can further result into huge amount of unemployment and decline in GDP growth rate. China’s economic growth slowed to 6.2% in the second quarter, which is its lowest growth rate in 27 years. US economy slowed down to 2.1% from the expected growth of 3.1%. Economists are suggesting it will plummet below 2% over the next quarter. Slowing down of these two economies in the wake of Corona crisis and protracted tariff war between them may fuel global economy crisis in the upcoming days.  OECD has marked that world economic growth will decline by half i.e., to 1.5% from 2.9%, and may experience greater economic disruption than the 2008 financial crisis, if the lock-down to contain Corona virus infection persists for a longer period of time. United Nation (UN) estimates that the present crisis may cost $220 billion to developing countries and world economy could lose approximately $2 trillion income. According to the World Bank, East Asian and pacific economy could face significant economic slowdown,  growth in this province may decline to 2.1% against forecast of 5.8% and in worst case scenario growth may plunge to 0.5% and 11 million people may end up below poverty line. World GDP may decline by 2.2% to 4%, estimated loss of approximately $ 3 Trillion.

Economic disturbance caused by this lock-down has led to three major impacts in the Indian economy. First, severe plunge in the stock market led to devaluation and volatility in financial market and slowing down of the industrial production due to global blocked. BSE Sensex started falling uninterruptedly from 41170.12 on 20th Feb to 29468.49 on 31st March which accounts for 28.4% decline in market value and is continuously dropping down till date. In Banking and NBFC sector ICRA anticipates assets quality stress likely to reflect with a lag of 1-2 quarter after removal of moratorium period. This will lead to spike in stressed assets and increased in generation of non-performing assets (NPA’s). Second, complete disruption of supply chain causing cessation of small and major economic activities. It has badly impacted logistics industry and employment there.  Only the supplies of essential services are just keeping this industry going right now. Third, mass exodus of migrant labour from cities to their native villages, who were a huge part of the informal sector. Most of them worked in the Micro, Small and Medium size Enterprises (MSME’s sector), so this mass departure could lead to temporary suspension of production activity or entirely closing down of some of the MSMEs and large enterprises in the short run. Lockdown has forced millions of migrant worker into joblessness. All these factors together are pushing the economy into a tailspin and future uncertainty, if strong expansionary fiscal policies are not taken into consideration. Some industries that have already been hit hardest by the lock down are tourism & hospitality and travel and logistic industry. Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) anticipates the loss of 20 million jobs in tourism and hospitality industry if its activities not pick up by the October. It also assessed that this is one of the worst crisis Indian economy is experiencing which has terribly impacted all the aspects of tourism sector.

According to FAITH (Federation of Associations in India Tourism & Hospitality), tourism industry is running towards the condition of bankruptcy, which could leave around 70% of the workforce in a lurch of mass unemployment. National Sample Survey (NSS) believes Indian economy is on the verge of losing 136 million jobs.

In the short-run, the economy will experience both negative supply and demand shocks. Complete shutdown of MSMEs and big enterprises’ production activities will lead to a decrease in aggregate supply. At the same time, there will be massive shortage of effective demand in the economy due fall in the mass consumptions, ascribable to decrease in the income level of households for various reasons such as increased unemployment, leave without pay or half salary to the employees and decline in business turnover. As a consequence, there will be decrease in profit and investment level which will lead to a fall in aggregate demand. Asian Development Bank (ADB) and National Statistics Office NSO estimates the expected annual growth for the economy is 4% and 5% respectively. All the other credit agencies have also revised their growth model of the financial year 2020 for India. Moody has downgraded growth rate from 5.3 % to 2.5 %, CRISIL has demoted economic growth from 5.7 % to 5.2%, S & P has reduced the growth expectation from 6.5% to 5.2% and Fitch has relegated the expected growth to 5.1% from 5.6%. At a time when the Indian economy is yet to completely recover from the two shocks of demonetization and GST implementation; it is now got stuck into the severe economic obstruction due to Corona lock down.  CARE has accounted for 6.3 – 7.2 lakh crore loss of income to the economy in 21 days of lockdown.

Raghu R. Rajan in his recent interview to India Today, said that government need to be cautious about temporary shocks to the economy does not become a more permanent shock. For now we are seeing downturn in the economy, slow revenue generation, slow cash flow, no income to worker, substantial layoff and MSME’s firms are closing down. The main concerns should be for the government to efficiently bridges between the present time crisis and the period after the lockdown over, when this crisis brought under the control and most importantly the government has to make crucial decision regarding prevention of closing down of MSME’s. Dun and Bradstreet in their forecast estimated that the economy may enter into recession, companies may go bankrupt and the economy’s expected vulnerability cannot be decoupled from the global melt down.

Corona Virus is not only affecting the human respiratory system but now it has also started infecting the respiratory system of the country’s economy. There will be some bigger challenges to the government as to how it will treat this economy’s respiratory ailments in the near future under looming economic recession: For how long the government is going to impose this ongoing lock-down considering the economic health and at the same time control the Corona pandemic? How is the government going to restore faith in financial sector, manufacturing sector and especially in the MSME’s sector? Who will the government bailout and to what extent? If the number of Corona patients increases in the upcoming days to huge numbers like those in US, Italy or Spain then, how is the government going to allocate the limited medical resources, like who will be given attention and extra care or who will not get it (in terms of admission and ventilators)? How is the government going to take care of gig workers, daily wagers, precarious labour and contractual labors, who have lost their job amid this Corona virus lock-down? How is the government going to ensure that all those migrant labour are placed again in the production circuit after the lock-down crisis will calm down? What ought to be the greatest learning from this devastating socioeconomic crisis will be depend on the how we as a political society respond to the double whammy of global health crisis and economic mayhem. Hope this global COVID-19 health crisis along with the massive fall down of global economy alters the government’s and economists’ view on global and domestic economic system and urges them to change the pattern of public expenditure towards the provision of universal health care system, expansion and access of social security programmes to each and every needy people, affordable housing, clean water and environment and free education for all and paved the way for a better society.

Australian government “pauses” hounding welfare recipients in face of massive jobless queues

Margaret Rees

The Australian government said last Friday it would partly suspend the pursuit of alleged welfare debts for six months during the coronavirus crisis, a measure triggered by a growing public outcry and the political establishment’s fear of social unrest.

Even though tens of thousands of newly unemployed people struggled to apply for welfare assistance on huge jobless queues, Services Australia was still deploying 1,500 “compliance officers” to pursue alleged debts until the pause was announced on Friday.

Outraged welfare recipients had taken to social media, as well as some corporate media outlets, to reveal threatening “accounts payable” letters they had received from Centrelink, the government’s welfare agency, demanding payment of supposed over-payments.

In addition, Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal-National government is still delaying repaying hundreds of millions of dollars to recipients who were unlawfully accused of over-claiming benefits under the government’s discredited automated “robodebt” scheme, even as the government channels billions of dollars in “rescue packages” to big business.

Friday’s decision, described as a “pause” on “certain debt activity,” was announced by Government Services Minister Stuart Robert, who said it would allow the redeployment of staff to process benefits claims. But he said “fraud and serious non-compliance” action would continue, leaving the door open to continuing to hound thousands of welfare recipients.

At the same time, Services Australia issued a notice that it intends to use Medicare records for a data-matching program that would include “detecting over payments and recovering debt.” The Medicare information would be used to “make sure Centrelink payments are only made to people who are entitled to those payments” and “help the whole-of-government approach to identify serious and complex fraud.”

The notice indicates that, having been compelled by a Federal Court ruling to abandon the automated “robodebt” scheme of computer-generated debt allegations, the government will now use Medicare data to pursue supposed welfare benefit over payments.

“Services Australia expects to match approximately 9.8 million unique records held in its Centrelink database,” it said. “Based on fraud criteria, Services Australia anticipates it will examine approximately 5,000-9,000 records per year.”

Families and Social Services Minister Anne Ruston last month issued a “public interest immunity” claim to prevent her department officials answering questions in a Senate committee hearing about the robodebt “income compliance scheme,” which is now the subject of a class action by about 10,000 people.

The class action—“Katherine Prygodicz & Ors versus Commonwealth of Australia”—accuses the government of unjust enrichment and negligence, basically for gouging illegal repayments out of poor and vulnerable welfare recipients and denying any duty of care to them.

Despite Ruston’s manoeuvre to avoid public scrutiny, a leaked confidential cabinet submission revealed that the government expects to lose the class action, so it will have to refund 449,500 debt repayments worth a total of $555.6 million.

However, the payments will not commence until July and will take 12 months to complete, according to the cabinet submission by Ruston, Stuart Robert and Attorney-General Christian Porter.

Services Australia stopped initiating reviews under the robodebt method of automatic income averaging last December, after the Federal Court ruled the method unlawful. But the government had not halted its broader debt recovery program, and was also denying cash advances to people whose “robodebts” had been frozen.

The government’s callous, punitive and financially cruel regime had continued in the face of the enormous social distress caused by the COVID-19 disaster. Newly-sacked or laid-off workers were forced to wait in massive queues outside the government’s Centrelink welfare offices to seek assistance.

Workers queuing at a Centrelink office in Sydney late last month

They could not access the MyGov website to lodge claims because it crashed due to years of staff and resourcing cuts in Services Australia, the government agency in charge of the welfare payment system. Nor could people get through by phone.

According to Australian Council for Social Services CEO Cassandra Goldie, the $555.6 million mentioned in the leaked cabinet submission represents just 70 percent of the $785 million that the government extracted via the robodebt system by August 2019.

The Labor Party’s shadow minister for government services, Bill Shorten, last week said staff working on robodebts should be redirected to help Services Australia handle the thousands of people applying for welfare due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fearing a potential social explosion, Shorten called on Stuart Robert to settle the case and “immediately front the Australian public and apologise to the multitude of robodebt victims who have suffered so much because of this scandal.”

This is sheer hypocrisy. It was the last Labor government that launched the “data matching” offensive against welfare recipients.

While assistant treasurer in the Greens-backed Gillard Labor government in 2011, Shorten declared that income compliance detection would be stepped up. “The new matching data link is expected to increase the number of former customers identified for this process by an additional 65,000, above current detection levels, over four years,” he promised.

One newly unemployed young mother, who worked in the welfare sector until she lost her job last week, told the WSWS about her experiences trying to access Services Australia.

“I tried but I couldn’t get through. I’m waiting for them to call back, but I have been waiting five days. I haven’t had any news. My partner was trying too.

“Everything the prime minister says is confusing. All the conditions are unclear.

“We also tried online, but we’re not going to queue up. That’s another contradiction. It is so unhealthy. They are not prioritising lives of workers. There are so many issues for us right now.

“These people in power don’t care. Even the laws that exist can’t cope with this situation.

“There is so much pressure and guilt. They are supposed to be for the whole of society, not just a sector. I’m not naïve, I know what they are like.”

African continent in social and economic chaos as official COVID-19 cases hit 10,000

Stephan McCoy

The scale of the disaster confronting Africa in the coronavirus crisis, with the least robust health care systems in the world and a venal bourgeoisie incapable of responding to the surge of cases, is becoming ever clearer.

Nearly 10,000 cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed on the African continent—a huge underestimate given the lack of testing kits—and 376 people have died. At least 148 health care workers have tested positive and four have succumbed to the virus.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, secretary general of the World Health Organization (WHO) said, “The best advice for Africa is to prepare for the worst and prepare today”—advice African governments have ignored.

The Global Health Security (GHS) Index, which assesses countries’ abilities and preparedness to respond to biological threats and novel flu epidemics or pandemics, exposes African governments’ lack of preparation for the pandemic, which was both foreseeable and foreseen.

Its 2019 report stated, “National health security is fundamentally weak around the world. No country is fully prepared for epidemics or pandemics, and every country has important gaps to address.”

It found, “Only 19 percent of countries receive top marks for detection and reporting” of biological threats, with only “5 percent of countries scoring in the highest tier for their ability to rapidly respond to and mitigate the spread of an epidemic.”

The average overall GHS Index score among all 195 countries assessed was 40.2 out of 100. The majority of countries ranked as “least prepared” are in Africa, with Somalia (16.6) and Equatorial Guinea (16.2) listed at the bottom. Only South Africa comes in with a relatively high number—34.

A recent Bloomberg article, “Trapped by Coronavirus, Nigeria’s Elite Faces Squalid Hospitals,” notes that the Nigerian elite, who have long been accustomed to flying to the UK, France or India for medical treatment, will now have to face the consequences of their own policies.

Francis Faduyile, head of the Nigerian Medical Association, said, “The health system is not strong enough. Over the years, it’s been denied normal funding and things are not where they’re supposed to be. If the burden of the coronavirus is added, it may be too heavy; it may actually cause a total collapse.” He said, “It’s going to be a lesson for those who think they can neglect the health system.”

What the article describes is horrific. And Nigeria is by no means the worst case as the GHS index shows. According to its health ministry, Nigeria has 75,000 doctors, 180,709 nurses and 25,000 pharmacists for a population of 200 million. But half of all registered doctors have emigrated to the advanced Western countries. Nigeria has 0.5 hospital beds per 1,000 people, far below WHO thresholds, and only five laboratories are able to test for the coronavirus.

Health spending accounted for about 5 percent of the government’s budget over the last decade, falling far short of the African Union’s recommended minimum of 15 percent. It has largely focused on recurrent spending, with little or no capital investment. Only N427.3 billion ($1.096 billion) of the federal budget (4.5 percent) went to health, which amounts to just N2,000 (US$5.50) for each of Nigeria’s 200 million population.

The Financial Times noted that African governments spend an average of $12 per capita a year on health compared with $4,000 in the UK. In Nigeria, there are just 169 ventilators for 200 million people. Nigeria has one of the highest mortality rates of children under five in the world, with one in ten children dying before the age of five. It provides health care coverage to only 3 percent of its population through the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS).

Life expectancy, at 52 years, is below the African average. HIV, tuberculosis and malaria are among the leading causes of death, together accounting for around 20 percent of all deaths. Some 40 percent of the population lack access to clean drinking water while only 30 percent have adequate sanitation.

This terrible situation is not due to a lack of resources. According to Oxfam, “The combined wealth of Nigeria’s five richest men—$29.9 billion—could end extreme poverty at a national level, yet 5 million face hunger. More than 112 million people are living in poverty in Nigeria, yet the country’s richest man would have to spend $1 million a day for 42 years to exhaust his fortune. … The amount of money that the richest Nigerian man can earn annually from his wealth is sufficient to lift 2 million people out of poverty for one year.”

The worldwide economic slowdown has led to plummeting demand and prices for Africa’s natural resources, including oil and gas, a collapse in tourism and travel and remittances from the African diaspora, while border closures and flight bans have curtailed the export of key agricultural produce.

Ahunna Eziakonwa, the UN Development Program regional director for Africa, warned that the economy faces a “complete collapse” unless the spread of COVID-19 is controlled. Up to 50 percent of all projected job growth will be lost. “We will see a complete collapse of economies and livelihoods. Livelihoods will be wiped out in a way we have never seen before.”

Governments throughout the continent are using the pandemic and the attendant lockdowns as the pretext for military dictatorship to deal with mounting opposition in the working class.

The Japan Times reported that in Nigeria a soldier enforcing the lockdown killed Joseph Pessu, a resident of the oil city of Warri in the southern state of Delta. In Kenya, security forces enforcing the lockdown killed a 13-year-old boy on his balcony. Yusuf Moyo, the boy’s father, said, “Where is our safety if not in our own homes?” Four others have been killed.

In South Africa, the police and the army have used whips, rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse people in Hillbrow, an inner-city Johannesburg neighbourhood. In Zimbabwe, the army and police forced thousands of homeless people from the streets and transported them to open fields, empty school grounds and stadiums where makeshift shelters are being set up to enforce social distancing.

Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the IMF, estimates that emerging countries may need as much as $2.5 trillion in support. The possibility for widespread unrest will only grow as food shortages hit ailing African economies. Vera Songwe, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa, “If we need an example of what the lack of multilateralism looks like, we’re seeing it today. If one of us has the virus, all of us have it.”

An international and coordinated response to stop the spread of the virus on the African continent must be mounted. Measures must be taken to provide the necessary medical equipment and staff to halt the pandemic—without which the coronavirus will spread, killing millions. A socialist leadership in the African working class must be built, pulling behind it the impoverished peasantry and in unity with the workers in imperialist centres for an uncompromising struggle against the banks, corporations and world imperialism.