Re/Generation: Perspectives on COVID-19 from the African Continent

This report is a snapshot of perspectives across the African continent on the implications of COVID-19 and what a post COVID environment might look like. The contributors are the intellectual thought leaders of the future mixed with cross-generational reflections so that the monograph covers the multi-generational concerns of generations X, Y, and Z.We have chosen to focus on this continent for several reasons not the least of which is the unique way in which African social movements mobilize and operate from a grassroots perspective. There is less reliance on social media as an echo chamber inciting action. Community-based shared grievances surrounding food security, corruption and common goods and the deeply layered engagement of the diaspora create a different dynamic than that experienced in the West. The influence of the diaspora on the continent is not viewed as external interference but intrinsic to community-based issues. Activism might be considered synonymous with simply existing, unlike the west activism is not a political choice which one may eschew. There is no choice about activism being framed politically or viewed as a political cause, it is more a question of activism as an existential imperative protecting a way of life which has to be defended and maintained regardless of the crisis at hand. Youth engagement in activism is not a question of simply being a part of online social movements which are fashionable or current. Livelihoods and lives depend on community engagement.The size of the continent and the impact of the African diaspora on Western politics and economies is also a crucially important reason for this report. One of the key lessons learned from COVID-19 is that security can no longer be framed purely from a national, state-centric, and western-centric view. Insecurity has to be understood in the context of the communities impacted. Individual communities experience insecurity in different ways.