“People will always need to eat, sleep and s**t, and plans fail if planners forget or ignore that”. Blindingly obvious and drilled into me twenty-five years ago with an unforgettable bluntness. I add to that appreciation of two other certainties – birth and death – and of the near-as-given need for medical attention at or between the two points. Roll all into one piece, and the sustainment requirements for individuals, families, communities, and nations becomes clear. For me, there has been the dubious privilege of being part of decision-making and processes that covered and pushed the whole piece through challenging situations.

My understanding includes environmental influences on how we normally eat (and drink), sleep (or rest), and get rid of wastes, and that we get on with sorting these matters if there are no disruptions to our abilities and freedoms to do so. Also learnt is that plans which disrupt getting on with these functions must include alternative ways and means to make them happen. This has been the stark lesson for poorer countries, many in Africa, when faced with the threat of COVID-19.

It was eye-watering to hear a British Conservative Chancellor detail intervention that would not have found a place in discussions between hard-line socialists only a few weeks earlier. I processed how bad things looked for richer nations alongside realisation that the cumulative damage of abuse and exploitation by Africa’s leaders, colonisers and “partners” had left many of her countries dangerously and tragically powerless in the face of the pandemic’s threat. Where in their national treasures was the capacity for what was being proposed in many places outside of the continent? Moving me from sadness to deep worry was the rush to adopt without adaptation solutions designed for faraway places with vastly different circumstances, experiences, capacities, and capabilities. Had the strategists not joined the dots to see the obvious links between off the shelf formulas and the depressing narratives of the executive, legislative and judicial systems in their countries? An “aha!” moment followed as I thought of that much bandied but maybe not deeply thought about slogan: “African solutions for African problems”.

The decision-makers need to know that it takes more than African implementation to make a solution African. Policy and strategy development by Africans side-by-side with tailoring for Africans needs to happen. There need to be respectful bows to the people they are designed for without the arrogance behind many failed ideas thrown at them without regard for their circumstances, understanding, beliefs and traditions. There must be recognition of local strengths and honest acceptance of weaknesses. Being different and needing different must not be considered a problem.

How the people eat, sleep, and get rid had been neglected almost as much as how they get fixed. Response planners in many parts of the continent found resistance came not from people yearning for freedom of movement, but from people desperately needing movement just to stay alive. Decades of neglect and poor planning were now throwing harsh realities at those who needed to be in charge.

If water will not go to where people need it, people will go to where the water is. If food cannot be kept fit for consumption, people’s movements will be determined by how they can get food fit to eat. If sanitation systems do not enable the getting rid processes, the processes will go down the paths of least resistance. And if the people cannot be fixed by the system, they will fix themselves and might just use methods and means that do not support the bigger plan.

It should not be the sorry mess that it is, but it is what it is, and what it is includes too many people for whom state input to their lives is not a lot more than the square root of zero. The quid pro quo that can be assumed as part of the covenant between state and people has never happened for way too many and is probably yielding diminishing returns for the few lucky to have ever had anything from the state.

On this Africa Day, many of the continent’s leaders must be hoping they do not find themselves in need of fixing by the health care systems they never needed and so never sorted. Maybe adding their fears to the confusing narratives of the past couple of months might get them seeing the blindingly obvious tribulations they have for too long been too blind to.

© Othame Kabia