Aid and Development Archive

The coronavirus pandemic has yet to peak across Latin America and the Caribbean, but China is already maneuvering to try and capitalize on the crisis and bolster its position and influence in the region. The heated blame game between Washington and Beijing over the coronavirus’s origins will eventually fade from the headlines, and Chinese leaders are quietly working to ensure that when it does, the strategic ground will have shifted in their favor. At the heart of these efforts is a campaign for ideological supremacy, to show the moral equivalence and even the supposed superiority of the Chinese communist system […]

OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso—Residents in the capital of this small, West African country rejoiced last weekend as their beloved corner bars, known as maquis, reopened seven weeks after the government had ordered them closed to curb the spread of COVID-19. In a maquis in the suburb of Wemtenga on Sunday evening, beer bottles clinked and chairs sidled closer together as patrons smoked and swayed to Ivorian music under drops of colored light pouring from a plastic disco ball. That same day, authorities had called on citizens to respect an earlier government order to wear masks—an edict that many Burkinabe, including those […]

From the moment the novel coronavirus burst out of China and began to spread around the world, many commentators quickly took for granted that Africa would become the pandemic’s biggest and deadliest target. Yet the continent has so far dodged those dire predictions. In retrospect, few things were more predictable. For decades, the convention in Western media coverage has been to treat Africa with a casual scorn that plays up its problems—pretending wrongly, for example, that its wars are unusually brutal by the standards of our times, or that its politicians, sneeringly dismissed as “Big Men,” are uniquely power hungry […]

Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, WPR Newsletter and Engagement Editor Benjamin Wilhelm curates the week’s top news and expert analysis on China. In a speech Monday to the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization, Chinese leader Xi Jinping called for international cooperation in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and in particular for greater support for the developing world. Xi’s remarks were a bold assertion of Chinese leadership at the WHO and in global efforts to contain the coronavirus, carefully designed to deflect international criticism of Beijing’s handling of the initial outbreak. At the annual meeting of […]

A recent survey by Reuters found that across Africa, there is less than one intensive care bed per 100,000 people. The continent’s three most populous countries—Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt—only have 1,920 intensive care beds to service more than 400 million people between them. Just two countries, South Africa and Ghana, accounted for 46 percent of all tests carried out in Africa as of May 7. As recently as April 17, 10 countries in Africa did not possess any ventilators at all, according to the World Health Organization, and just 2,000 ventilators were spread across 41 countries home to hundreds of […]

Editor’s Note: You can find all of our coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here. If you would like to help support our work, please consider taking advantage of our subscription offer here. Late last month, as the coronavirus continued to spread across the globe, the World Food Program warned of a “hunger pandemic.” With lockdowns constraining the incomes of the poor and supply chain disruptions preventing food from reaching consumers, pandemic-related hunger and malnutrition could eventually take more lives than the disease itself. Understanding the geography of the pandemic and the vulnerability of different food systems is critical for a […]

China has made concerted attempts recently to rewrite the global narrative about the coronavirus pandemic, especially its own lack of transparency about the early outbreak in Wuhan, in order to project an image of itself as a responsible global power. It has shipped medical supplies to help countries around the world contain the virus’s spread, and has launched a far-reaching disinformation campaign about the origins of the contagion and China’s response to it. Europe has been at the heart of these efforts. Chinese state media outlets have insinuated that Italy was the source of the novel coronavirus, while Beijing has […]

The COVID-19 pandemic is affecting the entire world—but in vastly different ways. In particular, efforts to “flatten the curve” could create huge but unquantified costs for the most vulnerable. As a result of measures to contain the coronavirus’s spread, the specter of “biblical” hunger now hangs over much of the globe. At the same time, social distancing strategies remain an unattainable mirage for the hundreds of millions of people living in crowded quarters in the developing world. For fragile and conflict-affected countries, the pandemic represents a grim, dual challenge that risks threatening a precious good: peace. Many of these countries […]

The ultimate cost of the coronavirus pandemic won’t be tallied for a while. But one casualty seems obvious now: sustainable development. The pandemic has exposed the world’s failure to meet basic human needs, not least in health. Worse, it threatens to erase recent social, economic and environmental progress, particularly among the world’s most vulnerable populations. Pundits frequently describe the coronavirus as a “great equalizer,” reinforcing the message that “we’re all in this together.” In truth, the pandemic is reinforcing the brutal inequality that separates the world’s privileged and marginalized communities. Five years ago, U.N. member states endorsed the Sustainable Development […]

Editor’s Note: Every Friday, Andrew Green curates the top news and analysis from and about the African continent. Zimbabwe was facing a food security crisis even before the coronavirus pandemic began, but a lockdown to stop the spread of COVID-19 has exacerbated the country’s economic woes and further restricted the food supply. Now more than half the country’s 15 million people are in need of food assistance. The World Food Program was already assisting 3.5 million Zimbabweans before the coronavirus struck. Cyclical periods of drought and flooding have interrupted domestic food production, while hyperinflation, fueled by the government’s reintroduction of […]