Résumé
This chapter analyses narratives about responses to COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa over the course of 2020, focusing in particular on the emergence of narratives of "success". It draws on in-country fieldwork in Senegal, Uganda and Sierra Leone, attendance at meetings and accounts in the public domain. The chapter explores how these narratives were produced and mobilised and what the characterisations of success revealed as well as obscured. Recurring themes point to early and swift action, experience from past epidemics and strong leadership. As is usual with policy narratives, they have supported political and social moves that extend well beyond the issue in hand and have had both winners and losers. While some have benefited from strengthened political power and institutions, others - including local populations - have experienced health conditions left untreated, livelihoods disrupted or state violence. Narratives of success also deflected attention from more challenging aspects of the pandemic in its heterogeneous and unexpected unfolding. Attention to the positive elements of the African response is timely and supports wider calls to decolonise global health. However, analysis of what is overlooked in narratives of success is also important, given the influence of such accounts in shaping action and future epidemic imaginaries.
With reference to in-country fieldwork in Senegal, Uganda, and Sierra Leone, attendance at meetings, and accounts in the public domain, the authors identify the various and shifting narratives that emerged about the pandemic responses in SSA over the course of 2020, focusing in particular on narratives of 'success'. In this chapter, the authors identify and explore narratives of successful responses in SSA in 2020 with reference to three particular themes, or sub-narratives, that relate to some of the assumptions about what contributed to this apparent 'sparing' of large parts of SSA during this period. They now examine narratives of success with reference to three centrally recurring themes or sub-narratives that they have identified swift action by African countries to institute measures; the benefit of experience of epidemics; and strong leadership. The swift institution of early and stringent measures is cited as a key reason why the first "wave" of COVID-19 disease was less severe than predicted (Africa-CDC 2021).