The whole world was virtually not prepared for COVID-19. The medical remedy was understandably unavailable. So, Europeans, Americans, and similar regions of the world fell back on their traditional approaches to disruptive events of the type that COVID-19 represents. Many African countries would be largely led to mechanically copy the template of these other regions to varying degrees irrespective of the often starkly different economic, political, and social milieus that confront them. This article examines the policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic by African political office holders and the politics of COVID-19 remedy in Africa as scenes for the enactment of cultural racism and biomedical imperialism. Relying on the theoretical frameworks of cultural racism and postcolonialism, the article interrogates what happened with Africa’s policy response and attempts to find a home-grown remedy to the global COVID-19 pandemic as reflections of the underlying patterns of relationalities that determine the behavior of those in leadership positions under normal times—a pattern that only appears in stark relief under the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Histories and stories of Europe’s two “World” Wars are generally centered on narratives that privilege metropolitan empire perspectives over the perspectives of their satellite countries and their societies. As Spivak correctly observes, European and American academic writing is produced to support the economic interests of these countries. Similarly, knowledge or information is never innocent as it expresses the interests of its producers. It has invariably been in the interest of Eurocentric academic chroniclers of the Europe’s “World” Wars to write Africa’s contributions out of the dominant narratives of those wars. Just like European military regiments containing African soldiers and soldiers of African descent, who fought in Europe’s second “World” War and enabled Allied Powers’ victory over Nazi Germany and its Axis Powers allies, were “bleached” off every post-victory battle photographs of the War, the dominant narratives of the two “World” Wars are “bleached” to rid them of Africa’s economic contributions to the successful prosecution of both wars. This article represents an intervention to de -center such dominant albeit erroneous narratives on both wars. It brings focus on Africa’s economic contributions to the war efforts with the underscoring argument that but for Africa’s economic contributions, Africa’s European colonizers could not have achieved victory over Germany in both wars. The article advocates a de-centering agenda, which stems from postcolonial studies and theoretical framework as a useful tool for such corrective scholarship endeavor. The conclusive argument is that Africa’s economic contribution to the successful prosecution of Europe’s “World Wars” is primarily phenomenal rather than epiphenomenal.
This study was conducted to assess the level and association of demographic factors on risky sexual behaviors and pattern of condom use among students of a Nigerian university. Final and penultimate year students in University of Nigeria were recruited and purposively sampled. Using a well structured and pre-validated questionnaire, questions on HIV awareness, sexual experiences and condom use were asked and responses collected. Data obtained were analyzed using descriptive statistics and analysis of variance. Exactly 524 students (mean age, 24 years; mean sexual debut age 19 years) participated. More females than male students had bisexual or homosexual partners (4.8% vs. 0.7%, p < 0.01); did not use a condom in the most recent sex (48.3% vs. 22.9%, p < 0.01) and in the last twelve months (31.5% vs. 11.7%, p < 0.05); had been forced for sex (23.2% vs. 18.7%, p < 0.05). More male students did not know their status (37.1% vs. 25.7%, p < 0.05); had oral and anal sex (41.3% vs. 27.3%, p < 0.01). As regards age at first sex, students who debuted earlier (≤ 19 years) performed oral/anal sex (53.6% vs. 40.1%, p < 0.05), did not use a condom during that first sex (70.1% vs. 45.4%, p < 0.01) and have had more than five sexual partners since then (38.5% vs. 10.1%, p < 0.01). This study showed that being male was associated with poor awareness of the virus and risky sexual behaviors and being female was associated with poor/inconsistent condom use. Also having started sex at an early age and being single was linked with risky behaviors. Such behaviors could be cautiously put in check by reintroducing HIV/AIDS prevention awareness strategies in universities.
This article discusses the experience of an up-coming African University lecturer engaged in teaching “emancipatory postcolonial knowledge” to young African minds for over 8 years. The young Africans that the lecturer has interacted with are in the age range of 19 to 31, they are fairly distributed between both genders, and are all university undergraduates taking the courses: Sociology of Decolonization and Contemporary African Social Thought. In addition to firsthand interaction in and out of classroom between the lecturer and the students, the article, among others, relies on course evaluation data obtained from course evaluation questionnaires given to the students at the end of the courses. The article notes a significant difference in the preference of course topics, among others, by gender among the students—a difference which qualitative data show to derive from the implications for gender equality that knowledge of such topics has for the students. The article thus concludes that the designing and teaching of social science courses in Africa generally will be more beneficial for African decolonization and contemporary civilization, as well as meaningful and exciting for the students thereby awakening their latent abilities, if knowledge that inspires thinking in postcolonial and gender equality terms is built in at every level as a matter of principle.
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