Rendering Africa more resilient, sustainable, and better prepared for COVID-analogous pandemics: Proposals from across seven African countries: Difference between revisions

       |acronym=Parents Rendering Africa more resilient, sustainable, and better prepared for COVID-analogous pandemics: Proposals from across seven African countries                  

This chapter details a number of proposals for rendering African countries more resilient, sustainable and better prepared for COVID-19 and similar future pandemics. The proposals were solicited from a group of participants from various countries in Africa, who previously (2016) participated in week-long face-to-face dialogues as part of a project entitled “Re-inventing democracy in the digital age” funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund and organized by the Futures Worlds Center. Many of the youth pioneers (aged 18-30) who participated in the 2016 sessions subsequently continued to liaise with one another via various virtual forums. In August 2021, spearheaded by the Future Worlds Center, we decided to set a “triggering question” for these participants to reflect upon and engage around with each other, with the aim of writing a chapter on responses to COVID-type pandemics, to share with audiences. The triggering question to kindle Ideas/proposals was: “What actions/reforms/ policies should our country take in order to become more resilient, sustainable and better prepared for future crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic?” Volunteer participants were invited to share their Ideas regarding practical and forward-looking (visionary) responses to this question. They were invited in the first instance to share Ideas on a virtual platform called IdeaPrism in preparation for a video conference using Zoom in which clarifications of the Ideas were solicited from the Idea-originators, by others asking questions. The clarification questions were mainly around actual or potential ways of actioning the Ideas within and across countries. This resulted in a rich array of concrete proposals, which we detail in the chapter, along with an overarching synthesis.