This week, President Muhammadu Buhari announced that lockdowns in Lagos, Abuja, and Ogun States will be eased in phases, with residents required to wear face masks when out in public. This announcement follows similar measures to ease lockdowns in countries such as Ghana and South Africa. However, unlike Ghana and South Africa, Nigeria has not yet been able to significantly scale its testing capacity. Further, Nigeria’s large population makes it more difficult to ensure that residents in high-risk communities take proper preventive measures. Empowering local manufacturers to supply face masks and supporting locally owned sanitation businesses before the lockdown is lifted, could help. Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa, for example, have taken a different route and successfully used local firms to produce protective gear or test kits.
Ghana
Ghana spends less per capita on healthcare compared to Nigeria; however, it has been able to take effective measures such as quarantining all returning travelers for at least two weeks and testing each traveler at least twice. Additionally, Ghana was able to scale testing and contact tracing across the country, testing more than 113,000 people. Ghana also empowered local factories to produce face masks, ensuring that masks are available for use post-lockdown and issued guidelines on homemade face masks. Further, the country is deploying technology by using drones to help rapid delivery of samples from locations across the country.
South Africa
South Africa’s healthcare spending per capita is significantly higher than Nigeria and Ghana’s spending. ( Only $47 USD of the expenditure is spent on treating HIV/AIDS.) Thus, it should come with little surprise that South Africa was better prepared than Nigeria. South African scientists were able to develop local testing kits, building on expertise fighting tuberculosis (a respiratory disease) and HIV, and launched mobile clinics to reach remote townships. This contextual approach—building on existing structure—was pivotal in allowing the country to prepare to re-open its cities and economies. Building on local expertise was also important since securing testing kits has been challenging as all countries are in bidding wars.
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Senegal
Senegal was one of the first African countries to close its borders and has since increased its testing capacity to 0.59 per 1,000 people. Senegal built on local expertise to launch a quick $1 test – a huge victory for Africa as European countries are already expressing demand for this Africa-built test. The test will be more commercially available in June. The lower cost test kit is also expected to help further scale testing capacity in Senegal. Finally, Senegal’s Trade Ministry created an e-commerce platform to allow micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) selling essential goods to digitise their sales operations.
Morocco
Morocco was one of the first countries in the world to shut its borders to its citizens. While this decision came with strong criticism, it was effective in avoiding high infection spillovers from travelers returning from Europe. Additionally, Morocco took measures to ensure that stranded citizens around the world were fed and housed in hotels and other accommodation facilities. With the advantage of avoiding returning infections, Morocco increased its testing capacity, produced more than 3 million masks daily, sanitised its streets, and engaged its military to ensure the supply of important materials. Finally, Morocco has been able to sustain a lockdown longer than five weeks because it has been distributing relief to low-income communities and using digital solutions to distribute cash through a US$1 billion fund created by King Mohammed VI.
Lessons for Nigeria
While Nigeria has taken some admirable steps in the initial response, further partnerships will be needed—expanding beyond the government—to provide food aid for millions of households affected and to scale testing using local expertise. Additionally, Nigeria is yet to empower local manufacturers to supply face masks and other PPE at scale. Finally, Nigeria is building its own technology rather than adopting existing innovations from other countries, i.e., the drones in Ghana, or contact tracing applications and platforms in use in European or Asian countries.
Ghana, Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa have shown it is possible to build on local capacity and innovation, and also borrow international solutions for efficient disaster response when the demand for rapid results is greatest.
