In March of 2020, through our mobile phone screens, we watched people around the world panic-buy groceries and squabble over toilet paper, leaving supermarket shelves desolate. At first, many of us laughed; it seemed like the stuff of post-apocalyptic movies. But it wasn’t too long before we found ourselves panic-buying into collective isolation with our own supermarkets running out of everything, too.
The economic implication of the pandemic on Nigerians has been nothing short of devastating. For the average to low-income earners, the consequences have been far more dire.
Added to the growing loss of businesses, jobs, homes and savings, the 2021 Goalkeepers Report – an annual publication by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation tracking progress on the global goals – states that women’s employment globally is expected to remain 13 million jobs below the 2019 level. What’s more, only a third of low- and middle-income economies are expected to regain pre-pandemic per capita income, compared to 90% of advanced economies.
Read the full 2021 Goalkeepers Report here.
When the government announced the lockdown, my plan for my first ever poetry installation was brought to a screeching halt, and work as a freelance writer vanished. Meanwhile friends, relatives and colleagues were dying from COVID-19. I was losing track of days and the world was at a standstill. This wasn’t a badly shot slasher flick. We were living through a real-life nightmare, a global pandemic.
Through all of this, our Nigerian spirit of adaptability and knowing when to pivot has remained evident. As much as I hate the word “resilience”, it seems to be the term that best describes how we survived and are still surviving this “New Normal”.
A friend told me about a fisherwoman in Epe who began photographing her catch of the day on her phone, sharing them with her customers over WhatsApp, as a way to keep her head above water. I have watched many market women do the same, bringing in extra revenue for their businesses through supply and delivery. A gym buddy of mine whose drinks business caters to the who’s who of weddings and events told me she had pivoted to catering food to single bachelors. There has been an explosion of logistics businesses and everyone making what they can of social media for connection, conversation and income.
It’s so easy to think about innovation in terms of disruptive technologies and grand systemic solutions. But people are innovating daily, in the various pockets of their realities. Selling crayfish via Twitter, or setting up a farm-to-table delivery service has become as vital to daily life as payment systems and online investment platforms.
Personally, I’ve gone from sharing photographs of my cooking during lockdown, to running a workshop called “Comfort Food,” which uses memories around food as a portal to creating new poems that will become recipes for joy. And joy is something we all need in large doses in the world right now. I have taught Comfort Food online and offline, and in the process made new connections and collaborations all over the world.
As that world opens back up again, conversations around vaccinations soak up the air. The vaccine is of course another ode to the marvels or innovation. The prospect that we could all be protected and granted the immunity to fight this virus fills many of us with excitement.
Vaccines usually take about 10 to 15 years to make. So the development of high level COVID-19 vaccines in less than a year is a tribute to the power of individuals, organisations and countries committed to adapting and building systems that make the world bearable and sustainable.
Yet, the 2021 Goalkeepers Report says that more than “80% of all COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Meanwhile, less than 1% of doses have been administered in low-income countries.” Nigeria is certainly one of the latter.
These inequities of vaccine access show that we aren’t far off from countries and communities treating COVID-19 as a pandemic of poverty, as though we haven’t all collectively suffered enough.
Watching my friend, through photographs, documenting his month-long stint in an isolation centre, face covered in an oxygen mask, struggling to breathe and fighting to survive, means that none of this data is lost on me. Added to that, the growing levels and rapid spread of vaccine misinformation isn’t making things any easier. And so, this fight is layered.
The only way to get ourselves out of this muddle and tilt the scales is for our governments to think long term about healthcare systems – from infrastructure and delivery to information production. If this pandemic has taught us anything, it has certainly shown us that all systems are interconnected, and when one brick falls the whole house comes tumbling down. I loved reading about this as one of the lessons learned, shared in the 2021 Goalkeepers Report.
There is news of a new Delta variant and as our population remains largely unvaccinated, we stand the risk of being hit really hard. I don’t know if Nigerians can survive another lockdown. We haven’t recouped from the last one quite yet.
Another lesson learned in the 2021 Goalkeepers Report is that playing the long game can seem tedious and unexciting, but ground-breaking innovations come from years and decades of seed planting, nurturing and watching things grow. These are the not-so-glamorous parts. We need to start laying the foundation for sustainable vaccine development and a manufacturing ecosystem so that we aren’t continuously playing catch up.
I am reflecting on all the years of creating, building and self-funding a portfolio of multi-disciplinary creative projects, in those instances when it seemed tasking and downright exhausting. I am also thinking about how it became a springboard for new opportunities and economic renewal. There is a saying that “when you wake up is when your morning begins”. I think that now might just be a good time to start.
Read the full 2021 Goalkeepers Report here.
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In collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates’ Foundation’s 2021 Goalkeepers Report, BellaNaija is taking you on a journey to see how Africans are, with resilience and determination, solving the social, financial, and health problems of the continent. Introducing you to them is just the beginning. We will continue looking to tell the stories of the many more who are blazing trails for a better continent.
#Goalkeepers2030 #AfricaMovesInnovation
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About the Author
Wana Udobang is a multi-disciplinary storyteller working at the intersection of writing, poetry, performance. She has three studio albums Dirty Laundry, In Memory of Forgetting, and Transcendence, which interrogate memory, familial bonds, healing and joy. She has been commissioned by Edinburgh International Festival, Deutsches Museum and ThankYou Australia. She has performed her work across Africa, Europe and the US. Wana runs Comfort Food workshop which uses memories around food as a conduit to create poems that become recipes for joy. She also curates Culture Diaries; an archival project which uses multi-platform storytelling to document African artists. Her writings have appeared on the BBC, Aljazeera, The Guardian, Observer and CNN. She is a 2021 University of IOWA International writing residency fellow.