African Responses to COVID-19: The Reckoning of Agency?

Patterson, Amy S.; Balogun, Emmanuel Dele

doi:10.1017/asr.2020.122

Cited by 17 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 48 publications

(4 reference statements)

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“…plan health responses. [11][12][13] National health research systems serve as a key component of a state's ability to respond to both acute and long-term health needs. 14 They, however, have also been seen to provide key economic development opportunities through specialised areas of expertise, high-tech employment, and innovation.…”

Section: Key Messagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Roles of Regional Organisations in Strengthening Health Research Systems in Africa: Activities, Gaps, and Future Perspectives

Jones

Sobngwi-Tambekou²,

Mijumbi-Deve

et al. 2022

Int J Health Policy Manag

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Background: Regional cooperation on health in Africa is not new. The institutional landscape of regional cooperation for health and health research, however, has seen important changes. Recent health emergencies have focussed regional bodies’ attention on supporting aspects of national health preparedness and response. The state of national health research systems is a key element of capacity to plan and respond to health needs – raising questions about the roles African regional bodies can or should play in strengthening health research systems. Methods: We mapped regional organisations involved in health research across Africa and conducted 18 interviews with informants from 15 regional organisations. We investigated the roles, challenges, and opportunities of these bodies in strengthening health research. We deductively coded interview data using themes from established pillars of health research systems – governance, creating resources, research production and use, and financing. We analysed organisations’ relevant activities in these areas, how they do this work, and where they perceive impact. Results: Regional organisations with technical foci on health or higher education (versus economic or political remits) were involved in all four areas. Most organisations reported activities in governance and research use. Involvement in governance centred mainly around agenda-setting and policy harmonisation. For organisations involved in creating resources, activities focused on strengthening human resources, but few reported developing research institutions, networks, or infrastructure. Organisations reported more involvement in disseminating than producing research. Generally, few have directly contributed to financing health research. They report gaps in research coordination, infrastructure, and advocacy at regional level. Finally, we found regional bodies’ mandates, authority, and collaborations influence their activities in supporting national health research systems. Conclusion: Continued strengthening of health research on the African continent requires strategic thinking about the roles, comparative advantages, and capability of regional organisations to facilitate capacity and growth of health research systems.

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Section: Key Messagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Roles of Regional Organisations in Strengthening Health Research Systems in Africa: Activities, Gaps, and Future Perspectives

Jones

Sobngwi-Tambekou²,

Mijumbi-Deve

et al. 2022

Int J Health Policy Manag

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“…Research has demonstrated the importance of social media platforms such as Facebook for both political engagement and health information dissemination (Patterson & Balogun 2021). These various platforms afford different capabilities to users.…”

Section: Humor Health and Repression In Quotidian Politicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Laughing through the Virus the Zimbabwean Way: WhatsApp Humor and the Twenty-one-day COVID-19 Lockdown

Chibuwe¹,

Munoriyarwa²

2022

Afr. Stud. Rev.

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In many African countries, jokes represent one of the many means used by citizens to cope with a crisis. Chibuwe and Munoriyarwa explore how Zimbabweans utilize WhatsApp jokes, which are anchored in the concept of the “everyday,” to cope with pandemic-induced lockdowns. COVID-19 jokes provide citizens momentary relief from fear and function as a defense mechanism against COVID-19 and its effects, enabling citizens to confront and rationalize fear, death, and suffering. Chibuwe and Munoriyarwa argue that jokes are also a means of speaking truth to power by disgruntled citizens attempting to cope with a health crisis, in a context characterized by corruption, state repression, and bad governance.

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“…Regional organisations are increasingly involved in health policy matters within their broader sectoral integration mandates, [1] including in Africa [2,3]. Public health emergencies such as the 2014 Ebola outbreak and current COVID-19 pandemic have highlighted the unique roles that regional organisations in Africa can play in coordination, resource pooling, or scientific leadership when they have institutional capacity for these [4][5][6]. The involvement of regional organisations in epidemics and disease control has been identified as a way to strengthen regional cooperation in health within Africa through diplomacy, with such organisations seen to be operating at the interface of global health institutions and national governments-seeking to represent and act on their shared interests, align strategies, promote a unified position, or mobilise partnerships [3,7,8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Acknowledging this history of regional bodies on the African continent and their health programmes and policies [2,3,[48][49][50], with emerging knowledge about their roles in health research [5,39,45], there is still much unknown about the constellation of actors in regionalism for health sciences research (HSciR). Therefore, this study aims to map the state-based regional organisations in Africa involved in HSciR, characterise the network of actors, and test the hypothesis of whether regional network strength correlates with national health research indicators.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis

Hedquist

Jones²,

Mijumbi-Deve³

et al. 2022

PLOS Glob Public Health

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Regional bodies can potentially play an important role in improving health research in Africa. This study analyses the network of African state-based regional organisations for health research and assesses their potential relationship with national health research performance metrics. After cataloguing organisations and their membership, we conducted a social network analysis to determine key network attributes of national governments’ connections via regional organisations supporting functions of health research systems. This data was used to test the hypothesis that state actors with more connections to other actors via regional organisations would have higher levels of health research performance across indicators. With 21 unique regional organisations, the African continent is densely networked around health research systems issues. In general, the regional network for health research is inclusive. No single actor serves as a nexus. However, when statistics are grouped by African Union regions, influential poles emerge, with the most predominate spheres of influence in Eastern and Western Africa. Further, when connectivity data was analysed against national health research performance, there were no statistically significant relationships between increased connectivity and higher performance of key health research metrics. The inclusive and dense network dynamics of African regional organisations for health research strengthening present key opportunities for knowledge diffusion and cooperation to improve research capacity on the continent. Further reflection is needed on appropriate and meaningful ways to assess the role of regionalism and evaluate the influence of regional organisations in strengthening health research systems in Africa.

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African Responses to COVID-19: The Reckoning of Agency?

Cited by 17 publications

References 48 publications

The Roles of Regional Organisations in Strengthening Health Research Systems in Africa: Activities, Gaps, and Future Perspectives

The Roles of Regional Organisations in Strengthening Health Research Systems in Africa: Activities, Gaps, and Future Perspectives

Laughing through the Virus the Zimbabwean Way: WhatsApp Humor and the Twenty-one-day COVID-19 Lockdown

Mapping regional cooperation of state actors for health research systems in Africa: A social network analysis

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