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Future Africa Forum and Pandemic Action Network launched the Africa Pandemic Resilience initiative with a policy forum with thought leaders and advocates from across the continent.
The Africa Pandemic Resilience initiative aspires to build a robust, resilient African health security architecture that can efficiently respond to future pandemics through active and proactive engagement with governments, decision makers and other critical stakeholders across sectors, including the private sector. The aim is to engage governments and policy decision-makers to preemptively set up systems that will ensure Africa is more prepared to respond to pandemic threats.
The initiative and related policy forum launched with two new resources — a policy brief: An African Agenda for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, detailing key pandemic preparedness recommendations for policymakers and multi-sectoral stakeholders. The policy brief is anchored on the State of Play report, which documents lessons learned from recent epidemics, highlights challenges and provides actionable and practical pandemic preparedness and response policy recommendations.
These new resources come at a critical point. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into its third year, African countries are grappling with the fallout from this multi-year crisis. The pandemic has exacerbated geopolitical, national, and social divides, setting back years of progress on health and gender equity, education, poverty reduction, and social progress. Health and social systems are strained, making us less prepared to respond to pandemics and other health crises. Even as we look ahead, the COVID crisis still looms. While most countries in the Global North have managed to fully vaccinate 70 percent of their populations, only 15 percent of Africa’s population is fully vaccinated. There are growing calls to act — for a New Public Health Order in Africa and on integrated health systems strengthening to ensure Africa is more resilient to respond to health crises.
“The Africa Pandemic Resilience initiative speaks to Future Africa Forum’s commitment to building the future of the African continent on a strong foundation. You can’t grow a great economy if you have a weak health infrastructure and inefficient systems in place. We cannot be prosperous if we are not prosperous in health,” said Gerald Chirinda, CEO and founder of Future Africa Forum.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed strong regional cooperation, particularly in Africa, and an abundance of lessons,” said Carolyn Reynolds, co-founder of Pandemic Action Network. “Now is the time to translate the lessons documented into lessons learned through sustainable systems changes that will ensure the continent is better equipped to respond to pandemic threats. Our role is to create the political will to make it happen.”
The partnership between Future Africa Forum and Pandemic Action Network is based on a mutual desire to catalyze conversations and amplify efforts aimed at realizing practical and actionable recommendations that strengthen the pandemic preparedness and response ecosystem, governance, and financing at both the national and regional levels.
For more information, visit Africa Pandemic Resilience.
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The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Future Africa Forum. Future Africa Forum is a pan-African policy think-tank and policy advisory consultancy headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.
