The current coronavirus pandemic will hit the most vulnerable hardest. This is the case of the African continent. There its effects will seriously deteriorate the existing social cohesion: in the absence of a health infrastructure capable of providing medical care, the fragile condition of their economies is added, a third of which are highly indebted. Countries such as Algeria, Nigeria, Libya and Angola will see their income dependent on oil exports decrease due to the collapse in the price of a barrel. A drop stemming from disagreement between Russia and Saudi Arabia over production limits and which has been exacerbated by China's containing its demand for confinement. This situation, affirm Signé and Gurib-Fakim, will make it difficult to repay the loans granted by Beijing and will force a renegotiation of them in favor of the Asian power.
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Likewise, if we add to the high unemployment rates the demographic changes - very young and urbanized populations - and the mobilizing effect of new technologies, we find a mobilizing dynamic: societies that fight against the lack of transparency and responsibility of their leaders. With the particularity that the civic activism of the networks is apt to take to the streets a discontented population and united by a slogan or idea - to expel the tyrant, request more freedom - but insufficient when it comes to politically organizing dissent and agree on concrete measures to advance an agenda. We have seen it in Algeria and Sudan.
Jendayi E. Frazer speaks of a period of instability whose social and political response will determine the tipping of the balance of power in favor of democratic or authoritarian models of governance. In the first case, reinforcing a trend that is already underway. In the second, favoring the emergence of military actors or emulating the leadership of China, the region's main credit and commercial partner whose management of the pandemic is used as a comparative reference from which to judge the suitability of one regime or another.
In Africa, health, economic and political risk factors converge, so the effects of Covid-19 will be more pronounced. The international community should be responsive to the needs of the African continent and collaborate to face the ravages that lie ahead.
In the current situation of widespread collapse of the health system, unemployment and recession, it may be difficult for public opinion to understand the need to provide aid to third parties, but the future of African countries also affects us and the ramification of their conflicts reaches us through different channels, including the pressure of migratory movements, which especially affects Spain due to territorial contiguity. There is another south to the south of Europe that must be addressed, for humanitarian reasons, but also because if there is something that this crisis has taught us, it is the complex interdependence of globalization. @ evabor3
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