On 13 April 2022, the Brussels International Center (BIC) organized a webinar event called “Healthcare and Politics in the Europe-Africa Partnership: Improving Policy and Discourse” that gathered experts on the different levels of healthcare implementation in Africa through the lens of inter-continental Europe-Africa cooperation.
Asil Sidahmed, former advisor to the Sudanese Minster of Health and BIC Strategic Advisor and Analyst for Africa, explained the challenges of implementing healthcare strategies, such as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, on the ground in Sudan noting that, “one of the main barriers to managing COVID-19 in Sudan was knowledge production and ensuring that doctors were equipped with information regarding the safety of the vaccines”. Expanding further on these context-specific difficulties, she noted that healthcare implementation is often difficult in countries with high levels of militarization, and that beyond COVID-19 there continue to be many diseases burdening African populations, including polio of which an outbreak affected Sudan in 2020.
Jens Pedersen, an Independent Consultant at Africa First Advisory, spoke of the priorities that African Union policy makers sought from their European Union counterparts at the most recent EU-AU Summit in February of this year. He said, “the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the double-standard between the politically correct language surrounding equity and the reality” and noted that the mantra of African solutions for African problems, though noble in intention, has yet to be realized with any great depth.
Inma Vasquez, Representative for the EU and NATO at Médecins sans Frontières, brought a perspective from the NGO sector, raising some of the challenges and issues that MSF has observed in implementing healthcare strategies in African contexts. In reference to the ongoing topic of vaccine equity, she said “covax [the WHO-led initiative to provide global access to COVID-19 vaccines] was undermined from the beginning. There was no global allocation based on needs, but rather a system for rich countries and a parallel one for poor countries.” She also raised the issue of political will, saying that such will to put patients first during the pandemic has been absent in African contexts.
Gabriella Fesus, Head of Unit Social Inclusion, Protection, Health and Democracy at the European Commission, responded to some of the key issues raised during the discussion and noted that the recent EU-AU Summit represented a shift insofar as this was the first Summit in which health was a big priority. She said that the EU is a strong actor in the manufacturing of COVID-19 vaccines and noted the challenge that uneven manufacturing of vaccines brings to African partners. She also suggested that from the side of African partners that “it is very important that, at the domestic level in Africa, tax-revenues are mobilized for health”, and that partners continue to give additional inputs to the EU on how to improve implementation contextually.
A question-and-answer session followed the interventions that was moderated by Ben Lowings, Political Analyst at the BIC. In his concluding remarks he noted that the issue of what role specific actors play in the delivery and implementation of healthcare initiatives, and how each step of this implementation supply chain remains accountable and transparent, will be imperative when considering effective healthcare responses in Africa that meet the needs of citizens in sustainable and effective ways. A discussion paper that proposes concrete policy recommendations based on this event will be published by the BIC in the coming weeks.