COVID-19 Resources

As the Harvard Center for African Studies continues to broaden public and scholarly awareness about Africa, African experiences, and African perspectives, we will be continuously updating this page with Africa-related resources and initiatives that our community is currently involved in with regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. We invite you to review how CAS Faculty Affiliates, Africa Advisory Board, Leadership Council, and Harvard alumni have been involved in the COVID-19 pandemic response below.

If you have any resources or you are doing work that addresses COVID-19, please do not hesitate to contact us at africa@harvard.edu.

April 22, 2022:

The Africa Research, Implementation Science and Education (ARISE) Network recently completed a survey to assess drivers of vaccine acceptance and hesitancy and the health and socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic over time among adults, adolescents and healthcare providers across SSA. This survey will provide important data on vaccine hesitancy and consequences of the pandemic to facilitate more effective and targeted interventions and provide decision-makers with data and tools to strengthen vaccination campaigns.

ARISE COVID Survey Round 2 Methods Brief (linked)
ARISE Network COVID-19 Round 2 Adolescent Survey (linked)
ARISE Network COVID-19 Round 2 Healthcare Provider Survey (linked)
ARISE Network COVID-19 Round 2 Adult General Population Survey (linked)

June 22, 2021:

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted lives across Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), however few studies have documented and quantified the pandemic’s direct and indirect health and socioeconomic impacts in the region. The Africa Research, Implementation Science and Education (ARISE) Network recently conducted a multi-country survey in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Nigeria, using mobile survey platforms, to generate data on knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to COVID-19 and to evaluate its impact on health and socio-economic domains. Findings from this study were published in a series of six manuscripts in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and key results were summarized into five policy briefs. Find out more below under “ARISE Network & COVID-19”.

COVID-19 survey (linked)
Nutrition and Food Security Brief (linked)
Adolescent Experiences Brief (linked)
Health Service Utilization Brief (linked)
Adult Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices Brief (linked)
Health Worker Experiences Brief (linked)

You can read the press release here.

COVID-19 Resources

June 22, 2021: The ARISE Network is a collaboration between Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard-affiliated Africa Academy of Public Health and public health research and training institutions from nine countries across the African region. It serves as a platform for robust research and cutting-edge education in the region. As the COVID-19 pandemic spread throughout the globe in 2020, the Network assembled to address important evidence gaps on the pandemic’s health and economic consequences in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Network established a novel mobile survey platform in Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, and Nigeria to conduct longitudinal surveillance for evidence generation on knowledge and practices related to COVID-19 prevention and management, and the impact of the outbreak on other health domains including nutrition and food security. Using this platform, a baseline survey among 900 healthcare workers, 1,797 adolescents, and 1,795 adults in six urban and rural sites was conducted. Plans for a second survey around vaccine readiness are underway. Findings from the baseline survey highlight deficiencies in COVID-19 knowledge, attitudes and practices among these population groups and demonstrate serious consequences of COVID-19 on domains including nutrition and food security; education for adolescents; and healthcare access and utilization. To disseminate these findings for maximum impact for policy and programs, the Network has also summarized the key results of the survey in five policy briefs (linked below). You can view the COVID-19 survey (linked) and see the briefs below:

Nutrition and Food Security Brief (linked)

Adolescent Experiences Brief (linked)

Health Service Utilization Brief (linked)

Adult Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices Brief (linked)

Health Worker Experiences Brief (linked)

The Africa Research, Implementation Science and Education (ARISE) Network’s main findings highlight the potential impact of COVID-19 on food systems including price increases for staples, pulses, fruits, vegetables and animal source foods and decreased consumption of diverse and quality diets. The study found evidence of disruption in schooling for most adolescents surveyed, with many not accessing education materials during the height of the pandemic. Disruptions of essential health services due to COVID-19 restrictions were common, including child and maternal health services, and HIV and surgical services, with governmental health facilities most affected. ARISE also found that knowledge about COVID-19 was high among health workers and adults. However, among adults (not including health workers) misconceptions about COVID-19 transmission were prevalent and adherence to recommended prevention measures was low. Finally, this study found that at least 18% of healthcare providers and 20% of adults reported mild or higher levels of psychological distress during the pandemic. These findings help address the knowledge gaps regarding the direct and indirect impacts of COVID-19 on various population groups in both rural and urban areas across multiple countries in SSA and can inform the development of evidence-based strategies and public policy to mitigate against health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa. The survey was conducted with support from the Harvard Center for African Studies, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Heidelberg Institute of Global Health. Additional collaborating institutions involved in the first survey round include the Addis Continental Institute of Public Health (Ethiopia), Haramaya University (Ethiopia), Nouna Health Research Center (Burkina Faso), University of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), and University of Ibadan (Nigeria).

Get the most updated statistics on COVID-19 on the African continent via the Africa CDC website here.
July 16, 2020: Azad Essa, Harvard Neiman Fellow '18 published a children's book with Nathi Ngubane called “Duma says” which is about the adventures of Duma, his sister Zihle and their friends, as they try to find their way during the coronavirus pandemic in South Africa. This educational book series written and illustrated by Durban-born Nathi Ngubane and produced by the experimental Social Bandit Media, based between Johannesburg and New York. You can read more about "Duma Says" here. You can also download Duma Says in isiZulu, Kiswahili, and isiXhosa here.
June 26, 2020: CAS Executive Committee member, Professor Fernando Reimers, is publishing a series that documents some country initiatives that ensured education continuity for all using technology and provided support to teachers, students, and their families called Education continuity during the Coronavirus crisis:
- Uganda: Popow’s Radio Response to Covid-19
- Sierra Leone and Liberia: Rising Academy Network on air
June 3, 2020: Brice Ngameni, Harvard Law'21, wrote an article on 'Coronavirus: Now is the time to build a future for Africa’s informal workers'
- Africa’s aim in navigating the COVID-19 crisis ought to be not merely preservation but amelioration; not simply a return to normalcy but the improvement of standards of living. The unfolding crisis presents a unique opportunity to reshape the continent by bringing a large number of informal workers out of the shadows, something that has eluded policymakers on the continent for decades.
May 14, 2020: Madikay Senghore, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics (CCDD), at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, co-authored an article on Leveraging Africa's preparedness towards the next phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Most African countries have a narrow margin for error because of weak health systems operating at near capacity outside of a pandemic and the need to maintain control of other infectious diseases. Staggered periods of relaxed social distancing could avoid a large resurgence of cases while providing respite for economic activity. However, monitoring the effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions and exercising flexibility in their implementation needs to be guided by continued surveillance through community testing. To meet this demand, testing capacity and implementation need to be scaled up substantially.
May 14, 2020: Read an article on how Archaeology shows how ancient African societies managed pandemics.
- Social distancing and isolation have become watchwords during the COVID-19 pandemic. From archaeology, we know that the same practices formed a critical part of managing pandemics in historical African societies. In what is Zimbabwe today, the Shona people in the 17th and 18th centuries isolated those suffering from infectious diseases - such as leprosy - in temporary residential structures. This meant that very few people could come into contact with the sick. In some cases, corpses were burnt to avoid spreading the contagion.
May 11, 2020: David Williams, the Florence Sprague Norman and Laura Smart Norman Professor of Public Health and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University, co-authored an article on COVID-19 and Health Equity—A New Kind of “Herd Immunity”.
- COVID-19 is a magnifying glass that has highlighted the larger pandemic of racial/ethnic disparities in health. For more than 100 years research has documented that African American and Native American individuals have shorter life spans and more illness than white persons. Hispanic immigrants initially tend to have a relatively healthy profile but with increasing length of stay in the US, their health tends to decline. A black infant born in the US is more than twice as likely to die before his or her first birthday compared with a white infant. In adulthood, black individuals have higher death rates than white persons for most of the leading causes of death.
May 5, 2020: Africa CDC Outbreak Brief #16: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Pandemic.
April 23, 2020: The Harvard Center for African Studies and other Centers and Departments issued a joint statement on Xenophobic and Racist Actions in Response to COVID-19.
- We strongly condemn xenophobic and racist acts arising from the global COVID-19 pandemic. International media outlets have reported on incidents worldwide targeting individuals and communities of Asian ancestry and the spread of racially targeted misinformation on social media platforms. Xenophobic and racist actions have also been reported against African and African American communities in Guangzhou, China. The reported actions are not only unjust and inhumane but serve to undermine the required global cooperation in response to COVID-19.
April 22, 2020: Professor Peter Huybers, member of the Center for African Studies Steering Committee and Executive Committee, co-authored research on Fever and mobility data indicate social distancing has reduced incidence of communicable disease in the United States.
- "Estimating the effectiveness of these socialdistancing strategies is challenging because surveillance of COVID-19 has been limited, with tests generally being prioritized for high-risk or hospitalized cases according to temporally and regionally varying criteria. Here we show that reductions in mobility across U.S. counties with at least 100 confirmed cases of COVID-19 led to reductions in fever incidences, as captured by smart thermometers..."
April 22, 2020: Hippolyte Fofack,the Chief Economist and Director of Research and International Cooperation Department at the African Export-Import Bank authored an opinion on Shifting from reliance on commodities crucial for Africa.
- Every crisis, though tragic, presents opportunities. The combination of the coronavirus downturn and oil price war has underscored the perennial risk of commodity dependency. It has also accentuated the need to expand industrial and manufacturing capabilities in Africa. Many countries on the continent are reliant on overseas imports for essential goods, including staple foods, while intraregional trade remains largely fragmentary. As the coronavirus circles the world, African leaders face a dire challenge. Closing their borders might shield their countries against the unchecked spread of the virus, but risks starving their populations and curtailing access to critical medical equipment that is in short supply in the region.
April 21, 2020: Euvin Naidoo, Senior Lecturer of Business Administration lists 7 Successful Battle Strategies to Beat COVID-19.
- "The Agile methodology used to speed complex software development is also helpful for managing decision-making in today's crisis environment."
April 21, 2020: Shelby Carvalho, PhD student and Presidential Merit Fellow at Harvard University, co-authored a blog post on How Are International Donors Responding to Education Needs during the COVID Pandemic?
- "The pandemic and its consequences are likely to continue for a long time and will inevitably have lasting impacts on education systems. Clarity on which donors are doing what, how, and why is key to helping education systems navigate the pandemic and to limiting growth of already wide finance gaps for education in developing countries."
April 20, 2020: Shelby Carvalho, PhD student and Presidential Merit Fellow at Harvard University, co-authored a blog on The Pandemic Reinforces Age-Old Urban Rural Divides in Access to Education in Ethiopia.
- "In the face of an uncertain global crisis and the potential for a prolonged time out of school, it makes sense to invest in developing remote learning strategies in Ethiopia. Yet, our interviews suggest that there is a need for more engagement with students, families, and teachers to communicate the importance of learning while schools are closed and to support the development of equitable and effective solutions for emergency learning and eventual recovery moving forward."
April 16, 2020: Myriam Sidibe Senior Fellow, Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, Harvard Kennedy School, co-authored an article on Africans can fight COVID-19 with stakeholder capitalism.
- With the COVID-19 pandemic threatening to overwhelm much of Africa, companies on the continent must broaden their perspective. Instead of focusing on short-term returns for owners and investors, they must consider the needs of a variety of stakeholders – employees, suppliers, customers, and the societies in which they operate. This stakeholder capitalism will help companies rewrite their rules of community engagement and rebuild their businesses faster post-COVID-19.
April 16, 2020: CAS Faculty Affiliate, Professor Sarah Dryden-Peterson, offers her perspective on Learning and Community in a Time of Crisis.
- "In times of crisis, standardized and widely-accessible approaches are essential to help combat existing inequalities and avoid exacerbating them, even in typically decentralized education systems like the United States. During the Ebola crisis in West Africa in 2014, teachers recorded lessons on radio providing a trusted voice directly into the homes of millions of children."
April 15, 2020: Professor Rema Hanna, Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School, co-authored an article on Cushioning the Poor from the COVID-19 Shock.
- "Expanding social protection to reach vulnerable people quickly must be a pillar of every country’s COVID-19 strategy. To achieve this, resource-constrained governments must look to past experience and existing research to design the most effective and efficient programs possible."
April 14, 2020: Nerissa Naidoo LLM’19, explores COVID-19 disinformation in South Africa in the article A Look at South Africa’s Covid-19 Disinformation Regulations.
- "But just because there’s no legal obligation to ensure the credibility of the information we share, doesn’t mean we don’t have a social one. The categories of false information enumerated in the regulations have the potential to result in physical harm, incite fear or discrimination, and derail public health efforts.
April 15, 2020: Professor Rema Hanna, Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School, co-authored an article on Cushioning the Poor from the COVID-19 Shock.
- "Expanding social protection to reach vulnerable people quickly must be a pillar of every country’s COVID-19 strategy. To achieve this, resource-constrained governments must look to past experience and existing research to design the most effective and efficient programs possible."
April 15, 2020: A survey by GeoPoll on Coronavirus in Sub-Saharan Africa: How Africans in 12 nations are responding to the COVID-19 Outbreak.
- "Although many countries in Africa have only reported a small number of cases, there is a high level of fear surrounding the outbreak; The level of concern is high across all countries, and a majority also believe that they themselves are at risk of contracting the disease. Food security and the economic impacts of the disease on economies that have already been struggling are at the top of mind for many people, aligning with warnings from experts that sub-Saharan Africa could experience high levels of food insecurity and an economic recession due to the virus."
April 13, 2020: Free Harvard edX course begins on Lessons from Ebola: Preventing the Next Pandemic.
- This four-week course provides the context in which to understand the Ebola outbreak -- why now, and why did so many people suffer and die? The course lays out the global governance structure -- what was the global response supposed to look like, and where did it fail? The course will feature practitioners, experts, and scholars who will focus on cultivating a better understanding of the Ebola epidemic and implications for future health systems to ensure that the world is more effective in preventing the next pandemic.
April 12, 2020: Chairperson of the African Union and President of the Republic of South Africa, His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa appoints special envoys to mobilize international economic support for continental fight against COVID-19. Read press release here.
- The Chairperson of the African Union, President of the Republic of South Africa His Excellency Cyril Ramaphosa has appointed Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Dr Donald Kaberuka, Mr Tidjane Thiam and Mr Trevor Manuel as Special Envoys of the African Union to mobilise international support for Africa’s efforts to address the economic challenges African countries will face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
April 9, 2020: Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs published a new case on COVID-19 & Security: Lessons From the Ebola Fight: “Managing a Security Response to the Ebola Epidemic in Liberia”
- In the rush to address COVID-19, policymakers are looking at recent outbreaks for guidance. Particularly relevant is the rise, spread, and containment of Ebola in West Africa in 2014. A new case from Harvard Kennedy School’s Case Program looks at the security lessons we can learn from that crisis. The case, developed by Margaret Bourdeaux and Juliette Kayyem of the Belfer Center’s Security and Global Health Project, looks at the various state and nonstate actors involved in containing a viral epidemic. It also explores how and whether security forces can be used to impose quarantines and the ramifications of such a decision.
April 8, 2020: CAS Executive Committee member, Professor Fernando Reimers, published a free, Open Access book, just published, explaining how to reform education systems so they educate all students as global citizens, with the necessary competencies to achieve the UN SDGs: Educating Students to Improve the World.
- This open access book addresses how to help students find purpose in a rapidly changing world. In a probing and visionary analysis of the field of global education Fernando Reimers explains how to lead the transformation of schools and school systems in order to more effectively prepare students to address today’s’ most urgent challenges and to invent a better future. Offering a comprehensive and multidimensional framework for designing and implementing a global education program that combines cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political perspectives the book integrates an extensive body of empirical literature on the practice of global education.
April 2, 2020: CAS Leadership Council member, Amandla Ooko-Ombaka co-authored this article: McKinsey: Tackling COVID-19 in Africa.
- Across the continent, leaders in the public, private, and development sectors are already taking decisive action—both to save lives and to protect households, businesses, and national economies from the fallout of the pandemic. But several leaders have told us that they need a clearer picture of the potential economic impact of the crisis. At the same time, many African countries are still in the early stages of organizing their responses into focused, prioritized efforts that make the most of the limited time and resources available.
March 30, 2020: CAS Executive Committee member, Professor Fernando Reimers, co-authored this report to support the development of an education response to COVID-19: A framework to guide an education response to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020
- This report aims at supporting education decision making to develop and implement effective education responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic. The report explains why the necessary social isolation measures will disrupt school-based education for several months in most countries around the world. Absent an intentional and effective strategy to protect opportunity to learn during this period, this disruption will cause severe learning losses for students.
March 29, 2020: Folorunso Alakija, CAS Africa Advisory Board member and Vice-Chairman of Famfa Oil Limited, donated N1 billion (US$ 2.6 million) to support the fight against COVID-19 in Nigeria.
- “As the world rallies to deal with the health, security, economic and social implications of the coronavirus, it’s clear that we will feel the effects much more deeply than many of the developed world. Managing a crisis of this magnitude means that the strength of our response will determine our ability to weather the storm. Individually and collectively, we are rising to this unprecedented challenge in a way that symbolizes our resilience, our character and strength.” - Read more in this article.
March 29, 2020: Harvard Sociology Department Lecturer, Shai Dromi, shared his thoughts on Africa and philanthropy during COVID-19 with Inside Philanthropy: COVID-19 is Spreading in Africa. How Should Philanthropy Respond?
- "Philanthropists wanting to make an effective intervention during COVID-19 should turn to one of the most commonly neglected aspects of epidemic interventions: continuing healthcare for all medical conditions and supporting the local healthcare systems in affected countries. Not only will this strategy help patients in need during the pandemic, it will also help the country sustain its independent healthcare sector in the long run. "
March 25, 2020: Q&A on the economic impacts of COVID-19 on developing countries with Professor Rema Hanna, Jeffrey Cheah Professor of South-East Asia Studies and Chair of the International Development Area at the Harvard Kennedy School.
- "The economic impact may be devastating as production, retail, trade, and almost everything comes to a standstill. For developing countries, it will be particularly devastating as they have fewer resources and lower borrowing ability to raise the funds needed to provide the kinds of health and economic support their citizens need, and providing the kind of support that citizens need right now could risk debt spiraling out of control."
March 24, 2020: Ricardo Hausmann, Director of the Growth Lab at Harvard's Center for International Development and the Rafik Hariri Professor of the Practice of International Political Economy at Harvard Kennedy School, authored an article on Flattening the COVID-19 Curve in Developing Countries.
- "The more contained you want the novel coronavirus to be, the more you will need to lock down your country – and the more fiscal space you will require to mitigate the deeper recession that will result. The problem for most of the Global South is that policymakers lack fiscal space even in the best of times."
March 20, 2020: The Harvard Gazette covered how CAS Faculty Affiliate, Dr. Paul Farmer, the Harvard Medical School faculty members, and their colleagues at Partners In Health (PIH) are collaborating with local communities and national governments to help prepare some of the world’s most vulnerable people for the COVID-19 pandemic. Read the article 'Getting ready for the inevitable' on the Harvard Gazette website.
March 5, 2020: Africa CDC: Africa Joint Continental Strategy for COVID-19 Outbreak
- In Africa, the primary strategy for COVID-19 will be to limit transmission and minimize harm. Given that transmission throughout the continent is inevitable, delaying and diminishing the peak of outbreaks can help health systems better manage the surge of patients and communities better adapt to the disruption of social, cultural, and economic activities. Tactics to achieve this include rapid diagnosis and isolation of infected persons, quarantine of people who had close contact with an infected person, and social distancing within the general population. Rigorous infection prevention and control practices will be needed in healthcare facilities and other high-risk congregate settings, including schools and prisons. Healthcare facilities will need to restrict hospital admission to infected persons who absolutely require a higher-level of care, such as intravenous antibiotics, oxygen, ventilatory or hemodynamic support, and/or management of complex co-morbid conditions.

April 22, 2020: The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health hosted a seminar at 11:00AM EST on Addressing Mental Health During the Covid-19 Outbreak in Africa as Health Care Systems Brace for a Battering.
- When the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic, Africa was initially spared. However, this is changing rapidly, with over 12,000 cases and 600 fatalities. This online forum is for anyone interested in learning about how Africa’s health care system and mental health professionals are preparing for the looming threat and surge of COVID-19 cases in the continent. You can watch event recording here.
April 13, 2020: The Harvard Center for African Studies hosted the African Studies Workshop featuring CAS Executive Committee member, Dr. Eugene Richardson, who presented two articles titled Pandemicity and On the Coloniality of Global Public Health. The discussant was CAS Faculty Affiliate, Dr. Paul Farmer.
- Eugene Richardson, MD, PhD, is a physician-anthropologist based at Harvard Medical School. He previously served as the clinical lead for Partners In Health’s (PIH) Ebola response in Kono District, Sierra Leone, where he continues to conduct research on the social epidemiology of Ebola virus disease.
- A recording of this workshop is available here: https://vimeo.com/408381902.
- April 17, 2020: Article published: Pandemicity, COVID-19 and the limits of public health ‘science’
April 8, 2020: Margaret Anadu, CAS Africa Advisory Board member and head of Goldman Sachs’ Urban Investment Group, talks about COVID-19’s impact on US small businesses in this podcast.
April 7, 2020: CAS Faculty Affiliate, Dr. Paul Farmer, and co-founder of Partners In Health, a global health non-profit, is featured on Reimagined Podcast's first episode of a new series Covid-19: the long view with Dr. Paul Farmer. He discusses what can lessons from Ebola teach us about how to effectively deal with Covid-19. Is this the moment to rebuild our human social architecture to ensure fatalities on this scale never happen again?
- “Shame on us if we cannot seize this moment to make some desperately needed improvements in our health systems.”
March 27, 2020: She Leads Africa, co-founded by CAS Leadership Council member, Yasmin Belo-Osagie, is offering a free webinar "Are you an African woman who needs a supportive network through the Covid-19 crisis and beyond?" Join their community here to gain access.
- She Leads Africa is a community that helps young African women achieve their professional dreams. With engaging online content and pan-African events, our vision is to become the #1 destination for smart and ambitious young women.
March 19, 2020: Mass General hosted its second Medical Grand Rounds lecture related to COVID-19. Members of the Greater Boston medical community, presented on the global effects of the pandemic. Watch the video here COVID-19 in Low-resourced Settings: Reaching for Global Health Equity.
- Speakers included Louise Ivers, the executive director of the Mass General Center for Global Health,David Walton, MD, MPH, of Build Health International and Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Inobert Pierre, MD, of Health Equity International and St. Boniface Haiti; Quarraisha Abdool Karim, PhD, of the Centre for the Programme of AIDS Research in South Africa, Columbia University; and Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, of Partners In Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital.
March 5, 2020: The Harvard Global Health Institute Director and K.T. Li Professor of Global Health, Dr. Ashish Jha asks Dr. John Nkengasong, Director, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention on preparing for Coronavirus: How did he do it, what is the current capacity for testing, and what's next as the virus spreads around the world? You can watch this short video here: How Africa's CDC is Testing for Coronavirus.
March 5, 2020: The Harvard Center for African Studies was hosted Dr. John Nkengasong (Director, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention) in collaboration with the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as the keynote speaker for a lecture generously supported by the CAS Africa Advisory Board member, Dr. Joseph Agyepong, the Inaugural Joseph S. Agyepong Distinguished Lecture on Public Health in Africa.
- In collaboration with the Harvard Africa Policy Journal, we interviewed Dr. John Nkengasong at the cusp of this global health pandemic. You can watch the interview excerpt with Dr. John Nkengasong discussing COVID-19 and Africa on our vimeo channel.

June 30, 2020: The COVID-19 Detect & Protect Challenge (Submission deadline: June 30, 2020)
- The UNDP is calling on Hackster's global community to support developing countries through the sharing and transfer of open source technology. This challenge has three priority actions:
  - Design replicable, low-cost tools and resources to aid viral detection
  - Flatten the curve in communities with preventive solutions
  - Reduce the disease's impact on the economies of these vulnerable areas
June 13, 2020: UNICEF / Cartedo African Youth COVID-19 Challenge (Submission deadline: June 13, 2020)
- This challenge gives youth a voice in exploring how we might empower people and communities to become more pandemic-resilient. We are looking for your ideas to solve real challenges faced by real people just like you. This challenge offers you the opportunity to develop future-ready employability skills like design thinking while contributing to the global efforts to tackle COVID-19.
April 30, 2020: The Harvard Graduate School of Education has compiled publications to facilitate educational opportunity and continuity during the Pandemic. Check out the publications here.
- PDF: Schooling Disrupted, Schooling Rethought: How the Covid-19 pandemic is changing education
- PDF: Education continuity during the Coronavirus crisis: Sierra Leone and Liberia: Rising Academy Network on air
April 26, 2020: Gavin Rajah, CAS Africa Advisory Board member, is spearheading an initiative to assist vulnerable communities during this lockdown and beyond. The White Light Movement isa project that empowers women and creates sustainable employment. The Spreading the Love initiative is working with women in very controlled and hygienic conditions to create fabric masks that are made up of 3 layers. The masks are washable and have a filter which can be washed and re-used. Contact the White Light Movement for more details on how to order here.
April 17 - 19, 2020: Africa vs. Virus Challenge: 72-hour Ideathon: Addressing the challenges presented by the global Novel Coronavirus pandemic to African societies, economies and individuals and prototyping tech and non-tech solutions. Governments, civil society organizations, companies and citizens are all invited to submit challenges until Wednesday, April 15.
April 13, 2020: The time to act is now: A letter to African leaders about the Covid-19 crisis:
- This letter is addressed to leaders of all walks of life, to the people of Africa and to all those that are committed to rethinking the continent. We invite them to seize the opportunity of the coronavirus crisis to join efforts in rethinking an African state in the service of the well-being of its people, to break with a model of development based on the vicious cycle of indebtedness, to break with the orthodox vision of growth for the sake of growth and of profit for the sake of profit.
April 7, 2020: Drew Edwards Harvard Graduate School of Education alum wrote a story "The Unwelcome Stranger: COVID-19" to provide important public health information through a narrative that empowers parents to discuss COVID-19 with their children available for free in Acholi, French, Luganda, Rutooro, and Swahili with more languages to come.
April 3, 2020: The State of Massachusetts launch a contact tracing initiative with Partners In Health (PIH), the global non-profit co-founded by CAS Faculty Affiliate, Dr. Paul Farmer.
- “Whether fighting Ebola in West Africa, tackling HIV and tuberculosis for a generation, or facing the sudden emergence of cholera in Haiti, we at Partners In Health know that even as we prepare the hospitals in the commonwealth to provide safe and effective care to all the people who are sick, we must simultaneously stop the ongoing spread of COVID-19 if we are to end this terrible pandemic” - Dr. Joia Mukherjee, Harvard Medical School associate professor of global health and social medicine and PIH’s chief medical officer.
April 1, 2020: Refuge Point, an organization in Kenya which is closely associated with CAS Executive Committee member, Professor Jacqueline Bhabha, shares what they are doing to provide their clients with life-saving core services to protect refugees from COVID-19 including delivering handwashing station, distributing food and medicine, and disseminating public health information.
- COVID-19 has spread to Nairobi, and we are working to ensure that refugees in Nairobi will not be forgotten or overlooked during this pandemic. Nairobi's population is almost as big as New York's, which is now the US epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic because of its density. Nairobi's impoverished areas are even more crowded.

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