ABSTRACT
The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic was much remarked in the literature since its onset in 2019, as was the crisis of social reproduction that the pandemic precipitated in the global south, and the care economies that were compelled into place as a result of poor public services and social infrastructure. Inequalities in the structures, conditions and institutions of care were key to understanding the ways in which countries of the global north and south distinctively responded to or were impacted by the pandemic. These inequalities are historically gendered, and have tended to deepen existing class, ethnic, and regional differences while intensifying identitarian conflicts and giving way to new forms of social organizing as well as social contradictions. This chapter explores these cleavages through a historical accounting for the nature of care amidst COVID-related economic crises in the Third World, with particular reference to Africa.
