ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses narratives about responses to COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa over the course of 2020, focusing in particular on the emergence of narratives of “success”. It draws on in-country fieldwork in Senegal, Uganda and Sierra Leone, attendance at meetings and accounts in the public domain. The chapter explores how these narratives were produced and mobilised and what the characterisations of success revealed as well as obscured. Recurring themes point to early and swift action, experience from past epidemics and strong leadership. As is usual with policy narratives, they have supported political and social moves that extend well beyond the issue in hand and have had both winners and losers. While some have benefited from strengthened political power and institutions, others – including local populations – have experienced health conditions left untreated, livelihoods disrupted or state violence. Narratives of success also deflected attention from more challenging aspects of the pandemic in its heterogeneous and unexpected unfolding. Attention to the positive elements of the African response is timely and supports wider calls to decolonise global health. However, analysis of what is overlooked in narratives of success is also important, given the influence of such accounts in shaping action and future epidemic imaginaries.
