A Crucial Barrier to Covid-19 Response in Africa: Public Trust in Government Institutions

Dr. Violet Wawire, Research Fellow and Mentor, African Political Economy Policy Lab
vwawire@africacfsp.org

Governments all over the world are grappling with the coronavirus pandemic that is quickly spreading among populations. More than ever, trust between citizens and their governments is a critical factor in facilitating good governance and ensuring an effective response to the pandemic. Within an African context, this paper examines the dynamics that influence public trust in governments and their implications on effectiveness in response to social distancing protocols. The paper derives lessons for African governments to build, maintain and leverage public trust for the management of Covid-19 and other related diseases ¹

Covid-19 Mitigation Measures

The novel coronavirus has instigated a global health and social crisis for the better part of 2020, disrupting the socio-economic fabric of communities. At the same time, the coronavirus pandemic has brought into sharper focus the fundamentals of political authority and the nature of state–society relations. To control the spread of the coronavirus, 46 African countries have implemented a range of measures, from declaring states of emergency or national disaster to partial or full bans on public gatherings, restrictions on international and/or domestic travel, and strictly enforcing curfews and full lockdowns.² However, variations have emerged in relation to the stringency of the lockdowns, with some countries like Tanzania, Sierra Leone and Burundi imposing more lax restrictions on movement, entailing limited restrictions to public gatherings, and the closure of schools. In Kenya and Senegal, a dusk to dawn curfew and movement restrictions in transmission hotspots characterized the COVID-19 mitigation measures. On the opposite side of the spectrum, countries like Botswana, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Djibouti, Morocco, and Uganda have implemented a total ban on cross-border travel, the use of public transport, as well as restrictions on all public gatherings.³ Safeguarding public health and providing measures to contain and respond to diseases like COVID-19 is a key responsibility of governments.⁴ Previous health crises in Africa indicate that trust in government institutions is crucial for public adherence to health advisories. Such trust influences virus contraction and peoples’ willingness to seek treatment, which enable governments to trace and track the spread of the virus. For instance, a distrust of public health institutions during West Africa’s 2014-2016 Ebola outbreaks meant that people avoided health-care centers, thus potentially hampering efforts at containment.⁵

Adherence to social distancing protocols is closely related to trust in government institutions. More than ever, citizens’ trust in their government is being tested during the coronavirus pandemic.⁶ This paper discusses how the dynamics of trust in governments in Africa have impacted the response to the coronavirus pandemic. It makes suggestions as to how African governments can leverage the mitigation of COVID-19 to build and maintain public trust for future governance processes.

The Dynamics of Trust in Government in the African Contex

On the whole, African governments entered the COVID-19 era with a checkered history of mistrust in the eyes of its citizens, created by years of corruption, mismanagement of resources, erosion of faith in politicians and political authorities, and inefficient service delivery in the public sector.⁷ As a result, trust in African governments tends to be very low, and there is wide public perception that governments are lacking in reliability, integrity, responsiveness, fairness, and openness. For example, a 2016-2018 Afrobarometer survey of 34 African countries drawn from the Sub-Saharan and North African blocs placed public trust of African governments at 55%, indicating that citizens think corruption is getting worse in their countries and that their government is doing a poor job of tackling it.⁸ The Afrobarometer study demonstrates a mistrust of key institutions; at the local level, councils, electoral commissions, and elected leaders (i.e. parliamentarians) register only 40% of positive public ratings. At the national level, citizens of Malawi, Madagascar and Togo expressed a similar level of public mistrust in presidents. Given that these institutions and individuals are at the forefront of the messaging around COVID-19 mitigation, this public perception may undermine efforts to fight the pandemic. Effective risk communication on the coronavirus pandemic plays a significant role in effective containment by providing information that people can use to take protective and preventative action. For example, during the West Africa Ebola virus epidemic, as a result of low levels of trust in government institutions, many communities reached for culturally familiar explanations of disease transmission and rejected medical disease control directives, thus hampering the control of the virus.⁹ The coercive strategies used by some African governments to enforce coronavirus-related policies have escalated public mistrust levels of government institutions. Reports of security forces using force, injuring and killing civilians in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda, points at a lack of compassion, one of the main components of trust.¹⁰ The lack of transparency in the utilization of COVID-19 funds by some African Governments has further eroded citizen trust in government institutions.¹¹

The socio-economic vulnerabilities and inequalities inherent to African societies further compound the dynamics of trust in government institutions under COVID-19. Social distancing restrictions are burdensome to the majority of the African public who live below the poverty line in slums and rely on small business and agriculture as a source of income. The closure of open air markets, borders, and the restriction of in-country and international movement has interfered with economic activities.¹² This reality has left most people with the dilemma of whether to risk their lives to put food on the table or have faith in government directives.¹³ With no social protection systems in place, trust that the government will support citizens to overcome the economic hardships occasioned by the COVID-19 restrictions has not been forthcoming.¹⁴Further, management of the virus in the African context is unique given Africa’s strong communal-oriented cultural value systems that revolve around communal living, large families and observance of cultural rites during festivals, funerals and other social gatherings that bring people together.¹⁵ Persuading people to put on hold these entrenched traditions requires a considerable level of trust that the institutions requesting people to make such sacrifices will effectively tackle the pandemic.¹⁶ Reports of resistance toward burial regulations set by health ministries in many African countries in order to limit the transmission of the virus is testament to the struggle between the transgression of cultural rites and the risk of virus contraction. For instance, in Kenya, one study indicates that the Luo community has been pushed to slaughtering a sacrificial animal as a protective ritual against the curse that may result from flaunting some of the burial rites under the COVID-19 protocols.¹⁷ Therefore, there is need for an action-oriented critical reflection of the factors that impede trust in African governments to improve the fight against the coronavirus.

Lessons for the Future

In order for African governments to exploit trust as an asset in mitigating the impact of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, there is a need to draw lessons from the barriers noted. This will involve transparently and equitably distributing and managing the public funds allocated to the management of the virus, using compassion and not coercion, in the enforcement of the COVID-19 protocols, and political leaders leading by example and observing social distancing and wearing masks when in public. Drawing on lessons of good practices from Africa, the following examples would inform future government actions in the region. Senegal, which has been ranked second out of the 36 governments in the Global COVID-19 Response Index, has used open public procurement and contracting procedures, entailing the translation of procurement procedures into the local language, Wolof, for easy accessibility by the public. This was coupled with educating the public on procurement systems through public workshops to ensure transparency in the COVID-19 expenditure decision-making processes.¹⁸ Yet again, Senegal provides a good example of what it means to lead by example in observing COVID-19 protocols, as seen when Senegalese President Macky Sall remained in self-quarantine for two weeks after testing negative for COVID-19.¹⁹ Meanwhile, Ghana has exemplified the display of empathy for its citizen’s financial woes under the COVID-19 restrictions by absorbing the three-month electricity bills for all citizens. An investment in long term social protection actions like this one would cushion vulnerable members of the community against the economic impacts of COVID-19.²⁰ An understanding of the dynamics of trust in governments in Africa in the context of the coronavirus provided by this paper, and related suggestions on how to use the virus to leverage trust among the citizenry, should inform ongoing and future mitigation actions around policy and programing.

Please Share this Article