Something I've begun to worry about ... what happens when/if/as coronavirus hits Africa? ewn.co.za/2020/03/08/sa-… 1/x 
In one way, Africa is shielded by a buffer against coronavirus. The virus seems to prey most fiercely upon the old - and Africa is continent of the young. brookings.edu/blog/africa-in… 2/x
But Africa is also a continent rapidly urbanizing into huge cities, tightly crowded and poorly serviced. Almost 500 million Africans now live in giant metropolises, ill served by water and electricity. 3/x csis.org/analysis/urban…
Africa was not a healthy place pre-coronavirus afro.who.int/sites/default/… 4/x
Progress has been made over the past 15 years, yes. 5/x afro.who.int/sites/default/…
But public health programs and organizations still lag ominously. African states lack capacity to surge resources to meet a crisis. And Africans have been spending a lot of their recently rising incomes on tobacco smoking - a prime coronavirus risk. 6/x qz.com/africa/1228845…
Epidemics show up *first* in the places most networked into world trade and travel. But networked places are also the most likely to be protected by strong and successful states. Africa is less networked. The virus will arrive later. But when it arrives - Africa is less protected
It's understandable that in an epidemic, we all worry first about ourselves. We're human, we do that. But over the horizon, it's a good guess that the toll will rise highest not in the developed countries, but in poor ones - and Africa most of all. 8/x
If the Trump administration is laggard in its epidemic planning for the United States, imagine how miserably indifferent it must be to planning for epidemics everywhere else - and those places everywhere else are precisely the places likely to suffer most. 9/x
Walls don't work against viruses, rising temperatures, or worsening tropical storms. "America First" was a dumb enough slogan in the days of steamships and dirigibles. It's criminally negligent in the face of the threats of today. - END -
