COVID-19 and Community Ownership in Cameroon

Author: Mwalimu George Ngwane, Head of the civil society organisation AFRICAphonie, May 22 2020 - One of the major problems of disease management and research, especially those that are sporadic, fatal and viral, is their lack of people-inclusive and empowerment strategies. Quite often, communities are basically beneficiaries of a hands-out process rather than a hands-on outcome. This is the case of the alarmist COVID-19 pandemic. Such a top-down approach has sometimes left the mitigating measures of COVID-19 only in the hands of a Santa Claus (government, public officials, and elites) club while disempowering the main target groups (local communities) from a domesticizing, indigenous and home-grown discourse. While this is universally understood as a legitimate responsibility of duty bearer (government) who are accountable and responsible to the welfare of their citizens, the act should now have a paradigm shift from public grandstanding to populist endowment. Strategies like use of community radio, creation of local task forces, promotion of grassroots distributive economy and enhancement of a proximate, traditional health response stand out.

Community radio
The messaging on COVID-19 has been limited to our two official languages, English and French, yet there is a large community that prefers the message in their Lingua Franca (Pidgin) or their indigenous languages. The existence of community radios in our hinterlands help to communicate the messages of COVID-19 to the local communities. According to the veteran journalist Robert Abunaw, a community radio reaches out to the largest community using the common language of the rural community. It has persuasive potentials in matters of opinion and belief, because it is independent and not commercial. It has the rare capacity to promote the sharing of information with the potential for immediate feedback. It has geographical or territorial competence broadcasting to a "homogenous public".

Community inclusion
Community inclusion should focus on creating a COVID-19 task force in the communities. Task forces are local authority's platform for information sharing with the involvement of traditional, religious authorities, women's networks and women's organizations, youth leaders and local NGOs [non-governmental organisations] in the fight against COVID-19. Also, most communities are filled with village meetings that hold monthly. There are also other specialised meeting groups (women, men, youths, church, and professional) which the community members can use as conversation mediums to enhance and disseminate most of what is broadcast in the community radios. Other traditional communication agencies include chiefdoms, quarter heads, town criers, placards etc.

Community economy
The production and dissemination of anti COVID-19 kits like face masks, hand sanitisers as well as the purchase of hand washing containers and soaps can be done at the community level rather than have them ferried from urban centres. This helps in bolstering grassroots distributive economy and creating a shared robust wealth at the bottom of the economic pyramid.

Community reconciliation
The Anglophone regions have been in a protracted crisis that has affected their respective health systems, making them vulnerable and susceptible to a pandemic such as COVID-19. Indeed before COVID-19, there was COFID-16. COFID-16 stands for the Conflict Over Federalism, Independence or Decentralisation that attained a manifest crisis in 2016. Can COVID-19 open windows for deeper dialogue and structural justice the way it did in Indonesia's island province of Aceh in December 2004 when it was rocked by a tsunami? In its wake and devastation of this tsunami, the warring parties in Aceh realised the senselessness of fighting amidst such a calamity. Within 8 months, both separatist rebels and the government signed a peace agreement in which the insurgent groups renounced their claim to a separate state and in exchange Indonesia agreed to offer a full-fledged special autonomy or special status to the Aceh region. So can COVID-19 trigger a permanent scope for and solution to COFID-16?

Community vaccine
A vaccine is a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases. We are aware that America, Asia and European countries are in the process of manufacturing a conventional vaccine against COVID-19. This however has not stopped local communities from relying on their herbal vaccine and nutritional vaccine. Archbishop Kleda's and Dr. Fru's highly mediatised herbal vaccines against COVID-19 are products from the artemisia plant and other herbs locally grown in our backyards. [Editor's note: click here for more details.] Prof. Julius Oben has just carried out research on the potential of "achu" soup (Star Yellow) in managing the spread of COVID-19. [Editor's note: click here for more details.] Prof. Oben's argument is that the dietary habits of a people determine the bacteria they host, as well as the functioning of their immune system and ability to manage certain infections. No one doubts the health value of most of our local diet.

Conclusion
The fight against COVID-19 should leave no one behind and no response ignored.

Image credit: AFRICAphonie

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