The pandemic opens up a great opportunity for the former colonial powers to help these countries that they abused and mistreated. The ten former colonial powers are well on the way to herd immunity, having vaccinated large majorities of their populations. Meanwhile, their former colonies have been left far behind in the global fight against Covid-19. For example, fewer than 3 percent of Africa’s more than 1.2 billion people have been vaccinated. At the current vaccination rate, it will be many years before Africa’s protection level reaches a point where it is comparable to that of the former colonial powers.
And that poses grave dangers not only to Africans, but also to Europeans and Americans. The only way to bring the coronavirus under manageable control is to vaccinate the entire world’s population. Otherwise, we will be subject to new and likely even more deadly variants than the current Delta strain that has caused so much devastation globally.
That can be largely stopped if the world’s rich countries go all out to quickly produce and distribute enough vaccines to their former colonies. They have the capacity to do this and to do it without charging these desperately poor nations for the jabs.
Among them, these colonial powers subjugated more than 100 colonies, which included virtually all of Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and much of Asia and the Pacific. A concerted program of supplying these now independent nations with Covid vaccines is one way to make up for some of the terrible harms they wreaked. Belgium, for example, killed an estimated 10 million Congolese during its rule. In addition, King Leopold II’s emissaries in the Congo brutalized millions more of the people they enslaved, hacking off their hands if they did not meet their production quotas. Leopold’s cruelty was hardly unique. The other nine colonial powers were also guilty of gross mistreatment.
“COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access” (COVAX) the international initiative aimed at equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines has been a disappointment. It has fallen far short of its original goal In the 18 months since its inception of distributing 2 million vaccine doses to 92 poor countries. It’s time to try something else. If each former colonial power focused its efforts on directing vaccines to its former colonies, doing something so significant, salutary and morally right would be a huge step toward conquering Covid-19 and a “win-win” for the entire planet.
October 22, 2021