President Higgins urges Europe to make new beginning with Africa

President of Ireland Michael D Higgins has said the coronavirus pandemic is an opportunity for Europe to "make a new beginning" with Africa and respond to "structural imbalances" between the two continents.

President Higgins made the remarks at a teleconference, organised by the African-European Parliamentarians Initiative, which examined the options and difficulties of addressing the Covid-19 pandemic and the lessons learned from past epidemics such as the Ebola outbreaks.

According to the Africa Centre of Disease Control, there are 23,716 cases of coronavirus on the African continent and there have been 1,160 deaths to date.

Mr Higgins said that it was important to realise the “particularities” facing Africa when dealing with coronavirus, also known as Covid-19.

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“In Ireland we may be coming out from some of our worst experiences through the co-operation of the public, really respecting that advice of washing our hands, having an etiquette in relation to sneezing [and] social distancing,” he said.

“But I know very well that such advice is going to be so difficult in Africa, where we have overcrowding in the periphery of cities, where clean water isn’t available and where ... the idea of social isolation is just simply impossible. And also, of course, the idea that one should stay inside and still have their daily economy work where one earns the price of one’s bread and one’s food for the day, it would be, really, an invitation to starve.”

Call for basic services

Mr Higgins said this crisis illustrates the importance of basic universal services in housing, health and education.

“And if we are to learn from this crisis, it should be that we shift the emphasis from armaments, and from the debt we’re encouraging in the world, towards providing universal basic services,” he added.

“I think, too, that this is a great opportunity for Europe [which] has had a legacy in Africa that it would like to forget but which Africans have not forgotten. And I think now is an opportunity to make a new beginning.”

He called for debt cancellation and unfair trade to cease to help Africa, not just through this crisis, but also to deal with inequality.

“It is in Africa, we can achieve equality. We can all benefit from proper adequate response to the present situation in Africa ... also committing ourselves to a whole new future for Africa, where two billion people will live in 2015, where 17 million young Africans into the labour force every year,” he added.