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Steven O. Kimbrough (Wharton, University of Pennsylvania)

Christine Chou, (National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan)

When the novel coronavirus and its disease, COVID-19, first spread in China, Taiwan was regarded as the next country most likely to be affected, due to its close geographic and economic ties with China. However, by mid-July 2020, after more than six months of rapidly growing COVID-19 cases around the world, Taiwan still counted substantially fewer cases than most countries. The worldwide news media have noted Taiwan’s initial success story, attributing it to Taiwan’s resilience, pervasive national health system, central command structure, rapid medical equipment build up, early prevention and transparent information sharing, as well as other factors. While these factors surely have played important roles in contributing to this initial success, it is too soon to tell whether that success will continue.

The purpose of our case study is to describe the work by a special group of people to assist in the pandemic response in Taiwan. That work has culminated, so its story can now be told. Our case study is based on 3,060 online community messages, 32 online shared interviews and information from several personal contacts. See “Not All Heroes Wear Capes: The Contributors Behind the Battle Against the Coronavirus Outbreak in Taiwan”for a fuller version of the study, including a detailed timeline.

The basic facts of the case are the following: Rationing of face masks began in Taiwan on January 28, shortly after the coronavirus appeared. This was partly in response to panic buying, but problems persisted, with long lines at all convenience stores that were originally designated to sell masks. There was also much agitation and anxiety among the public. At this point the idea of a name-based rationing system — tied to the national health system records — for buying face masks in the pharmacies was proposed. Under the system, each citizen or foreigner with a valid alien resident certificate could purchase two masks within a 7-day period using their identification cards as of February 6.

Once news of the forthcoming arrangement was released on February 4, a novel collaboration among the public, private and civic sectors began to emerge spontaneously. More than 1,000 software developers joined in the task of providing apps and other tools to identify in real time where face masks were available, sparing the public wasted time and anxiety. By the beginning of March, 59 map systems, 21 line applications, three chat bots, 23 mask sales location search systems, 22 apps, five audio systems, two information sharing systems, and one online mask reservation system were launched. Several applications have attracted more than 2 million users. The tools have been very effective, easing public anxiety and preventing a black market from emerging. As Microsoft executives Jaron Lanier and E. Glen Weyl wrote, “These tools showed where masks were available, but they did more than that. Citizens were able to reallocate rations through intertemporal trades and donations to those who most needed them, which helped prevent the rise of a black market.” In the end, democracy and social capital in Taiwan were strengthened.

“In the end, democracy and social capital in Taiwan were strengthened.”

The rationing system and the searching tools fully met their expectations until late April when the government was able to produce ample numbers of masks domestically. The government began to donate masks to various countries in need beginning in early April and was able to accumulate uncollected masks to donate more to other countries in late April. There are several important lessons to be learned from this case:

1. An Existing Platform

The software community coalesced on the g0v.tw platform, which is “an online community that pushes for greater information transparency [and] that focuses on developing an information platform and effective related tools for citizens to participate in society.” This platform was first set up in 2012 when a group of engineers was not satisfied with the government’s stance towards data availability.

1. Persistent Key Members

The channels used by the g0v community (#general and then #covid19) had persistent, attentive members. In the development of the mask-searching system, several leaders responded to the community multiple times every day. The top three members’ IDs were kiang, minexo79 and tnstiger, all of whom steadfastly replied to channel members’ messages, and continue to do so.

1. Openness of Government Data 

Thanks to the universal national health system, the Ministry of Health and Welfare had complete data available on pharmacies around the country. That data included pharmacists’ store codes, locations, business hours, mask inventory, and ways of issuing numbers to distribute the masks. This data was made available to the g0v developers after they requested it.

1. Emotion Sharing

The g0v community shared frustrations among its members as the project got underway and elation as successes were achieved. Emotion sharing was a key element in binding the community together and serving its higher purposes.

Stepping back, we should see the generous behavior of the g0v community in a larger context. It is an example of people spontaneously coming together in the spirit of community service during a public disaster. Rebecca Solnit documented multiple such examples in her 2009 book, A Paradise Built in Hell. Her chronicle begins with the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the acute firsthand observations of the philosopher William James, who noted the initial effective and peaceable self-organization of response by the diverse citizenry. Sadly, that period of comity and effectiveness soon ended because authorities imposed force where it was hardly needed and, in fact, detrimental. Solnit found this to be a recurring pattern up to the present day.

“In a time of immense challenge, each contributor became a hero in his or her own way.”

Happily, Taiwan so far has been an exception. In this case, the government responded with welcome and alacrity to the pro-social impulses of the g0v community. Audrey Tang, the government’s digital minister, has been a linchpin. With expert skills and knowledge in information technology, and the political skills that come with holding an important position in the government — a rare combination — she actively supported the projects and served as a crucial go-between for the multiple stakeholders present. An exceptional talent, she is also openly a transgender woman who, remarkably for Taiwan’s historical culture, has achieved the highest levels of access and influence in government and society. Her voice is eagerly sought and listened to. See “How digital innovation can fight pandemics and strengthen democracy” for Tang’s broader take on the situation.

The success of the name-based mask projects was enabled by an unusual combination of elements including: outstanding leadership and commitment (the digital minister, the leaders of the g0v collective); trust and residual goodwill (among the g0v community, and between the citizens generally and the government, which had recently obtained a very strong electoral mandate); deep preparation and steady, highly competent, informed leadership by the government that welcomed the g0v contributions; a well-educated, highly skilled group of techies with the freedom and capacity to contribute without being paid for their services; and a general, creative openness to diverse people and ways of thinking (including enlisting volunteers to visit pharmacies in person and collect additional data).

Above all, the success of this case relied on many volunteers willing to contribute large amounts of their time and effort. As writer Andrea Randall put it so well, “Heroes don’t always wear capes, badges or uniforms. Sometimes, they support those who do.” In a time of immense challenge, each contributor became a hero in his or her own way. Not only did they help solve the problem, but they also warmed everyone’s hearts with their effort and generosity. The gratitude they merit is perhaps even more for the lasting value and example they created for the future, and what this means for Taiwan’s social capital, than for their fine achievement of the day.

*The authors acknowledge the help and authorization from CC BY 4.0 by g0v Contributors and helpful comments from Finjon Kiang. 

It may seem paradoxical, but political stability is a prerequisite for the change we need to transition our economy to one that is environmentally sustainable. The beating heart of America’s economic wealth and power is the politically stable system of law that we Americans take for granted. Investors around the world know that a dollar loaned to the United States or invested in American corporations will not disappear or be stolen by a corrupt, lawless regime. Last week, we saw both the fragility and the resilience of our political system. Its stability was attacked by an aspiring autocrat and his deluded followers as they ransacked the U.S. Capitol building. Its resilience was demonstrated as determined legislators worked all night to complete the certification of the duly elected President of the United States.

It was shocking, but sadly, not surprising. And it is far from over. Inauguration Day and the days leading up to January 20 will see more political violence. Hopefully this time our police and military will be better prepared to resist it.

President-elect Biden and his team have an enormous task ahead of them. They must vaccinate the nation, restore the economy, promote equity, address racism, combat climate change and reinforce and solidify our democracy. That work requires a stable, functioning political process. In my view, there is a mistaken belief that autocracies are stable, and democracies are not. The American experience has been the opposite: that a democracy governed by a system of law and built on the consent of the governed provides the highest probability of political stability. The consent of the governed, not the “muscle” of the autocrat is the source of genuine political stability. But as we have learned over the past four years, our political system is more fragile than we thought. Trump’s attack on the electoral system before and after the election was relentless. Fortunately, it was met with determined, bi-partisan resistance. Democracy does not run on autopilot. It requires people to place principle over power. We saw that with the Republicans in charge of Georgia’s elections. We saw that in Congress before the assault on the Capitol building and it only grew stronger after Trump’s mob was expelled from the building. A belief in the Constitution and the rule of law dominated the discussion of our elected leaders.

But it was far from unanimous. Fear of the Trump base led elected officials all over the nation to parrot the president’s disinformation about the presidential election. Millions of misled voters all over the nation fell victim to the campaign of lies and fantasy perpetuated by the insecure and vain man who simply could not accept his electoral loss. We are fortunate that Trump is an incompetent aspiring autocrat. A more skilled operator might have had greater success in attacking our political institutions.

Since the initial attack was quickly repelled, the resilience of our institutions should provide some assurance that political stability will be maintained. Disinformation-fueled extremism will continue, but it will no longer be led by the most powerful elected official in the world. The images of the Capitol building desecrated by a mob should serve to delegitimize this form of political extremism, as will the calm, principled and moderating voice of President-elect Joe Biden.

And we need calm voices and political stability to take on the climate crisis and the challenge of creating an economy that provides economic opportunity without destroying the planet. The type of economic transformation we need will require massive long-term investment of capital. Government needs to invest in green infrastructure to decarbonize our economy and private capital must be attracted to investments in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and the production systems and supply chains of the circular economy. Long term investments require government incentives, and we require a stable government to assure that these long-term investments will eventually pay off.

Political stability is not simply a set of laws but is based on belief in the sanctity of those laws. It is a social construct. A dominant social paradigm about how the political world works. A great challenge to that set of beliefs is the ability of social and mass media to create a universe of alternative facts. The recent election is a visible case in point. Scores of challenges to the election were filed in court and dismissed over and over by judges all over America. But the mob attacking the Capitol continued to repeat the same fiction in scores of interviews and on social media. Clearly, some of the intensity stemmed from the president repeating these falsehoods relentlessly. Removing the presidency from the equation and separating Trump from his 80 million-plus Twitter followers should help, but political stability and the capacity for constructive political and economic change requires a shared consensus about reality.

Attacks on the electoral process, the seriousness of COVID-19 and the science of climate change have been part of the political landscape of the Trump administration for years. The result has been a massive pandemic impact, a steadily warming planet, and a Congress hunkered down in the basement while mobs ran amuck above. These impacts are closely connected and a direct result of our incompetent but aspiring autocrat-president seeking to retain his hold on political power.

We Americans are fortunate that most of us have never lived under conditions of political instability. While racism and xenophobia make America less free than it should be, and too many fear they will be attacked for their appearance or accent, there remains a calm predictability in our daily lives that people in Syria, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and other places in the world long for. That calm predictability is why wealthy people from all over the world purchase real estate in the United States and try to ensure that some of their wealth is invested here. Coupled with our vast military power, America possesses the wealth and stability that is needed to invest in the renewable resource-based economy. I know that sounds like a logical contradiction since the lust for economic power is what created the crisis of environmental sustainability. But we need organizational competence, financial capital and political power for a peaceful transition to an environmentally sustainable economy. The transition will be a high wire act, maintaining a productive economy while eliminating its destructive environmental impacts. We need to repair the airplane and fly it at the same time. An economic crash would slow and possibly end the transition to sustainability. Our methods of production and consumption must be transformed rather than reduced. A stable political system inspiring economic confidence is a prerequisite to a successful transition to sustainability.

Our military might, global reach, and vast power have both costs and benefits, but this nation’s vast power makes the goals of the Green New Deal feasible. The transition we need requires America’s leadership and without that leadership, it is hard to see how the climate crisis and the interconnected crisis of environmental sustainability can ever be addressed. We have spent the past four years relying on corporations, non-governmental organizations, cities, states and civil society to lead the renewable resource transition in America. Although we’ve made progress, it’s clear that the job requires federal leadership and that leadership requires political stability and a shared factual understanding of how the world works. While last week was wrenching, the electoral results in Georgia, the courage of many Republican elected officials, and the silencing of Trump’s Twitter account give us reason to hope that better days lie ahead.

*Courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University.

Undercounting or ignoring cases of the disease on the continent could lead to new variants that might derail efforts to end the pandemic. Kenya and other African countries are reporting relatively few COVID cases, but studies suggest that the continent’s true burden of disease may be undercounted.

Africa has suffered about three million COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic—at least officially. The continent’s comparatively low number of reported cases has puzzled scientists and prompted many theories about its exceptionalism, from its young population to its countries’ rapid and aggressive lockdowns.

But numerous seroprevalence surveys, which use blood tests to identify whether people have antibodies from prior infection with the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2), point to a significant underestimation of African countries’ COVID burden. Undercounting could increase the risk of the disease spreading widely, hinder vaccine rollout and uptake, and ultimately threaten global efforts to control the pandemic, experts warn. Wherever the virus is circulating—especially in regions with little access to vaccines—new mutations are likely to arise, and it is crucial to identify them quickly.

Viral variants are already complicating vaccination drives around the world. New SARS-CoV-2 variants first detected in South Africa, Brazil and the U.K. have raised concerns that they could be more transmissible or make available vaccines less effective. And drugmakers are scrambling to develop vaccine boosters to protect against them. (The currently authorized vaccines still provide strong protection against severe disease and death.)

Undiagnosed transmission of COVID in African countries increases the risk of new variants taking hold in the population before authorities have a chance to detect them and prevent their spread, says Richard Lessells, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the KwaZulu-Natal Research and Innovation Sequencing Platform in South Africa. That nation has the highest number of recorded cases on the continent (many of them caused by a new variant). And officials suspect that its surveillance network is only catching one in every 10 infections.

Mutations develop spontaneously as a virus replicates and spreads. While many of them are innocuous, they can sometimes make the pathogen more transmissible or deadly, as seen in the SARS-CoV-2 variant first detected in the U.K.

“If you allow it to continue to spread, it will continue to evolve,” warns Lessells, who was part of the team that first identified the new variant in South Africa. The threat of mutation is greater if the virus is moving unhindered through large swaths of a country’s or region’s population. Lessells emphasizes that Africa is not the “problem” and that new variants could just as easily emerge elsewhere. Rather the issue is vaccine equity. “It is clear that if we leave Africa behind on the vaccine front, then there’s clearly a risk that it gets more challenging to control transmission,” he says.

The underestimation of COVID cases feeds into a narrative that African countries do not need vaccines as urgently as other nations. After all, if there are relatively few cases and deaths, then some people may say, “Good, no problem––they don’t need vaccines,” says Maysoon Dahab, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. Her research estimated that only about 2 percent of COVID deaths in Khartoum, Sudan, were correctly attributed to the illness between last April and September.

Many African countries have initiated limited vaccination programs, mainly procured through the COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX) Facility. Vaccines are earmarked for health care workers and extremely vulnerable groups. They are simply not available to inoculate entire African nations in the short to medium term—both as a result of global demand and because of rich countries hoarding doses.

Currently, rich nations accounting for 16 percent of the world’s population have bought 60 percent of the global vaccine supply, wrote World Health Organization director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in Foreign Policy last month. “Many of these countries aim to vaccinate 70 percent of their adult population by midyear in pursuit of herd immunity,” he wrote.

Vaccine-induced herd immunity is not likely for African countries in the near future. A spokesperson for COVAX co-leader GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, told Scientific American that the initiative aims to vaccinate 20 percent of people in its member countries by the end of the year. “COVAX’s work has only just begun: it is vitally important that manufacturers continue to support COVAX and governments refrain from more bilateral deals that take further supply out of the market,” the spokesperson said.

But if reported COVID cases are low, officials may struggle to persuade people to get a shot even if they are in a position to do so. The low reported disease numbers are bolstering vaccine hesitancy, warns Catherine Kyobutungi, executive director of the African Population and Health Research Center in Nairobi, Kenya. “People are asking why they need to be vaccinated when they’ve already gotten rid of the virus without vaccines,” she says.

Kenya has officially had 122,000 cases, but a nationwide blood-bank survey found that about 5 percent of more than 3,000 samples taken between last April and June contained SARS-CoV-2 antibodies. If extrapolated, this finding points to the possibility of millions of undiagnosed cases in Kenya, although some scientists say that the survey was not representative of the general population and could have had skewed results. Nevertheless, the country aims to vaccinate 30 percent of its population—a figure Kyobutungi describes as a “drop in the ocean”—by 2023.

Without widespread access to vaccines, African countries are relying on basic public health measures such as mask wearing and handwashing alone to control the disease’s spread. And, as with vaccination, people could dismiss these measures as unnecessary if the numbers misrepresent the risk of infection.

Governments may also take the statistics at face value and downscale their COVID surveillance efforts, Kyobutungi warns. That is, they may do so “until something terrible happens or, a year down the line, there’s a Malawian variant, a Ugandan variant or Sudanese variant,” she says. “If new lethal variants emerge in Africa, Africa gets cut off from the rest of the world, or the variants spread like the first cases in China. Then you have cases everywhere, and we need to vaccinate the whole world all over again.”

Others, however, are less concerned about undercounting and its potential consequences. Epidemiologist Salim Abdool Karim, co-leader of South Africa’s ministerial advisory committee, says that the only way to completely protect the public is to presume “everybody is potentially infected” and institute universal health measures such as mask wearing. “Vaccines are an important part of our prevention tool box—probably the most important part,” Abdool Karim says. “But they aren’t enough on their own.”

Ngoy Nsenga, WHO Africa’s program manager for emergency response, agrees that variants are a concern and that the best response is implementing public health interventions. “Of course, we wish we could have vaccines to vaccinate everyone and stop the chain of transmission, but because of availability, that is not possible,” he says.

Without worldwide concurrent vaccination, COVID will continue to spread. With the disease, African countries are “here for the long haul,” Nsenga says. And if that is true for the continent, it could well be true for the rest of the world. “If any place, any country, is not safe in this world, no country will be safe,” he says.

WHEN BANKS started to fail and protesters began filling the streets in 2019, Moussa Khoury resisted the temptation to leave his native Lebanon. After a massive explosion flattened part of Beirut, the capital, last year, he fixed his broken windows and stayed put. But in the end he could not withstand the collapse of Lebanon’s currency. Mr Khoury runs a startup selling vegetables grown in hydroponic planters. His customers paid him in liras, while his suppliers demanded hard currency. So in April he accepted an offer from an acquaintance who promised to invest in the business—if Mr Khoury moved it to Ghana.

More than 250,000 Lebanese probably live in west Africa. It is impossible to know how many have moved there since Lebanon’s economic crisis began in 2019, but the evidence suggests the number is large. A pilot of Lebanese descent living in Togo says Lebanese pack his flights to west Africa. Lebanon’s embassy in Nigeria reports a “noticeable increase” in Lebanese moving to the country. Guita Hourani, who leads a centre that studies migration at Notre Dame University-Louaize in Lebanon, says her office is flooded with calls from locals who want advice on how to track down relatives abroad, including in Africa.

Many Lebanese came to west Africa in the 19th century, disembarking (some say by mistake) from ships heading for America. The new arrivals proved remarkably successful, first as middlemen between locals and colonising powers, later as business owners and commodity traders. Today, for example, Lebanese reportedly control many of the companies in Ivory Coast that handle exports of coffee or cocoa.

Over a century of conflict, crisis and famine have scattered Lebanese all over the world. But these days Lebanese find it much easier to obtain visas from west African destinations than from America or European countries. Jobs are easier to get hold of, too. Someone always knows someone who has an opening, says Karim Maky, a Senegalese of Lebanese descent. Skilled workers are paid well. And most west African countries already have Lebanese churches, mosques and schools.

Some newcomers plan to stay for a while. Take Ibrahim Chahine, a young mechanical engineer who left Lebanon last year. Canada’s visa process was too cumbersome, he says. His applications to Gulf countries went unanswered. So when he got a job at a company run by Lebanese in Nigeria, he didn’t think twice. Within two weeks he had moved to Abuja, the capital. He expects to stay for ten years.

Mr Khoury is not so sure. He had hoped to use his startup to boost agricultural production in Lebanon, which currently imports nearly all of its food. Instead he is building a greenhouse in Accra, the capital of Ghana, with the aim of selling baskets of kale, leeks and lettuce to local supermarkets, restaurants and hotels. He plans to spend at least a year there. But his extended family is back in Lebanon. And he’s kept his operation there open. That’s because of nostalgia, he says, not profits.

Like all nation-states before it, Nigeria is now confronted with stark existential choices — stay the current course of self-delusion or boldly grapple with deep-seated unresolved issues that threaten to disintegrate it. The idea of a unitary Nigeria is appealing, but it requires extraordinary self-less effort and sacrifices that both its people and leadership are unwilling or capable of rendering. It may very well be that the opportunities it had for course-correction to keep it whole are no longer available. An October 23^rd article on Nigeria by the Economist, as presented below, is instructive.

Africa’s biggest nation faces its biggest test since its civil war 50 years ago

The Economist. October 23^rd, 2021.

Little more than six decades ago, as Nigeria was nearing independence, even those who were soon to govern Africa’s largest country had their doubts about whether it would hold together. British colonists had drawn a border around land that was home to more than 250 ethnic groups. Obafemi Awolowo, a politician of that era, evoked Metternich, fretting that “Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression.”

The early years of independence seemed to prove him right. Coup followed coup. Ethnic pogroms helped spark a civil war that cost 1m lives, as the south-eastern region calling itself Biafra tried to break away and was ruthlessly crushed. Military rule was the norm until 1999. Despite this inauspicious start, Nigeria is now a powerhouse. Home to one in six sub-Saharan Africans, it is the continent’s most boisterous democracy. Its economy, the largest, generates a quarter of Africa’s gdp. Nollywood makes more titles than any other country’s film industry bar Bollywood. Three of sub-Saharan Africa’s four fintech “unicorns” (startups valued at more than $1bn) are Nigerian.

Why, then, do most young Nigerians want to emigrate? One reason is that they are scared. Jihadists are carving out a caliphate in the north-east; gangs of kidnappers are terrorising the north-west; the fire of Biafran secessionism has been rekindled in the oil-rich south-east. The violence threatens not just Nigeria’s 200m people, but also the stability of the entire region that surrounds them.

Readers who do not follow Nigeria closely may ask: what’s new? Nigeria has been corrupt and turbulent for decades. What has changed of late, though, is that jihadism, organised crime and political violence have grown so intense and widespread that most of the country is sliding towards ungovernability. In the first nine months of 2021 almost 8,000 people were directly killed in various conflicts. Hundreds of thousands more have perished because of hunger and disease caused by fighting. More than 2m have fled their homes.

The jihadist threat in the north-east has metastasised. A few years ago, an area the size of Belgium was controlled by Boko Haram, a group of zealots notorious for enslaving young girls. Now, Boko Haram is being supplanted by an affiliate of Islamic State that is equally brutal but more competent, and so a bigger danger to Nigeria. In the south-east, demagogues are stirring up ethnic grievances and feeding the delusion that one group, the Igbos, can walk off with all the country’s oil, the source of about half of government revenues. President Muhammadu Buhari has hinted that Biafran separatism will be dealt with as ruthlessly now as it was half a century ago.

Meanwhile, across wide swathes of Nigeria, a collapse in security and state authority has allowed criminal gangs to run wild. In the first nine months of this year some 2,200 people were kidnapped for ransom, more than double the roughly 1,000 abducted in 2020. Perhaps a million children are missing school for fear that they will be snatched.

Two factors help explain Nigeria’s increasing instability: a sick economy and a bumbling government. Slow growth and two recessions have made Nigerians poorer, on average, each year since oil prices fell in 2015. Before covid-19, fully 40% of them were below Nigeria’s extremely low poverty line of about $1 a day. If Nigeria’s 36 states were stand-alone countries, more than one-third would be categorised by the World Bank as “low-income” (less than $1,045 a head). Poverty combined with stagnation tends to increase the risk of civil conflict.

Economic troubles are compounded by a government that is inept and heavy-handed. Mr Buhari, who was elected in 2015, turned an oil shock into a recession by propping up the naira and barring many imports in the hope this would spur domestic production. Instead he sent annual food inflation soaring above 20%. He has failed to curb corruption, which breeds resentment. Many Nigerians are furious that they see so little benefit from the country’s billions of petrodollars, much of which their rulers have squandered or stolen. Many politicians blame rival ethnic or religious groups, claiming they have taken more than their fair share. This wins votes, but makes Nigeria a tinderbox.

When violence erupts, the government does nothing or cracks heads almost indiscriminately. Nigeria’s army is mighty on paper. But many of its soldiers are “ghosts” who exist only on the payroll, and much of its equipment is stolen and sold to insurgents. The army is also stretched thin, having been deployed to all of Nigeria’s states. The police are understaffed, demoralised and poorly trained. Many supplement their low pay by robbing the public they have sworn to protect.

To stop the slide towards lawlessness, Nigeria’s government should make its own forces obey the law. Soldiers and police who murder or torture should be prosecuted. That no one has been held accountable for the slaughter of perhaps 15 peaceful demonstrators against police abuses in Lagos last year is a scandal. The secret police should stop ignoring court orders to release people who are being held illegally. This would not just be morally right, but also practical: young men who see or experience state brutality are more likely to join extremist groups.

                                                              Things don’t have to fall apart

Second, Nigeria needs to beef up its police. Niger state, for instance, has just 4,000 officers to protect 24m people. Local cops would be better at stopping kidnappings and solving crimes than the current federal force, which is often sent charging from one trouble spot to another. Money could come from cutting wasteful spending by the armed forces on jet fighters, which are not much use for guarding schools. Britain and America, which help train Nigeria’s army, could also train detectives. Better policing could let the army withdraw from areas where it is pouring fuel on secessionist fires.

The biggest barrier to restoring security is not a lack of ideas, nor of resources. It is the complacency of Nigeria’s cosseted political elite—safe in their guarded compounds and the well-defended capital. Without urgent action, Nigeria may slip into a downward spiral from which it will struggle to em

Recent events in Ethiopia, as horrific as they are, no longer shock or disturb the sensibilities of Africans. They are normal activities in their natural habitats; they are also egregiously unacceptable. That Africans now see these events as unavoidable costs of incredibly bad leadership that have shaped their collective state of affairs and their future prospects is dispositive. What is not so clear is what they can do about it. Only less than three years ago Ethiopia held out hopes that African countries may yet indeed give their citizens reasons to believe that personal security in a stable and productive economic environment was possible after all. That was many months ago when the world thought Abiy Ahmed, the current Ethiopian prime minister, was refreshingly different from a long series of rotten African leaders. He was also awarded a Nobel Prize for peace; now they wish they could take it back. An October 9th, 2021 article by the Economist paints a dreadful picture of Ethiopia under Mr. Ahmed.

 ON ETHIOPIA

The Economist.

It was one of the grandest ceremonies that Meskel Square had ever witnessed. Part military parade, part cultural jamboree, the spectacle in the heart of the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, was so lavish that one might have mistaken it for the inauguration of a president or the crowning of a monarch.

In fact, the focus of the pomp was Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s prime minister. He came to power when his predecessor resigned amid massive protests in 2018. Although the early months of his tenure involved mending relations with the opposition and signing a peace deal with Eritrea (for which he won a Nobel prize in 2019), his rule has since been marred by ethnic unrest, a slowing economy and a devastating civil war in the northern state of Tigray. The event on October 4th marked the start of his first full five-year term as prime minister, following elections in July.

The ceremony was in part a riposte to those questioning Abiy’s legitimacy, above all the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (tplf), which once called the shots in the country and is now at war with the central government. “We have reached a new era,” Abiy told cheering crowds (pictured), one in which power “emanates only from the genuine voice of the people via the ballot box”. But the voice was somewhat muffled by an opposition boycott and the decision to call the election off in a fifth of districts because of violence. Small wonder that Abiy’s Prosperity Party won more than 90% of the seats contested.

The show was also aimed at an international audience. Relations between Ethiopia and many Western countries have sunk to their lowest point in decades. Last month America said it would slap sanctions on officials involved in the war in Tigray if the parties (which also include Eritrean troops fighting alongside Ethiopian forces) did not start talks or allow food to reach those cut off by the government’s blockade of the state. Martin Griffiths, the un’s humanitarian chief, warned on September 29th that hundreds of thousands could starve. Abiy’s response was to expel seven senior un officials, accusing them of “meddling” in Ethiopia’s affairs.

In his speech Abiy declared that Ethiopia would never submit to foreign pressure. In the past such prickly talk typically masked a great degree of pragmatism, as Ethiopia attempted to win friends and gain international influence. For instance, it championed igad, a regional bloc, and contributed more peacekeeping troops to the un than almost any other country. It also cultivated close ties with China and America, becoming the latter’s eager ally in its “war on terror”. Ethiopia enjoyed such clout in Washington that when it invaded Somalia in 2006 to topple an Islamist government, America joined in.

The picture now is very different. Abiy’s decision to cosy up to Eritrea’s dictator, Issaias Afwerki, has divided igad. Ethiopia’s relations with Sudan have soured, leading to border clashes. Even more spectacular is the falling out with the West. Barely a week goes by without a rally against alleged foreign interference, or a statement by a senior official denouncing “foreign enemies”. A stream of conspiracy theories floods state media: that America is supplying tplf fighters with drug-laced biscuits, for example, or that un agencies are smuggling weapons. In August the government halted the work of Médecins Sans Frontières and the Norwegian Refugee Council, two aid organisations.

Three factors are contributing to Ethiopia’s growing isolation. The first is Abiy’s capricious approach to foreign policy, which is characterised by personal relationships rather than engagement with institutions. He has sidelined the foreign ministry and closed or downsized dozens of embassies. He has alienated foreign leaders with a string of unkept promises, such as those to allow aid to reach Tigray or to eject Eritrean troops. And he has infuriated America by buying drones from Iran and snubbing American envoys.

The second factor is the West’s perceived double standard. From 1991 to 2018, when the tplf dominated the Ethiopian government, America routinely turned a blind eye to its ally’s human-rights violations. Because the Ethiopian army was helping fight jihadists in Somalia, a brutal campaign against separatists in Ethiopia’s own Somali region drew scant condemnation. “The West emboldened the tplf and whitewashed its past sins,” argues Zelalem Moges, an Ethiopian lawyer. More recently, the administration of Donald Trump sided with Egypt and Sudan in their dispute with Ethiopia over a huge dam it is building on the Blue Nile. “Abiy genuinely believes the United States is trying to overthrow him,” notes an American diplomat. “He believes that he is this pro-American, liberalising market reformer that we have shunned.”

Most important is a disagreement about the wisdom of continuing the war. “Our demands are quite simple: end the war and our relations are by definition better,” says a European diplomat. African officials, though quieter, tend to agree. Even Russia and China, which Abiy hopes will plug any financial holes left by cuts in Western aid and military assistance, have been reticent. Both have opposed punitive measures in the un Security Council. China has also criticised American sanctions. But neither has offered Abiy much by way of practical support.

Abiy has hinted privately that he might be open to negotiations with the tplf. The special envoy of the African Union (au) to the Horn of Africa, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, has reportedly been given permission to sound out the Tigrayan leadership. But the tplf, which considers the au biased against it, may not accept its mediation. The prime minister, for his part, made no mention of talks in his inaugural address and seems determined instead to launch a new offensive. That may force the hand of America, which is deciding whether to suspend duty-free access for Ethiopian goods under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. Already bad, relations between Ethiopia and its allies are set to sink further.