COVID-19 is reorienting ethnographic fieldwork in Africa towards digital methodologies

Virtual methodologies for remote fieldwork have become commonplace during the COVID-19 pandemic, often driven by research interests in Europe to collect data in Africa. But changing practices and new possibilities raise ethical and theoretical implications. LSE’s Dr Liz Storer recaps a recent panel addressing these concerns and distinguishes between the relevance of old and new ethnographic questions

Negotiating faith in exile: learning from displacements from and into Arua, North West Uganda

Humanitarians have recently championed faith actors as valuable resources in delivering humanitarian aid. Partnerships are increasingly promoted through international declarations and bespoke toolkits. Such approaches are abstracted from the historical and contemporary contexts through which faith is negotiated, and through which faith actors have become legitimate. This paper explores how faith has been entangled within the dynamics of two spatially connected crises: Ugandans fleeing post-Amin reprisals in the mid-1980s, and South Sudanese fleeing civil war from 2013. Drawing attention to the local-structural engagements which have shaped forms of protection and the legitimacy of faith actors, this paper urges for a consideration of complexity in humanitarians' localisation calculations

Better health interventions in Africa means understanding individual and communal practices of care

The COVID-19 pandemic has refocussed research into local responses to global health campaigns and the complex relationships between individual and communal practices of care. Drawing on ethnographic work in Uganda, researchers at the LSE Firoz Lalji Centre for Africa argue that humanitarian responders should consider the impact of reifying the individual as the primary actor

Understanding how people think about the spread of COVID in Africa

Early in the pandemic, rumours spread that Africans and people of African descent enjoyed immunity to COVID. Later, people’s understandings of how the virus is transmitted changed, focusing on the perceived risks posed by migrants, drivers, traders and other mobile individuals. Liz Storer and Cristin Fergus (LSE) explain how ‘infodemiology’ informs our understanding of the pandemic

Social media and trust in strangers have grown Uganda’s market for COVID-19 treatments

The COVID-19 pandemic in Uganda has coincided with an ‘epidemic’ of misinformation, spread in part through social media platforms such as WhatsApp. Against a backdrop of unaffordable formal healthcare, this has grown the market for herbal and traditional treatments, with effects on Ugandans’ everyday expenditure

Only for African export: understanding vaccine hesitancy in a Ugandan town

In the town of Arua, people refuse COVID vaccines for numerous reasons. Liz Storer (LSE) and Osuta Jimmy explain how the colonial legacy in the region, worries about side-effects, conspiracy theories that feed into narratives of oppression by the West, and belief in prayer and herbal cures for COVID have made people reluctant to get the jab

Vaccine populism and migrant assistance: on the contingency of mutual aid in Italy's Alpine region

Prior to COVID-19, migrant journeys through the Mediterranean were often described with reference to the barriers posed within ‘fortress Europe’ or through registers which centre migrant's adeptness at navigating draconian immigration regimes. Between these two contexts, this paper explores how a public authority lens can assist in understanding the implications of COVID-19 and associated vaccine bureaucracies. We draw on ethnographic research on the Italian-French Alpine border and chart how ‘vaccine populism’—perpetuated in nationalist political discourse as well as in the counter-commentaries of resistance offered by solidarity networks—has specific implications for migrants' access to vaccines and health information. We argue that analyses attentive to the subtle nuances of state and local politics provide an important entry point to map multi-scalar power dynamics which accompany universal health policies. Through considering the complex realities relating to Alpine crossings, we advocate from less categorising approaches to vaccinating migrants

Vaccine calculations among diaspora populations: evidence from South Sudanese communities in Canada

This brief explores understandings, and experiences of COVID-19 vaccines among South Sudanese diaspora members living across Canada. Members of this community, along with other members of African diaspora populations globally, have been considered to be vaccine ‘hesitant’. By contrast, we find that many South Sudanese Canadians have accepted a vaccine. Yet, this has not been linked to the formation of trust with the healthcare system or the government. Rather, fears of vaccine side-effects persisted, and many considered their decision-making compromised. This brief places sentiments in the context of adverse experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic, which have fostered trust in diaspora networks, maintained both virtually and physically, where vaccine misinformation has circulated

Covid-19 riskscapes: viral risk perceptions in the African Great Lakes

In this article we explore Covid-19 riskscapes across the African Great Lakes region. Drawing on fieldwork across Uganda and Malawi, our analysis centers around how two mobile, trans-border figures – truck drivers and migrant traders – came to be understood as shifting, yet central loci of perceived viral risk. We argue that political decision-making processes, with specific reference to the influence of Covid-19 testing regimes and reported disease metrics, aggravated antecedent geographies of blame targeted at mobile “others”. We find that using grounded riskscapes to examine localised renditions of risk reveals otherwise neglected forms of discriminatory discourse and practice