Internally displaced persons and COVID-19: a wake-up call for and African solutions to African problems – the case of Zimbabwe

In this paper we engage with the situation of internally displaced persons (IDPs) residing in two informal settlements in Zimbabwe, within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We draw on an ongoing collaborative, interdisciplinary and impact-oriented project that seeks to help IDPs to be more prepared to protect themselves from the COVID-19 pandemic. We start by providing an analysis of the existing COVID-19 preventative messages and their applicability to the IDPs situation, and further argue for the need to adopt Transformative Public Health Education (TPHE), to allow co-creation and co-production with IDPs in order to produce messages and interventions that suit their lived realities. We then move on to show the importance of leveraging local low cost COVID-19 solutions, drawing on the example of the innovations that the project adapted in order to meet the needs of the IDPs residing in the two informal settlements