United Front

Africa needs to set up a mechanism that leverages China’s experience for a united fight against this global pandemic

- Eddie Momoh

A recent incident some four weeks ago at Jomo Kenyatta International airport, in which a young Chinese woman was subjected to five hours of profiling and questioning by an overly-enthusiastic airport immigration officer went viral. She is a Kenyan resident who has been living in the country for the past five years and was returning home after a brief visit to Ghana.

Another isolated incident in Kenya, that also went viral, involved two youths confronting a group of Chinese construction workers in a Nairobi suburb, taunting them about the coronavirus.

Not surprisingly, the two incidents were blown out of proportion by the Western media, portraying them as representing the African people’s collective dislike of the Chinese. The Kenyan Government responded swiftly, condemning the two incidents as unacceptable; it also warned that anyone found in future to be discriminating against Chinese citizens would be dealt with according to the law.

These two incidents in Kenya, unfortunate as they may be, do not in any way give a fair representation of African people or African governments, and neither are they representative of most African people’s views on China. Africa and the African people have always identified themselves with, and stood by China, long before the coronavirus outbreak, and will continue to do so. This is evident in the fact that while the U.S. and several European governments were scrambling to evacuate their citizens from China, several African governments remained resolute and urged their thousands of citizens to remain in Wuhan (the epicenter of the outbreak in China) because they had every confidence that China was capable of dealing with the challenge.