Lacking data, many African governments make policy in the dark
It is hard to help the poor if you don’t count them
THE GRAVEDIGGERS of Kano know something is up. Death has not come as rapidly to this town in northern Nigeria since a great cholera outbreak 60 years ago, one told the BBC. Local newspapers are running long lists of names of people who have died after showing symptoms of covid-19. Among them were two professors, a newspaper columnist, the former editor of a paper and the mother of a film star. “They all died on Saturday,” read one report. Nobody knows whether they died of the virus, because nobody has checked.
This article appeared in the Middle East & Africa section of the print edition under the headline “Start counting”
From the May 9th 2020 edition
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