Structural inequality in the time of COVID-19: Urbanization, segregation, and pandemic control in sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic exposes countries and people in sub-Saharan Africa to severe risks because of structural global inequalities. There is a simultaneous risk of the use of public health action to enact oppressive governance policies, which is happening in response to COVID-19 in many countries. In this commentary, we use the example of 20th-century pandemic control in pre-apartheid South Africa to illustrate how public health crises can engender oppressive social, economic, and spatial transformations.