By ELSIE EYAKUZE

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When was the last time we talked about inequality? I realised that it hasn’t been raised as often as it used to be when reading news about the vaccine that is coming out of the UK to prevent Covid-19. It used to be a word that was all over the place.

The realisation that inequality as an aspect of modernity was a moral failing on a human scale that was being validated, and we even began to take action on it.

I mean, concepts like Fair Trade cropped up: high-end commodities such as coffee and cocoa — why it is always these two is a mystery — consumed in more developed economies would try to pay farmers and small traders on the ground something closer to a fair price to even the distribution of wealth created by said commodities. Considering that in the dark human past wars have been fought over such things as spices, this was a pleasant development.

So it has been bothering me that we haven’t talked of inequality in a while, like a gap where something should be. This only fell into place when discussions of the vaccine from the UK turned to the issue of affordability.

In the last column I ended a meditation on the miracles of science and technology in finding an answer to this current global pandemic, and ended it on a hope that any solutions found would be extended to Africa. Reading back, it sounds more like a supplication than an expression of hope.

Again I was consumed by the gap in the conversation when reading about US Senator, Dr Ben Carson, and his message of thanks to President Donald Trump after he contracted Covid-19 and was able to access top-notch medical care that helped him recover.

The sycophancy was to be expected if nauseating nonetheless. But this was reported in the same week that the US passed a critical threshold with 250,000 people reported to have died from Covid-19. The highest number of victims of the disease in more developed economies, widely thought to have been caused by the lag in response that the Trump administration took preventive measures.

To make things even more depressing is the fact that African Americans have, of course, been disproportionately affected by the disease. Likewise, in the UK, minorities were disproportionately affected by Covid-19.

And how about the way in which the pandemic entered the world in the first place? Covid-19 is a zoonotic disease like so many others we have picked up along the way in our association with animals and how we treat them.

Nature has a way of making us remember our boundaries with her. I guess we are just one of the very many living things that are involved in the balance of existence. Not particularly important, not particularly unimportant, just, you know, human. And hungry.

So while I would not in any way condemn the immense hunger for proteins and dependable food sources that make us constantly expand into nature’s space, I also can’t forget how much food dumping amongst other practices we employ to keep markets happy rather than people fed.

The issue of subsidies to farmers is a big one in the developed economies and a political one.

However, in a tragedy of contradictions, despite the fact that thanks to technology they can produce enough to feed the world over, the market demands that they not sell freely as this would affect prices. So food gets thrown away.

On the other side of that issue, there are places in the less developed economies that can also produce enough to feed the multiples.

But issues of infrastructure and political interference can severely constrict distribution. Tanzania’s bumper crop of cashew nuts rotted in fields and bags awaiting access to a market that should have been there, if carefully negotiated over time. But alas that was not so and thus school fees was not paid and neither were loans but there’s nothing the growers could do about it. Inequality rears its head, again.

Can we qualify inequality as a global pandemic, now? Given the lens of Covid-19 and how it has exposed the deleterious effects of unfairness upon human life and thriving? I think so.

There are many philanthropists who work to redistribute wealth, opportunity, health et cetera but I want to highlight Bill Gates. Reason? He wants to make the vaccine available to Africans for as close to free as possible.

The computing and tech billionaire has taken a special interest in Africa for a long time and seems intent on being a voice of reason and a helping hand in many of the issues aforementioned, with health at the forefront.  It is one of many examples of people who know they have benefitted excessively from the disease of inequality, it’s vampiric quality, wanting to redress a wrong.

Given the context of Covid-19 and the brevity of life in the grander scheme of things: yes, why not? An imperfect cure to a social disease is one start towards a total therapy.

Elsie Eyakuze is a consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report: E-mail: [email protected]