COVID-19: Morocco encourages Africa to mobilize its resources
A fleet of Boeing planes from the Royal Air Maroc has been responsible for bringing Moroccan medical aid to 15 African countries. 8 million masks, 900,000 visors, 600,000 caps, 60,000 gowns, 30 tons of hydroalcoholic gel, 75,000 boxes of chloroquine and 15,000 boxes of azithromycin have arrived in record time at the airports of Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Swaziland, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Malawi, Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, Tanzania, Chad and Zambia, where they have been received by ministers and senior officials from these countries.
The decision to send this medical aid to most vulnerable countries on the African continent was taken personally by King Mohamed VI of Morocco. It must be said that these are not the countries most affected in terms of contagion and deaths from COVID-19, but they are the ones with the least health infrastructure and resources. The main African countries in terms of GDP and population, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria and South Africa, are those most affected by the pandemic and those with the highest number of deaths.
Mohamed VI's decision is consistent with his proposal on April 13 to create a Joint African Operational Structure to deal with the pandemic. Senegalese Health Minister Abdulkaye Diuf, who welcomed the show of solidarity and friendship upon the arrival of the RAM plane in Dakar, stressed that it was the best example of south-south cooperation, the real basis of African unity. Other ministers and most of the ambassadors of African countries present in Addis Ababa, which is the headquarters of the African Union, have applauded and thanked Morocco for its help.
One of the most relevant aspects of this aid is that the material sent was 100% manufactured in Morocco, which is interpreted as a message to all the countries of the continent: we must count on our own forces; Africa must mobilize its own resources against the pandemic and its dire consequences.
Morocco has done its best to avoid politicizing the serious problem facing the continent. Among the 15 countries that receive its health aid, there are traditional friends of Morocco and others that for many years have had divergent positions with Rabat for example regarding the conflict in Western Sahara. Mohamed VI has asked nothing in return. The philosophy of the Moroccan proposal, already formulated in April, is based on pragmatism and concrete facts. Moreover, according to some independent media, since the beginning of the world pandemic in March, Morocco has proposed to send aid to the Saharawis living in the camps in Tindouf, who Rabat considers to be Moroccan citizens. Algeria did not accept Moroccan aid and carried out its own aid by sending medical equipment and food, something which, moreover, according to international legal experts, it is obliged to do when it receives a displaced population in its land.
The non-politicization of the common struggle of African countries against COVID-19 gives credibility to the challenges facing the continent with its more than 1.2 billion inhabitants. This is how South Africa has understood that, through the words of an expert, Liesl Louw-Vaudran, of the Institute for Security Studies of Africa, the decision of Mohamed VI is a transcendent gesture of African solidarity.