Megan Gieske is a storyteller and photographer based in Cape Town, South Africa.
With a country-wide unemployment rate of 32.6% and over 2.4 million confirmed cases as of August 2021, COVID-19 has been wreaking havoc on South Africa. And Johannesburg remains the epicenter of the virus’ spread.
In western Johannesburg, however, Queen of Hearts Circle, founded by Mariam Behr, has been stepping up to support community needs during the pandemic, raising awareness and educating the community on COVID-19 safety.
How Queen of Hearts...
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Dr. Charles Murigande is a former Rwandan minister of education and until his retirement in June 2020, he was the deputy vice-chancellor in charge of institutional development at the University of Rwanda.
The COVID-19 pandemic provided a lesson for Africa’s education sector: The continent must assume greater responsibility to address an unprecedented learning crisis. Africa must better address a crisis that threatens the vision of a knowledge-based society able to survive in a global and competitive environment.
Exacerbating learning poverty
Since the...
COVID-19 has exposed fault lines in both rich and poor countries. From failing public healthcare systems to racial inequality, the pandemic has laid bare unjust and inequitable structures that are failing the most vulnerable and marginalised groups. Poverty levels are rising globally. Between 88 million and 115 million more people were pushed into poverty in 2020 because of the pandemic, according to the World Bank.
In South Africa, the pandemic exacerbated inequality levels. This was evident during the protests and...
A roundup of the latest news, stats, and analysis of COVID-19’s impact in Africa. View our data tracker and sign up for our weekly newsletter, and read on for the impact of the pandemic on global education, Africa’s record COVID-19 death rate, and warnings of an impending “orphan crisis.”
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COVID-19 updates
Grim milestone: This week, Africa’s daily death COVID-19 rate tipped over the peak reached in January. ONE’s COVID-19 Africa Tracker shows that in the week to 26 July, more...
Rasna Warah is a Kenyan writer and journalist who is working with the ONE Campaign’s COVID-19 Aftershocks project.
While Western nations are focusing their attention on their post-COVID economic recovery, Kenya is confronting a crisis with far-reaching social and economic consequences: rising poverty levels. Kenya gained an additional 2 million “new poor” as of last November due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the World Bank’s Kenya Economic Update. “The pandemic is inflicting tragic loss of life and human suffering...
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Destructive pathway: COVID-19 infections in Africa are increasing at their fastest rate ever, with over 1 million confirmed cases recorded in the past month alone. The situation in at least 18 African countries is dire, as chronic shortages of vaccines leave millions exposed to the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant. With only 1.4% of the continent’s population fully vaccinated, daily confirmed COVID-19 deaths have more than doubled in the past month and are currently sitting just...
ONE’s supporters hail from all walks of life and across the globe, coming together for simply one mission: to ensure that everyone, regardless of where they live, can live a life of dignity and opportunity.
But for those who are just getting familiar with ONE and the work that we do, there are many ways to become a ONE supporter, ranging from taking a simple action to becoming an official ONE activist.
Here’s a closer look.
Sign our petitions
At ONE, we’re advocating...
Ahead of the Global Education Summit on July 28-29, hosted by the United Kingdom and Kenya in London, 82 civil society organizations and 14 Members of Parliament together with 6 artists and 43 individuals on the continent all from over 22 countries are asking African Heads of State to protect domestic public financing of education in their countries.
They are also urging them to endorse President Uhuru Kenyatta’s political statement on education. In it, he calls on them to prioritize,...
As COVID-19 spreads across low- and middle-income countries, billions of people are vulnerable to variants that could resist vaccines and put the world back at square one in tackling this pandemic.
So why isn’t the vaccine already available to everyone, everywhere? It comes down to supply and distribution. Rich countries have bought up the majority of the supply and are hoarding even what they don’t need. Meanwhile, low- and middle-income countries are struggling to roll out the doses they do...
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Fallout of COVID-19 pandemic causes spike in world hunger
Critical juncture: The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a dramatic worsening of world hunger – in 2020, just under 10% of the global population was undernourished, up from 8.4% in 2019. A UN report on the state of food security and nutrition in the world found that Africa saw the sharpest rise – at 21% of the population, Africa’s rate of undernourishment is more than double that of any other region...