Ridwan Balogun   The emergence of the corona virus with its attendant destruction, loss and setbacks, shocked the entire world, including Nigerians from all parts of the country. Nigeria joined the rest of the world in their attempts to deal with the pandemic after the country recorded its first case with the entry of an infected…

José Claudio de Souza Alves (UFRRJ), Carly Machado (UFRRJ), Adriano de Araujo (Fórum Grita Baixada), Giulia Escuri (UFRRJ).   It was Ash Wednesday in 2020, when the news of the first confirmed case of Covid-19 in Brazil was broadcast on television. The date could not have been more symbolic: the announcement was made on the…

  Martín de Gregorio (Utrecht University)   On Friday October 18, 2019, the government closed the entire network of Santiago metro stations. Secondary school students had been protesting for a week against the increase in subway fares, jumping the turnstiles and calling to evade payment. The movement was gaining more and more support from the…

    Tirso H. Sitoe and Nikkie Wiegink*   My son, I have nothing to eat. We are told at some point to stay home. Here, I’m at home and doing my small business to pay the bills here at my house. My children need to eat. We all need to eat. They who say…

  Edson Miagusko (UFFRJ) and Jonathan W.B. Da Motta (UNICAMP)   Like elsewhere in the world, Brazil remains under the coronavirus pandemic. With 2.7% of the world’s population, the country accounts for 10% of all COVID-19 deaths. The number of cases is currently on the rise, surpassing the period in the first half of 2020…

Karla M. López   They hardly go there … even the police are afraid of what they hear in the neighborhood (neighbor zone 7). Lack of police is common in neighborhoods and poor settlements of Guatemala City. According to Ana, a resident of the area, the police hardly enters her neighborhood, because there are youth groups called “maras” that…

  Jana Ambré   Since February and March 2020, the lives and education of youth across the globe have been widely impacted by the emergence of the COVID pandemic. The policy responses by governments in the education sector have varied significantly and served to elicit critique from corresponding populations, along with varying degrees of community-led…

Andy Fuller  Some twelve plus months into the Covid 19 Era, by numerous reckonings, Australia can be regarded as having done well. The number of cases is incredibly low: Australia, with a population of 25million has only 30,000 cases and only some 800 deaths. The Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think tank, places the nation eighth…

This is a guest blog by Mercy Gitonga & Joost Fontein (University of Johannesburg)   When, in late October 2020, we asked a ‘village elder’ in Mathare, one of Nairobi’s many ‘slums’, what effects Covid-19 was having in the area, he responded by saying ‘getting sick around here is a normal thing … but now if…

Murtala Ibrahim   Jos is one of the largest cities in central Nigeria and serves as capital of Plateau State. The emergence of coronavirus as a national health crisis caused both the federal and state governments to enact social distancing regulations. Similar to other states in Nigeria, on the 9th of April this year, the…