Slums Should No Longer Be Acceptable In Today's Africa

The COVID-19 global pandemic has demonstrated clearly, to humankind, that viruses have the potential to destroy businesses, and wipe out vital sectors of the economies of nation-states, in all the seven continents of our biosphere.

And, since slums will remain dangerous hotspots harbouring viruses, and sundry-killer-pathogens, for as long as they are allowed to exist, wise African leaders must, perforce, be wary of them, and find creative ways of empowering slum-dwellers to move into planned new green cities.

Furthermore, if they are wise, the leaderships of even the poorest nations in the continent, ought always to come to the conclusion that in the longterm, for common- good reasons, it will be far more cost-effective, to give slum-dwellers direct-bailout-cash (of say GHC250,000, to each individual slum-dweller above the age of 16, in urban slums across Ghana, for example), to purchase homes in new, well-planned and well-built green cities.

The abandoned slums can then be razed down, and new green cities built on the selfsame sites, to replace them and provide modern purpose-built accommodation for that particular nation's younger generations.

In other words, urban slums are, and will remain, latent-and-active-disease-infection-hotspots that are major public health risks, which, in light of the devastating economic-impacts, of the COVID-19 global pandemic, are totally unacceptable in today's Africa, because the viruses and other pathogens they harbour, might have the potential to wipe out the populations of entire regions, of nations in the continent. Simply put, because of the threat they pose to public health, slums should no longer be acceptable in today's Africa. Cool.