ABSTRACT
On 7 January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported a new unknown pneumonia outbreak in China. Over the following weeks, COVID-19 spread to an endemic situation mainly concentrated in the Hubei province, with few isolated cases outside China. The WHO hesitated until 11 March to use the term pandemic, although cases of COVID-19 were reported already in Europe at that time. Sub-Saharan Africa only reported its first cases in mid-February, with some travellers from or returning mainly from Italy, but also Austria, Germany and France. It was only then that the media in South Africa started to report extensively about the COVID-19 outbreak. Various governmental ministries in South Africa or Lesotho informed their populations about COVID-19 and their regulations to control the outbreak of the disease. Although most of the information was in English, a substantial amount of audio and video files were available in several African Languages in South Africa, plus many governmental announcements in Sesotho in Lesotho. Governments and healthcare professionals were aware of the risks of fake news being spread, but they tried to be as transparent as possible with the public. This paper analyses how different countries like Lesotho and South Africa broadcasted COVID-19 in media, official government websites and social media platforms. Cognizance of language usage in media will be looked at as most African countries are multilingual and such life-threatening topics and far-reaching political interventions in all spheres of life should be communicated as inclusively and transparent as possible. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.
ABSTRACT
After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in China in January 2020 and its global spread during February and March, many governments took far-reaching measures to control it in their countries. One of the first measures to reduce the outbreak of COVID-19 was banning group gatherings of over 500 and later 50 people. Surprisingly many countries also decided very fast to close all their educational institutions for some weeks or months as one of the early provisions. UNESCO reported that more than one billion children globally are currently out of school, which is 80% of all enrolled pupils. Many universities and schools still try to use online learning tools to enable some kind of learning and teaching. Countries like Ukraine broadcast some learning materials through TV, while others like South Africa designated new specific TV channels entirely for educational purposes to reach more children. Two questions, especially for countries of the Global South, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa, are: how vulnerable and rural or non-dominant language children are affected by school closures and what languages are being used for online or TV materials to reach children in Sub-Saharan African countries? The possibility is high that the already existing educational gap between the better-off and the disadvantaged communities globally and within each country further spreads. This paper analyses some online materials used for pupils as well as TV and social media platforms in selected countries of Southern and Eastern Africa. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.