Youth play role to help Africa beat pandemic

Young people are increasingly stepping up to help combat the spread of the coronavirus in Africa with enterprising initiatives.

Their contributions are making a difference as the World Health Organization predicts that Africa could become the continent hit hardest by COVID-19.

As of Monday afternoon, 42,626 cases had been reported across Africa, the WHO said.

South Africa, the worst-affected country in the continent, saw the number of cases top 10,000 by Sunday, according to health authorities.

In Ghana, President Nana Akufo-Addo said in a broadcast late on Sunday that a worker at a fish-processing factory in the Atlantic coastal city of Tema had infected 533 colleagues with the novel coronavirus.

Ghana had reported 4,700 confirmed cases as of Sunday night, the most infections in West Africa.

Greenway International Foundation, a youth-driven environmental protection organization from Ghana, has partnered with the Nigeria-based World Youth Summit and the United Nations Youth Association to distribute healthcare supplies to vulnerable communities.

Michael Olusanya, the organization's founder and director, said it has been distributing sanitizers, liquid soap and face masks, as well as educating the community on how to reduce the spread of the virus.

Olusanya said the group had so far handed out 3,000 containers of home-made liquid soap in 60-centiliters portions, 2,700 hand sanitizers in 100-milliliter packaging, 1,300 face masks, and 320 buckets in Ghana and Nigeria.

Kenya's Usalama Technology, a mobile platform founded by James Chege, is helping to disseminate information about the risks posed by the coronavirus.

The platform also links users to nearby emergency services and helps potentially infected people access healthcare services. The application uses GPS to offer locations near users.

Chege said his company has about 14,500 users, with the site logging about 21,000 lifetime downloads. Locations of medical facilities authorized by the government to offer firstline COVID-19 responses are shown on a map, as well as isolation facilities provided by the government.

"We do not have exact numbers of COVID-19 infected users but we estimate that it may be up to 5 percent of our users," he said.

Chen Yingqun in Beijing and agencies contributed to this story.