Aishu Balaji is a Coordinator at Regions Refocus and part of the Post-Colonialisms Today secretariat.
The COVID-19 Global Access (COVAX) initiative is being touted as a key step toward vaccine equality. But many of COVAX’s donors and architects are deeply enmeshed in the global intellectual property regime at the heart of vaccine apartheid.
While flawed, African governments in the early post-independence years projected a vision beyond neocolonialism and subordination to the Global North. Neoliberalism has deepened the continent’s subjugation — and dressed it up as non-ideological.