Control, Extract, Legitimate: COVID-19 and Digital Techno-opportunism across Africa.

Across Africa, the deployment of digital solutions such as track and trace apps and vaccine passports to tackle COVID-19 largely failed in their public health objectives. Yet, in the process, these material interventions revealed and unleashed new potentialities of governance throughout the continent. This article examines these developments and their significance through historical and theoretical lenses.

Media and Digital Technologies for Mixed Methods Research in Public Health Emergencies Such as COVID-19: Lessons Learned From Using Interactive Radio-SMS for Social Research in Somalia.

Radio shows which invite audience participation via short message service (SMS)-interactive radio-SMS-can be designed as a mixed methods approach for applied social research during COVID-19 and other crises in low and middle income countries. In the aftermath of a cholera outbreak in Somalia, we illustrate how this method provides social insights that would have been missed if a purely qualitative or quantitative approach were used. We then examine the strengths and limitations associated with interactive radio-SMS through an evaluation using a multimethod comparison.

Lockdowns, lives and livelihoods: the impact of COVID-19 and public health responses to conflict affected populations - a remote qualitative study in Baidoa and Mogadishu, Somalia.

Background: Authorities in Somalia responded with drastic measures after the first confirmed COVID-19 case in mid-March 2020, closing borders, schools, limiting travel and prohibiting most group functions. However, the impact of the pandemic in Somalia thereafter remained unclear. This study employs a novel remote qualitative research method in a conflict-affected setting to look at how some of the most at-risk internally displaced and host populations were impacted by COVID-19, what determined their responses, and how this affected their health and socio-economic vulnerability.