AFRICA’S GOVERNANCE RESPONSE TO COVID-19 | PRELIMINARY REPORT 2020 CONTINENTAL AND SUB-REGIONAL RESPONSES 3.1 Innovative Responses essential to a well-coordinated regional, collective response that is necessary to complement and reinforce responses at national level. Africa offers examples of best practice that can be emulated by other regions in the world. When the WHO declared COVID-19 an international public health emergency on 30th January 2020, Africa, through its regional institutions - the AU and the REC - moved swiftly to take strong action to stop the spread of the virus on the continent. They adopted a united, coordinated approach based on the values of Pan-Africanism and solidarity. a. Joint Strategy First is the “Africa Joint Continental Strategy for COVID-19 Outbreak” adopted by African health ministers in February 2020. The Joint strategy has two goals namely: i) prevent severe illness and death from COVID-19 infection in Member States; ii) minimize social disruption and economic consequences of COVID-19 outbreaks. To achieve these goals the strategy seeks to coordinate efforts of member states, AU agencies, the WHO, and other partners to ensure synergy and to minimize duplication and to promote evidence-based public health practice for surveillance, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and control of COVID-19. It is the contention of this report that a regional response is critical in the fight against COVID-19, and that this response should be based on international solidarity and Pan Africanism. Because of the nature of its epidemiology, this virus cannot be effectively and successfully fought and contained through an inward-looking, national strategy, with countries acting as isolated individual entities, each working on its own and standing alone. In the face of COVID-19, exclusive and narrow nationalism has limitations as a strategy. For their response to succeed, countries have to deploy their national measures in coordination and concert with their neighbours and other actors in the international community. This virus respects no physical boundary and knows no nationality. Nationalism is undeniably important, but it can take a country only so far. Therefore, Africa’s continental response should be appreciated, commended and encouraged. The AU response to the corona outbreak is managed by the Africa CDC through two major operational units: Africa Task Force for Coronavirus (AFTCOR) and Africa CDC’s Incident Management System. This level of organisation and coordination is indeed remarkable, considering that Africa CDC has only been launched three years ago Since then, the AU and the Africa CDC have been an important convening power of coordination and joint standard setting for AU member states. In addition to the emergency meeting of health ministers, African ministers of finance held a virtual meeting in March to discuss the likely fiscal consequences and strategies to tackle them. Weekly webinars are organised, bringing together clinicians from across the continent to exchange information and experiences. This is very useful, given the fact that several countries across Africa have wide The regional response to COVID-19 is a dimension of global governance. Regional organisations can develop and deploy mechanisms and instruments to guide, facilitate and support the efforts of their member states. Regional governance tools and meetings convened by these regional bodies are 48