Epidemics and intra-communal contestations: Ekeh, ‘les Guinéens’ and Ebola in West Africa

Abstract

As the Ebola epidemic ravaged the Mano River Basin in 2014, there was concern in Senegal that the resident Peul community of Guinean origins will cause the spread of the disease to Senegal. These fears went unrealized as the Peul migrants embraced many of the epidemic control and prevention measures, which often distanced them from primordial publics in Guinea. While partly motivated by concern over the dangers of Ebola, Peul migrants embraced these measures also because the epidemic and measures advocated to curb it allowed them to assert greater autonomy in their often-fractious relations with primordial publics in their places of origin in Guinea. Their embrace of these measures suggests a rethink of the emphasis on intercommunal strife, intra-communal conviviality and trenchant state-society chasms, which pervades much work on the political economy of postcolonial Africa and which draws significant inspiration from the work of Peter Ekeh.