In this article, the author argues that this public health emergency could be dwarfed by a deep crisis, which is a story about constitutional politics, which begins with elections, but is really about how African governments derive their legitimacy and what they do with power.
He argues that the combination of a pandemic and emergencies is lethal to both campaigning and competitive politics and that in some countries, these measures threaten to run out the clock on the tenure of government with no clear means to renew or replace them. This could create a gap conducive to instability.