Damilola Oduola

The world recently witnessed an outbreak of a disease identified as SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 which has resulted in a pandemic. Consequently, many political leaders have taken drastic measures such as the restriction of citizens’ personal and civil liberties to counter the pandemic. These restrictions pose serious challenges to democracy as elections and citizens’ political participation have been negatively affected in a number of countries. Although the recent development of vaccines and decline in infection rates may suggest an end in sight, yet, democracy may not remain the same after COVID-19. Hence, in this paper, I explore the prospects and limitations of digital democracy as a tool for safeguarding democratic rights and public safety simultaneously. I further argue that since democracy may not remain the same after COVID-19, there is the need for democratic states to leverage on digital technologies to enhance democratic participation in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The health of a particular population cannot be maintained or enhanced without the active participation of health care workers. This is because health care workers (doctors, nurses, midwives, pharmacists, etc.) are critical individuals in ensuring health, as they determine the quality, equity and sustainability of health care services that can be available to a population. In this paper, I argue that Africa, in recent times, has continued to witness enormous shortages of health-care workers as a result of “medical braindrain”. I draw from Michael Blake’s liberal orthodoxy doctrine to argue that although some African countries have adopted restrictive migration policies to combat medical brain drain, yet, restrictive migration is not an effective approach because it not only limits individual’s liberty but also places the totality of health burdens onhealth workers at the neglect of other determinants of health. Hence, I argue that to successfully combat medical brain drain, African countries need to address the underlying factors that are responsible for bad health outcomes in Africa and also adopt viable health and public policy approaches that are considerate of individual liberty and at the same time sympathetic to the “plight” of developing African countries.