Coronavirus, Imagined Location, and Disenchanted Home in Africa

Abstract

This essay, which is based on secondary sources and online research, examines the home dilemma experienced by many diasporic African elites during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. It argues that despite the pervasive nationalist discourse on homeland and the official celebration of national home, many postcolonial African elites actually view their home nations as a “ second chez soi” (second choice home), from which they quickly distance themselves during times of political unrest and health emergencies. This oscillation between cosmopolitanism and nationalism partly explains why many of the so-called Afropolitans started to experience anxiety after the global health pandemic forced them to lead sedentary lifestyles akin to those of their less fortunate peers. Furthermore, the essay sees the COVID-19 pandemic as a leveling and game-changing force that has significantly altered the home life and mindset of the “rooted cosmopolitan” African elites. Many of them are now neo-localists or maisonneurs (stay-at-home people) who strive to create a new sense of community in their formerly unloved African homeland.