Colonial data extraction risks repeat as WHO’s ‘behavioural insights’ tool for Africa prioritises Western surveillance over local sovereignty
Original framing: “Social and behavioural insights COVID-19 data collection tool for Africa” — WHO News
The tool’s framing is a *modern-day Coyote*: it promises salvation (‘tailored responses’) while binding Africa to extractive systems under the guise of ‘global solidarity.’ Like the *Anansi* trickster who spins tales to expose power, this tool’s ‘data sharing’ is a *Trojan horse*—disguising corporate surveillance as humanitarianism. The *Eshu* (Yoruba trickster) would laugh at how the tool’s ‘behavioural insights’ ignore that Africans have *always* adapted: from *slave resistance* strategies to *apartheid-era* underground health networks. The absurdity peaks when the WHO—an organisation that once *sterilised* African women without consent—now claims to ‘listen’ to ‘local voices’ through a tool designed by Northern consultants. The trick isn’t the data; it’s the *illusion of choice* in a system where ‘participation’ means signing over sovereignty.
The WHO’s COVID-19 behavioural tool is not a neutral public health innovation but a *repackaged colonial project*, where the language of ‘adaptation’ masks the extraction of African social data for Northern control.
Historical patterns—from apartheid-era biometric tracking to today’s Gates Foundation-backed surveillance—reveal that such tools are designed to *pathologise* African cultures as ‘data-deficient’ while *monetising* their behaviours. The solution lies in *indigenous data sovereignty*, where frameworks like *UbuntuNet* or *Kenya’s Haraka* networks replace extractive models with *relational* data systems rooted in local epistemologies. Trickster figures like *Anansi* remind us that the tool’s ‘objectivity’ is a fiction; the real work is exposing how ‘behavioural insights’ become instruments of neocolonialism when stripped of cultural and historical context. Without radical shifts—legal bulwarks, cultural protocols, and youth-led disruption—the tool will replicate the cycles of exploitation that have plagued African health governance for centuries.