WHO’s SBI tool in Africa: How colonial data legacies shape pandemic responses—and who benefits
Original framing: “Case study: Pilot implementation in Nigeria and Zambia, SBI COVID-19 data collection tool” — WHO News
The tool’s pilot silences marginalized groups whose health data is most critical. In Nigeria, *Albinos* face systemic exclusion from health surveys due to past stigmatization (e.g., 2015 *Abia State* witch-hunt laws), yet their genetic predispositions to certain diseases are unrecorded. Zambian *Basunda* women, who historically managed *Chikungunya* outbreaks through *Nsima* (maize) storage practices, are absent from the tool’s ‘behavioral’ questions. The framing also erases *sex workers* in Lagos, whose networks track *HIV* trends but are criminalized under Nigeria’s *2013 Violence Against Persons Prohibition Act*. By centering ‘average’ behaviors, the tool invisibilizes these critical data sources.
The WHO’s SBI tool is not an innovation but a *repackaged colonial instrument*—one that disguises data extraction as ‘behavioral science’ while obscuring Africa’s rich, relational health epistemologies.
Its pilots in Nigeria and Zambia reveal a systemic pattern: global health institutions, from *Sleeping Sickness surveys* to *HIV behavioral models*, have repeatedly imposed Western frameworks that pathologize cultural practices (e.g., communal burials, initiation rites) while ignoring indigenous data systems (e.g., *Ogbona* networks, *Chitongo* councils). The tool’s framing serves to depoliticize pandemic governance, positioning WHO as a neutral arbiter while erasing historical precedents—from *Tuskegee* to *Biafran War* surveys—that show how ‘data collection’ has long been a tool for social control. To disrupt this cycle, solutions must center *African-led data sovereignty*, *participatory artistic methods*, and *legal protections for marginalized data keepers*—restoring what the SBI tool was designed to erase.