Although COVID-19 is a health issue, the crisis is far more than a health crisis. It is a social and cultural one that is currently poorly understood and minimally represented in the context of the Global South. The project is an urgent response to a rapidly evolving global pandemic whereby the North is leading -- by example and economic pressure -- a response to an emergency affecting communities all over the world. The “Whose Crisis?” project aims to co-curate representations and develop understandings of the social and cultural crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and expose unseen and misunderstood aspects of this time. The project will provide critical insights and inform and contribute to more equitable global responses including those related to health, policy, economics, and education.

How do workers design their future when traditional career pathways are threatened by unstable environments? More importantly, how do women approach new literacies (be they digital and non-digital) when natural disasters and human-induced social and political instabilities threaten their work-related journeys?

In recent years, both India and Scotland have made an extensive investment in skill training and education to reduce the unemployment of marginalised youth and enabling their social and occupational mobility (ILO, 2011, 2016).

Poverty in and unsustainability of urban areas in the Global South has been a major challenge to researchers and policy makers for a very long time. International and national urban policies still tend to operate at a very general level with policy makers having limited knowledge about the unequal distribution of opportunities, benefits, and harm within the urban population.