Ignorance and Global Health. Strategies and actors of the Covid-19 response in so-called ‘developing’ countries

The Covid-19 pandemic provides a novel opportunity to study the production of knowledge in the face of an ‘unknown but knowable’ global disease, particularly in the settings favored by ‘global health’ interventions: the so-called developing countries. This article focuses on the responses of fifteen African and Asian countries (with particular attention to India and the DRC). These responses fall into three broad categories, which in its own way produces ignorance: denial of the existence of the virus, replication of foreign or historical measures, and ‘recycling’ of local experiences. We also document the specific actors and tools that contribute to the production of ignorance about Covid-19, notably the construction and mobilisation of health data and the ‘Covid-19 taskforces’, the emergency groups that constitute the forum for disseminating knowledge and/or producing ignorance about the pandemic.