Health as a Security Issue : An African Perspective

Health security, as an integral component of human security, is often problematic when African governments address communicable and non-communicable diseases which present as security issues. This article questions how a security issue is defined and advances a qualitative expression for describing a security issue in terms of a threat to a referent object, leading to a conclusion regarding politicisation or securitisation as a response. The qualitative expression is thereupon applied to non-communicable and communicable diseases in Africa in order to formulate options for a government's response supported by agency. The conclusion and recommendations concerning Africa's health and security issues and the politicisation or securitisation thereof are twofold. Firstly, governments must use their agency to ensure they do not abdicate their responsibility by keeping non-communicable diseases, such as malaria, and enduring communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, within the politicised domain. Secondly, governments must use their agency to securitise health issues to contain and arrest as swiftly as possible, certain communicable diseases, such as Ebola, that spread rapidly. In this way inchoate solutions that lead to illinformed and mistimed government interventions will be minimized.