This Corona pandemic has shifted the nature of terror in the horn of Africa through stretching state resources, redeployment of security infrastructure, policy focus and movement of both people and cash. The impact of these shifts will in the coming months reorient the capability of both the state and the terror networks to operate optimally and precipitate creation of new networks and the death of some of the older networks as narrated by Joe Kobuthi and Ngala Chome.

Knowledge and education are never neutral. What we understand, how we understand it and the process leading to the validation of that knowledge is filtered through prisms and biases some of which we never give much thought to. Given that the state will keep children stuck at home till 2021, we'll need to advocate for a better philosophy of knowledge, even as we advocate for more schooling opportunities outside of school; in art centres, museums, libraries, grandma stories and festivals. We need an education that reflects the country that we desire, as narrated by Dr Wandia Njoya and Prof. Lewis Gordon.

The Kenyan state is trying to recreate the 1990s and send us back into the days of the dreaded special branch as it loses grip of the Kenyan society through its incompetence, dysfunction and unimaginable corruption. Public spirited citizens, as we witnessed during the Saba saba rallies, find themselves accosted by a well-oiled infrastructure of violence which is the last resort for a regime that has lost its legitimacy, willpower and capacity to lead, as narrated by Kiama Mutemi.

The 2020 COVID scare has accelerated certain forces within the local and global societies and put into question age-old beliefs including the idea of the infallibility of the market. The state, we were told, is corrupt, inefficient and stuck. But as Prof. Tiyambe Zeleza explains, the magnitude of the pandemic is demanding from us massive logistical, infrastructural, and systemic responses which only the state machinery is large and rich enough to pull off.

The COVID-19 has upset the basic economic relationship that existed between different sectors in the wider economy. As Dr Mariam Omollo and Dr Charles Warria explain, this heightens the need for new data on the evolving relationships between known variables and market indicators, as moderated by Wanjiru Gikonyo.

The modern Africa city and state with their colonial origins are finding it harder to evolve in way that allow them to meet the needs of their urban populace. Gathara says this is the best time to question their structural limitations and to reform them in ways that ensure continuity of human organization.

Lockdowns may have made sense in the initial civilizational panic but their efficacy, and sustainability are now being put into question. Now that the pandemic evolves its time for regimes to take into account the unique aspects of their respective nations and regions.

The year 2020 is evolving at a pace that overwhelms the creative synergies of the artists, and the creatives. But what opportunities, growth areas and anxieties define this age artistically.

Dr. Chambi Chachage: Pandemics evolve from being a clinical health issue, to public health issue before becoming a public order issue. At that point urban anthropology, city dynamics, and historical accidents become amplified as different players in the urban space try to adjust to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Alex Awiti: We’re living in the new dispensation in which COVID-19 will become part and parcel of our clinical and public health realities. How then do we embrace the plus COVID world and what adjustments will it require of us?