Rationale
The first confirmed case of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in
Africa and sub-Saharan Africa were respectively announced on the
February 14 and 27, 2020 in Egypt and Nigeria [1,2]. This was
correspondingly two weeks after (January 30, 2020) and one month before
(March 11, 2020) the categorization of the outbreak as a Public Health
Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC) and as a pandemic [3].
According to the Africa branch of the Centre for Disease Control (Africa
CDC), on August 1st 2021, they were overall 170,187
COVID-19 related death, the most impacted region being the southern one
[4]. Aside its well-recognized
and highlighted human and economic consequences, this pandemic also
affected the education sector, especially at the university level
[5,6].
In order to reduce the spread of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
Coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2), numerous governments, under the
recommendations of national and international health institutions, have
had to reorganize university programs [6,7]. These reorganizations
notably involved the closure of universities (especially during lockdown
periods), the suspension of face-to-face classes with or without the
establishment of distance learning, and this also in Africa [6,8,9].
The reshaping of higher education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic
had negative corollaries on universities students’ wellbeing not only in
terms of academic performances[5,10,11], but also regarding the
psychological sphere [12–14]. Indeed, published studies reported
high frequencies of mental health issues such as depression, anxiety and
stress among universities’ students during the current COVID-19 pandemic
[14–16]. This not only due to the remodelling of university
education negatively influencing their learning processes, but also as a
consequence of stressors such as social distancing, loneliness, fear of
infection regarding themselves or relatives, and the uncertainty of
future [12,13,16]. Otherwise, all the currently existing studies
summarizing data on this issue pertain to European, American or Asian
settings [16–18].
Considering the unstable evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide,
its reported impact on universities students’ well-being amid other
settings, and the lack of papers summarizing such information for
Africa, we carried out this review.