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Paper short abstract:

As Africa increasingly faces the ‘fallout of Western industrial orders’, cancer is becoming an oft ignored yet burgeoning health problem. This paper examines this problem through the lens of data paucity on the continent and the agential actions of care through data collection of registrars.

Paper long abstract:

The WHO has warned that Africa is facing a ‘cancer epidemic’. Many people on the ground believe that there is an increase in cancer incidence due to life-style changes and increased environmental and industrial pollutants, essentially in the effects of ‘Western industrial fallout’.

Much of the continent, however, has suffered under a decade’s long paucity of cancer data – therefore knowing, or saying, much about cancer on the continent is fraught with challenges, resulting in statistical inequality and an exclusion of Africa's cancer burdens in global discourses, as well as inadequate responses from local governments. As a result, African bodies that find themselves afflicted by cancer are subjected to very late diagnosis, long distances to access treatment or an inability to afford it, lack of treatment options, and a lack of research on them as cancer bearing bodies.

Focusing on the work being done by cancer registries in east and southern Africa, the first part of the paper argues that the paucity of cancer data has negatively affected health possibilities around cancer. The second part of the paper examines how cancer registrars dedicate themselves to collecting data precisely as an act of both agency and care. Through this, the paper shows the work actors on the ground are doing to change the narratives around African cancer incidences, mobilising data not only to create structures of care, but also to actively face the growing challenge this disease poses for the continent.