Paper short abstract:

Analyzing the effects of a Covid bond on families in Senegal, I show how calls for urgency in the face of "crisis" are bound up with economic moralities that obfuscate the ways “responsible” and “sustainable” investments can exacerbate inequalities, jeopardizing families’ ability cope with crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Two weeks after the WHO declared Covid-19 a global pandemic, the African Development Bank issued a Covid-themed social bond to help African nations manage the crisis. By June, representatives at the West African Central Bank declared the region to have entered a phase of economic recovery, thanks to the quick response by organizations like the AfDB. In Senegalese families, however, the economic effects of the pandemic drag on. After two years, household revenues have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, meanwhile expenses have increased, due to the rising cost of necessities and the strain of providing for relatives who slipped into poverty.

This paper analyzes the effects of this Covid bond on families in Dakar, considering the consequences of the financialization of crisis relief on bonds’ purported beneficiaries. I analyze the economic moralities that motivated the issuance of Covid bonds and justified their inclusion in portfolios of “responsible” or “sustainable” assets, comparing these ethical discourses to moral narratives in Senegalese households that critiqued the insufficiency and corruption they saw as surrounding relief efforts. Through Covid bonds, financial professionals’ efforts to predict and manage crisis became entangled with families’ struggles to do the same. Families and financiers grapple with the crisis on divergent time scales, each underpinned by its own moral-economic presuppositions regarding how resources ought to be redistributed. I argue that calls for urgency in the face of crisis are bound up with economic moralities that obfuscate how “responsible” investments can reinforce inequalities and jeopardize families’ ability cope with crisis.