I really like the term, “care infrastructure”, that is part of the discussions about a huge US infrastructure plan. That is because it instantly reminds me of the wide-ranging discussions that have taken place in Africa over the years as women stepped up to fill the holes in their society.

I read so many stories over the years, of women who took in their orphaned grandchildren and women who looked after the people suffering from HIV/AIDS in their communities. Those women were helping to build something bigger than themselves – a ‘care’ infrastructure..

And they began to develop a vocabulary to describe it. That is not as easy as describing our physical infrastructure – sewage pipes or water pipes or water treatment plants or dams. We have tended to think of ‘care’ in terms of buildings – day care centres and seniors homes, for example. But I suspect the pandemic has shown us it is much more than that.