Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is struggling with unemployment and food insecurity, which became severe with the spread of COVID-19 pandemic and its containment measures. This paper aimed to present a systematic review of food insecurity and unemployment crisis in sub-Saharan Africa under COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, 1026 papers were retrieved from different sources, and 53 papers were included for the synthesis after screening and selection of retrieved papers. The review paper revealed that household livelihoods were disrupted, which deepened the crisis in the region. Unemployment was severe particularly in times of lockdowns and working hours loss in 2020 were above 10% in Eritrea, Cape Verde, and Uganda. COVID-19 lockdown measures caused a 10.6% fall in Ethiopia’s agri‐food system, about 19.8% agri-food system GDP loss in Ghana, a 6–15% increase in food insecurity of Nigeria, and 10% of Kenyan farmers faced food shortage. Moreover, Kenya and Uganda’s food insecurity raised by 38% and 44%, respectively, and a 44% drop in per adult equivalent food expenditure of rural Uganda. The review paper pointed out that social protection measures, regional cooperation, a strong financial sector, and domestic borrowing to mitigate the socio-economic effect of COVID-19 and rapid economic recovery.

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