The role of development finance institutions in supporting jobs during Covid-19 and beyond

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The Covid-19 pandemic has led to dire global economic consequences, including a significant loss of jobs across the world, worsening an already precarious situation for the world’s workers. Policy-makers face major challenges in protecting jobs. Although development finance institutions (DFIs) are actively supporting the creation of a large number of jobs and improving their quality, they could do more to ensure that recent progress towards economic development is not completely wiped out.   Read more

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Economic Policy during the COVID-19 Pandemic in South Sudan

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South Sudan is experiencing a distressing economic period. Government revenue has shrunk to historic lows and debt, both domestic and external, is mounting, marked by unsettled salary arrears and outstanding loans. A combination of the COVID-19 pandemic and the fallout of just-concluded civil strife is largely to blame. The pandemic and conflict have dramatically impeded oil sales, collection of non-oil revenues, and access to remittances and foreign aid. While income levels have dropped drastically, the…

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COVID-19: Impact on gender dynamics in the livelihoods sector within crisis-affected countries

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This report is an overview of the gendered impact of COVID-19 on the livelihoods, income and employment of women, men, girls, and boys in different countries affected by humanitarian crises. These countries were included in the August 2020 INFORM Severity Indexand have gender-disaggregated data and analyses available at national or subnational levels. The report can be used by staff of humanitarian, donor, and operational actors covering a global or crisis-specific portfolio to roll out gender-nuanced,…

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The impact of COVID-19 on the Horn of Africa

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The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) was first reported in the Horn of Africa region in early March 2020. At first, the number of cases seemed low compared to other regions, both on the continent and around the globe; however, these figures did increase steadily. Six months into the pandemic, it is encouraging to note the downward trend in the number of cases and deaths over the past few weeks. Thus far, more than 150,000 cases have…

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Africa needs sustainable digitalisation: The link between tech, inequality and the environment

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What the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted in Africa is that addressing digital inequality isn’t a technology problem. It’s a classic development challenge. It’s become abundantly clear that offline education, gender, income, public service delivery and spatial inequalities are simply mirrored online. Meanwhile, structural economic deficiencies are arguably amplified, as the economic and social value of being digitally networked increases exponentially.   Read more

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Sharing the burden for investment in the Covid-19 recovery

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The major question facing policy-makers at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Annual Meetings this week will be how to support economic recovery. Until the Covid-19 pandemic is contained, there will continue to be great uncertainty about the future health of the global economy. We can however be certain that as the world emerges from the crisis, economies will be smaller, firms will have gone bankrupt and governments will be more indebted and…

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Protecting land and natural resources tenure rights in the era of COVID-19 by heeding the lessons from the past

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The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe disruptions in food supply chains, undermining the ability of small food producers to access their land and the natural resources they need, thereby rendering them more vulnerable to encroachment on their tenure rights. This pandemic is requiring all stakeholders to evaluate and plan for how to protect the tenure rights of small food producers, particularly women, indigenous peoples (IPs) and other vulnerable groups, to avoid additional devastating effects that…

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Global Dialogue on Responding to the COVID-19 Pandemic and Economic Crisis: Building Back Better Aligned to the SDGs and the Paris Agreement

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The COVID-19 crisis provides an early glimpse of how the climate and biodiversity crises will affect the world. The impacts of the pandemic and economic lockdown have led to a stark decline in development gains, dispro-portionately affecting low-income and vulnerable households, communities and countries. Disparities have sharpened within countries and between developed and developing countries; the latter has experienced a “perfect storm” of unem-ployment, capital flight, loss of remittances, and increasing debt leading to the…

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The effects of COVID-19 on farmers and pastoralist communities

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This article argues that there is an important need for relevant stakeholders to adopt strategies aimed at reaching out to farming and pastoralist communities, if the fight for the mitigation and possible eradication of the COVID-19 pandemic is to have any meaningful effect.   Read more

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Crisis? What crisis? COVID-19 and the unexpected recovery of regional trade in East Africa

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At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, such was the scale of the economic disruption caused by lockdown measures that there was much talk of the collapse of global trade. In the midst of the lockdowns, in April, the World Trade Organization estimated that the decline would amount from anywhere between 13 and 32 percent. In a similar vein, UNCTAD was forecasting a 20 percent decline in global trade for 2020. However, recently released trade…

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