Keeping Food and Agricultural Systems Alive: Analyses and Solutions in Response to COVID-19

INTRODUCTION

The COVID-19 pandemic is a public health crisis, but there are considerable risks that it can turn into a food crisis unless governments take urgent actions to protect the most vulnerable, and mitigate the pandemic’s impacts on agriculture and food systems. Prior to the pandemic, there were serious concerns about the food security situation in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, 239 million people went to bed hungry, and 65 million people suffered from acute food insecurity (FAO, ECA and AUC, 2020). Now the continent faces a health crisis that is adversely affecting a stubborn food security and nutrition situation, particularly for vulnerable populations, such as smallholder farmers, livestock keepers, artisanal fisherfolk, persons whose livelihoods depend on the informal economy, and migrants.

COVID-19 has not only exacerbated an already fragile food security context in sub-Saharan Africa, where chronic foodcrises and high levels of foodinsecurity exist, but has added another complex layerto other food security threats, such as climate change, crop shortages, conflict and economic slowdowns and downturns.

It is also aggravating other threats to food chains affecting food security, including fall armyworm and various locusts (desert, red, African migratory. For example, the ongoing crisis with desert locust outbreaks that affected several East African countries, resulting in USD 8.5 billion in crop and livestock losses, reduced harvests and limited availability of food in informal and formal markets.

Agriculture is one of the most important economic sectors in Africa, accounting for 23 percent of the continent’s GDP. With over 60 percent of the African population living in rural areas and dependent on agrifood systems, COVID-19 poses a severe risk not only to livelihoods that dependent on food supply chains and access to local, regional and international markets, but also to household food and nutrition of vulnerable populations. Left unchecked, the vulnerability of large number of households facing shocks from multiple crises at the same time may very well lead to unprecedented increases in the numbers of hungry and vulnerable people in Africa. Refugees, internally displaced people, and people living in conflict-affected and fragile areas are especially at risk.

In Africa, there are heightened concerns over the impact of COVID-19 on food systems because:

• Many countries on the continent are import-dependent, especially for food and agricultural inputs.
At the same time, these countries exports are skewed toward agricultural products (e.g. cacao, coffee, tobacco). The dependence on limited agricultural exports increases the risk of several countries’ GDP to commodity price shocks or risks of contractions in global demand. On the other hand, when such countries’ trade partners impose export restrictions, the countries lose access to necessary commodities. (Fortunately, few export restrictions were imposed at the time of the authoring of this document.)

• While a vibrant private sector exists, most African economies are characterized and dominated by a large informal sector, comprising up to 70 percent of economies.

• Limited safety net programmes and social protection systems cover only about 10 percent of the African population. COVID-19 containment measures exposed the inadequacies of existing social protection and safety net programmes across the continent.

• Loss of income-earning opportunities and global economic slowdown are predicted to drive unprecedented recession in the region. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) forecasts contraction of about 2 percent in Africa’s GDP growth in a best-case scenario.