The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to have serious health and economic ramifications in Africa. This paper presents a technical position on demand and supply shocks associated with the COVID19 pandemic within the African context. We document the disruptions associated with containment measures implemented by various governments and their implications on labour mobility, import and export of food commodities, production and productivity of major staples and prices of food items. We also highlight policy needs focusing on containment of the pandemic while adapting African food production and distribution systems in response to the COVID-19 related shocks through concerted efforts to ensuring minimum disruptions on input supply, food production and marketing. Options for achieving this include agricultural sector stimulus programmes to support input access and value chain development, promotion and deployment of resilient technologies and digital agricultural solutions and providing social support to vulnerable communities.
In this webinar, the discussion focuses on the need to promote appropriate agricultural technologies and innovations that will help agribusinesses in Africa to be resilient in the wake of the COVID 19 pandemic.
Efficient agricultural value chains create competitiveness and accelerate industrialisation. Though they have the ability to advance economic partnership and competition, in most African countries, agricultural value chains remain underdeveloped and underexploited; moreover, they are hardly affected by political instability with...
The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying responses to mitigate this global health crisis have resulted in substantial disruptions to demand, production, distribution and labor in fisheries, aquaculture and food systems. These disruptions have severely impacted women processors and traders, who play...
The 2021 Global Report on Food Crises (GRFC 2021) highlights the remarkably high severity and numbers of people in Crisis or worse (IPC/CH Phase 3 or above) or equivalent in 55 countries/territories, driven by persistent conflict, pre-existing and COVID-19-related economic...
The government of Rwanda is promoting agricultural intensification focused on the production of a small number of targeted commodities as a central strategy to pursue the joint policy goals of economic growth, food security and livelihood development. The dominant approach...
