아프리카ㆍ중동

The COVID-19 pandemic poses important risks for people’s health and economic wellbeing. While the full socio-economic consequences remain uncertain, the pandemic’s impact on the labour market has become an issue of global concern. Especially low-income earners with jobs in precarious, informal sectors of the economy, without unemployment insurance, limited access to healthcare, and no back-up savings, are most at risk. Already disadvantaged groups will suffer disproportionately from the adverse effects of the pandemic.

Policy makers in the Global South have responded with a range of measures, varying from cash transfers for the poor to loans for small enterprise. In this note, we summarize some of the impacts of COVID-19 on employment and livelihoods, and detail the policy responses of developing countries, drawing from the sub-Saharan African experience. We first provide an overview of the progress of the pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), and the mitigation and suppression measures taken by SSA governments. We then discuss what we know so far on the employment effect of the pandemic in SSA. Finally, we discuss policy responses to the pandemic, focusing on the experience of one SSA country—Ghana.