COVID-19 has caused massive shocks to both informal and formal economies across Africa. The World Bank’s Africa’s Pulse estimates that sub-Saharan Africa will see significant economic decline and plunge to as low as between -2.1% and -5.1% this year, due to the global COVID-19 crisis. The region is predicted to fall into its first recession for 25 years, reversing encouraging gains over the past two decades and the 2.4% in economic growth experienced last year alone. The continent is replete with small, medium and micro enterprises (SMMEs), with 85.8% of employment generated by the informal economy. Any successful efforts at economic revitalisation need to encompass the informal economy, as this sector makes up 55% of the economy in sub-Saharan Africa.
Women have been hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. Emerging evidence from the International Labour Organization (ILO) on the impact of COVID-19 suggests that women’s economic and productive lives will be affected disproportionately. They have less access to social protection and are the majority of single-parent households. And women in the informal economy are more often found in the most vulnerable situations, including as domestic workers and home-based workers, with limited access to social benefits. Their capacity to absorb economic shocks is very low.
As the economic toll of the crisis is felt, there is also an increased risk that female children will be forced into early marriage, and that the number of child marriages and early pregnancies may increase as girls are turned into commodities and a source of quick income for families.
Given the shocks to our economy and society at large, it is no surprise that our food systems will be dealt a significant blow, resulting in the dangerous exacerbation of food insecurity and nearly doubling the current levels of widespread hunger.
COVID-19 has disrupted supply chains and thrown the global food economy into disarray. As border closures, production stoppages and export restrictions limit supply, demand has surged, inflating prices and impacting the world’s poorest and most marginalised people – and Africa is no exception.
Women are central players in the food chain and are key to agricultural output on the continent. The agriculture sector is comprised of predominantly small-scale farming, with 50% of agricultural activity on the continent performed by women, who produce about 60–70% of the food in sub-Saharan Africa. There is no way Africa can face this food crisis without empowering rural women – in particular, rural women’s associations – in the response to COVID-19. A sector-wide overhaul is needed to disrupt the archaic approaches to food production and distribution as a whole.
Studies in several African countries reveal that the cost of malnutrition has a tremendous impact on a country’s economic growth. The knock-on effects of stunting on learning and on earning are quite debilitating when translated into economic terms. In previous years, for example, losses in gross domestic product (GDP) are estimated at 10% in Malawi, 11.5% in Rwanda and 16.5% in Ethiopia. No data is yet available on the specific impacts of COVID-19.
The lack of adequate nutrition is a key contributor to unacceptably high levels of both maternal and child mortality, as well as stunting – and therefore to the loss of human capital for the overall economic, social and political development of the continent. The health impacts of COVID-19 go far beyond the obvious impacts of the virus itself.
The fragility of African health systems is revealing itself, and women and children are most vulnerable to the lack of attention and adequate specialised services created by COVID-19. Female healthcare workers on the frontlines of the response are also at a greater risk of exposure to COVID-19 than male nurses and doctors.
Data available on the impact of COVID-19 on pregnant women in Africa is still limited, but the ramifications are likely to be significant. Drawing on the experience of the 2014–16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, a surge in child and maternal mortality was recorded during and after the outbreak, as women stayed away from medical facilities due to quarantine restrictions or misconceptions about virus transmission, and were forced into riskier home births.
Domestic violence has increased by upwards of 25% in some countries as a result of lockdowns – and victims have limited access to protective services during periods of quarantine. At least 15 million more cases of domestic violence around the world are predicted in 2020 for every three months that lockdowns are extended. Africa lacks specific data, but we should be concerned about an increase in gender-based violence (GBV), especially in countries where there are lockdowns and/or job losses are high.
The COVID-19 pandemic is also impacting negatively on the mental health of millions of women, who are working longer hours while juggling domestic duties such as childcare and home schooling, in addition to their professional obligations. Increased responsibilities at community and household levels are also resulting in increased physical and emotional stress.
A call to bold action: dismantling structural barriers and nurturing a culture of innovation
As decision-makers respond to the economic and health impacts of the pandemic, the following issues must be considered:
- All responses must take into account the gendered impacts of COVID-19 and be informed by the voices of women: Women and women’s organisations should be at the heart of the COVID-19 response in making decisions and designing health and socio-economic policies and plans. An intentional focus on the lives and futures of women and girls is an essential part of breaking structural practices that have been marginalising them. A system for collecting and disaggregating data needs to be put in place to ensure that the impact of the crisis on women informs the redesign of fragile and inequitable socio-economic and health systems into those that are fully inclusive and equitable.
- Government and development partners must implement gender lens economic policies and sharpen the capacity of women as engines of economic growth: Women- and female-owned businesses must be given direct access to credit, loans, tax and social security payment deferrals and exemptions, and preferential procurement. Structural barriers to access to finance, inheritance and land rights should be removed. And an enabling environment for information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure must be created and supported so that both rural and urban women are able to contribute to the digital economy and access online platforms to facilitate e-commerce and e-health/education/social exchanges.
- Invest in women along the local food chains to improve food security: Response resources should target female-owned SMMEs and rural women’s associations to increase productivity in both the formal and informal economies, and to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. Local food production must be boosted and the indignity of Africa importing its food confronted head-on. Food security is a fundamental investment in the building of healthy societies.
- Recognise and implement equal rights in the workplace: Provide equal pay for equal work.
- Narrow gender-based education gaps: ICT infrastructure for online learning must be built to bridge the inequality divide, and teachers must be retrained on virtual curricula so that every African child – especially the girl child – has access to quality education. Efforts to protect girls from child marriage and early pregnancy, and the provision of safety net resources for households to keep girls in school, are also needed.
- Strengthen health systems, gradually implement universal health coverage (UHC) and provide mental health services: These are needed as key strategies to the improvement of health systems and citizen well-being.
- Comprehensively strengthen the criminal justice system and increase efforts around survivor support and protection: Prevention and protection efforts must be deemed as essential services, and intentional mass media efforts are required to spur a fundamental change of mindset whereby GBV is rejected and deemed socially unacceptable and intolerable.
Women’s leadership at all levels is a fundamental requirement to fighting inequality successfully. COVID-19 presents us with unprecedented opportunities for the regeneration of the African socio- economic landscape and the movement towards a just, equitable and sustainably prosperous continent. Let us not dare squander this opportunity for rebirth.
Signed
Mrs Graça Machel
Founder, Graça Machel Trust and the Foundation for Community Development
Dr Ngozi Okonjo–Iweala
Board Chair, Gavi the Vaccine Alliance; AU Special Envoy to Mobilize International Economic Support for the Fight Against COVID-19; Former Finance Minister, Nigeria
Dr Vera Songwe
Under-secretary General of United Nations and Executive Secretary of Economic Commission for Africa
Ms Maria Ramos
Co-Chair of the UN Secretary-General’s Task Force on Digital Financing of the Sustainable Development Goals and former Chief Executive Officer of Absa Group Limited