# **1. Introduction**

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to test global food and social protection systems at an unprecedented scale. Initially starting as a global health crisis, the pandemic has evolved into a major economic crisis, causing disruptions to global economic systems, livelihoods and health. Several waves of the pandemic have prolonged the suffering of households by delaying economic recovery. Developing countries with poor public health infrastructure, limited social protection systems, high levels of food insecurity and poverty rates were projected to be disproportionally affected. The impacts of the pandemic were expected to be highest in African countries, which host about 70 percent of the world’s poor. Early projections were particularly pessimistic about the potential impact of the pandemic on poverty, both globally and for Africa (e.g., Laborde et al., 2020; Sumner et al., 2020; Mahler et al., 2020a; Mahler et al., 2020b). On the other hand, national accounts data on actual GDP growth for 2020 provide a more positive picture than these early projections (Pauw and Thurlow, 2022; McDermott and Swinnen, 2022).

The uncertainty in poverty projections is not surprising because the pandemic has evolved in an unpredictable way affecting various regions, economic sectors, and households differently. The pandemic had a large negative impact on African economies, but effects vary across countries and sectors (Zeufack et al., 2021). Several studies have shown that services and manufacturing sectors suffered the most while agriculture appeared to be relatively resilient (e.g., Arndt et al., 2020; Zeufack et al., 2021; McDermott and Swinnen, 2022). Informal sector workers, the poor, women, and youth experienced the greatest impact. In many cases, urban dwellers primarily employed in the industry and service sectors, including trade, transport and hotel services, were disproportionally affected by the economic fallout and associated lockdowns and mobility restrictions.<sup>1</sup> The impacts of the pandemic were also compounded by other shocks, political instabilities and conflicts in many African countries.

However, most of the initial economic projections were built on expected changes in incomes and prices which were in many cases overstated (Pauw and Thurlow, 2022; McDermott and Swinnen, 2022). Several factors drove these pessimistic projections. First, initial modeling exercises assumed a uniform economic shock to global growth rates, rather than accounting for heterogeneity in impacts by the demographic structure of countries. Africa, on average, has one of the youngest populations compared to other regions and consequently suffered fewer direct health impacts. Second, following from the first point, modeling exercises assumed more restrictive measures and a longer duration of restrictions than those realized in Africa. Third, the projections failed to account for the counteracting responses of governments and businesses to mitigate the adverse impacts of the pandemic. For example, as the pandemic evolved,

> 1 Because of these trends, many argue that the pandemic has increased existing inequalities across societies (e.g., Mahler et al., 2022; Bundervoet et al., 2022; World Bank, 2022).

2