10 recommendations for African governments to ensure food security for poor and vulnerable populations during COVID-19

Abstract

In addressing COVID-19, African governments should not forget the livelihoods as well as the food and nutrition security of their citizens. With over 70% of the workforce in the informal sector without any social protection and health insurance, the pandemic could have a devastating impact on income and livelihoods as well as food and nutrition security for workers up and down the food chain. There are ten steps African governments can take to ensure that their response to the disease takes food and nutrition security into account: 1. Protect food supply chains and consider them essential services; 2. Consider fiscal and monetary incentives; 3. Prioritize healthy diets; 4. Use food reserves wisely; 5. Keep food markets open while ensuring safety; 6. Use mobile cash transfers for social protection; 7. Protect farmers and food workers; 8. Prioritize gender equality; 9. Instill a sense of solidarity; and 10. Avoid export bans.

COVID-19: From health crises to food security anxiety and policy implications

“…In some instances, men resorted as a coping mechanism in sending their families back home to the rural areas—resulting in families deconstructing. Lastly, several countries responded by ensuring that households could access food by providing relief through honouring water and electric bills, tax relief as well as provision of agricultural inputs and removal of collateral for loans (Deloitte and Touch 2020 ; World Bank 2020 ; Lawson-Lartego and Cohen 2020 ). However, despite these initiatives, effects of the pandemic are not yet robustly identified.…”

“…Except for a few attempts such as the Feed Africa Response (Blanke 2020 ), there is insufficient evidence of inter-state collaboration through the above economic regional bodies to collectively address the cross-border challenges relating to food security and to have collective solutions (Torero 2020 ). This is also summarized as 10 recommendations for African governments to ensure food security for poor and vulnerable populations during COVID-19 in a recent publication (Lawson-Lartego and Cohen 2020 ).…”

“…For example, the negative impact on informal financial remission channels poses a serious food security problem for migrants (Duvenage 2020 ; Madonsela et al 2020 ). According to Lawson-Lartego and Cohen ( 2020 ), “if people are worried about what to eat and other basic needs, they will not respect the lockdowns necessary to combat the COVID-19 pandemic” reflecting a special nature of this COVID-19 shocks as compared to the 2002 food crisis (Vogel and Smith 2002 ), 2008 world financial crisis and other crisis (Schmidhuber and Qiao 2020 ).…”

“…The impacts of the wide array of lockdown measures are yet to be fully investigated (Kosnik and Bellas 2020 ), especially in Africa where agriculture is the backbone of the economy, livelihoods and household food security (Lawson-Lartego and Cohen 2020 ). The intersections of gender and age with food insecurity have gained even less attention, at this early stage in the investigations (Ragasa and Lambrecht 2020 ; Zeinali et al 2020 ).…”

Impact of COVID-19 on household food insecurity and interlinkages with child feeding practices and coping strategies in Uttar Pradesh, India: a longitudinal community-based study

“… 37 38 A recent costing study conducted in Mexico found it would cost less than 0.06% of the gross domestic product to effectively safeguard families with young children through a cash transfer and basic services subsidy. 39 Other strategies which may be considered include outlining specific recommendations to ensure food security for poor and vulnerable populations as done for other LMICs in Africa 40 and include special initiatives for migrant populations. 41 Certain agricultural reforms may also be considered 42 such as home gardening, 43 diversification of production and strong local market chains 44 to alleviate HFI, improve diets and reduce reliance on coping strategies due to food insecurity.…”