COVID-19 and the attempts to limit its spread have resulted in profound economic impacts and a significant contraction in the global economy is expected. This webinar will provide some of the first evidence on the socioeconomic impacts of and responses to the pandemic among households and individuals in Sub-Saharan Africa. To do so, reduced-form econometric methods are applied to longitudinal household survey data from Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda. This data originated from the pre-COVID-19 face-to-face household surveys that had been conducted under the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Surveys on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) initiative and from the novel monthly phone surveys that are implemented during the pandemic — partly with financial support from the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

The headline findings are fivefold: 

• First, although false beliefs regarding COVID-19 remain prevalent, government action to limit the spread of the disease is associated with greater individual knowledge of the disease and increased uptake of precautionary measures.
• Second, 256 million individuals — 77 percent of the population in the four surveyed countries — are estimated to live in households that have lost income due to the pandemic.
• Third, attempts to cope with this loss are exacerbated by the inability to access medicine and staple foods among 20 to 25 percent of households in each country, and food insecurity is disproportionately borne by households that were already impoverished prior to the pandemic.
• Fourth, levels of concern are high across all four countries: an estimated 257 million individuals (78 percent) are concerned that someone in their household will fall ill with COVID-19 and 292 million individuals (88 percent) are concerned about COVID-19 being a threat to household finances.
• Fifth, the student-teacher contact has dropped from a pre-COVID-19 rate of 96 percent to just 17 percent among households with school-aged children.

These findings can help inform decisions by governments and international organizations regarding measures to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and reveal the need for continued monitoring.