Ashlegh Pfunye and Iyunoluwa Ademola-Popoola are Youth Leaders for Global Partnership for Education. They raise awareness of the barriers to education and aim to increase the ambition of leaders for financing education and development. It is undeniable that COVID-19 has altered how we live and work. Lives continue to be lost, and hospitals and health workers have been overwhelmed with patients suffering from the virus. Though efforts such as social distancing, wearing of masks, and bans on large gatherings have...
Top news Begins at home: 72% of African women reported worrying about not having enough food to eat in the past 30 days, according to a major new survey from Facebook’s Data for Good program. 53% of women (35% of men) felt that their current financial situation does not fully cover their own expenses. Gender vulnerabilities: 80% of the countries where women are most vulnerable to COVID-19 are in Africa. So says new research from DATA2x and Open Data Watch. Women...
Facts from our Africa COVID-19 Tracker Population: 2,347,706 Share of population living in extreme poverty: 10.3% Share of people with insufficient food intake: 12.8% (latest: 18 Feb 2021) The economy relies upon agriculture, tourism, and remittances. Economic impact The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding border closures have severely impacted the fragile economy of The Gambia. Pandemic responses are affecting trade, which accounts for 25% of imported goods and exported earnings, and the valuable tourism industry, which provides an income to 42,000 Gambian people. Hotels, restaurants, and...
Facts from our Africa COVID-19 Tracker 21.3 million people require humanitarian aid. 1.8 million people are internally displaced. 792,000 refugees are seeking safety. Ranked 84th of 195 countries for capability to prevent and mitigate epidemics. A socioeconomic crisis As Africa braces for the spread of the latest Ebola outbreak, the COVID-19 pandemic has already placed Ethiopia in an acute crisis. COVID-19 is causing a loss of income for many families who have been simultaneously affected by irregular rainfalls and outbreaks of...
Having safe and effective vaccines a full year since the first reported cases of COVID-19 is a historic scientific achievement. It has shifted the conversation from “if” we will see an end to the pandemic to “when.” But COVID-19 will not end with just a vaccine. It ends when everyone, everywhere has access to it. If the virus remains unchecked anywhere in the world, it will continue to move across borders, mutate, and drastically impact the global economy. Prioritizing the...
h2>Top news Debt donut: ONE’s new debt donut shows that 80% debt service payments from poorer countries have not been suspended, despite warm words from the G20. In 2021, we expect countries eligible for the Debt Service Suspension Initiative will have $6.8 billion of payments rescheduled until later. But they will still have to pay $36.1 billion to bilateral creditors, multilateral institutions, and private creditors this year. African countries eligible for relief will still have to pay $19.8 billion. G20...
In September 2020, Vanessa and her husband, both residents of rural Makueni County in Kenya, reported to the FSD FinMark Trust COVID tracker, a survey of economic and social issue across seven African countries, that the couple had not gotten any work for three months, and the family was running out of food. Like Vanessa and her family, many respondents to the COVID tracker drew down their savings, asked for remittances, and borrowed from friends to survive the pandemic....
Maryjacob Okwuosa, Mukhtar H. Modibbo are Youth Leaders for Global Partnership for Education. They raise awareness of the barriers to education and aim to increase the ambition of leaders for financing education and development.  The impact of COVID in Nigeria  The advent of the COVID pandemic has not only revealed the poor state of infrastructure and facilities in the health sector of Nigeria but also revealed the reality of the dilapidation and poor funding of the education sector. Aside from the...
A roundup of the latest news, stats, and analysis of COVID-19’s impact in Africa. View our data tracker and sign up for our weekly newsletter here, and read on for more on COVID’s impact on food security in Africa. But first, what to look for at this week’s G7 meeting. Top news War-time footing: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, new Italian Prime Minister and G20 Chair Mario Draghi, and US President Joe Biden have all said we are at war with...