40m more Africans face risk of extreme poverty due to corona

The Covid-19 pandemic has the potential to push over 40 million more people in Africa into extreme poverty, new research shows.

A survey conducted in 19 African Union states in September, titled Partnership for Evidence-based Response to Covid-19 (PERC), found that macro-level factors affecting agricultural outputs and export prices are likely to increase food insecurity and unemployment.

“Insecurity and conflict continue to exacerbate income and food precarity in many member states. Military coups took place in both Sudan and Guinea close to the fielding of the survey," the report says.

"The Tigray crisis in Ethiopia has evolved into a humanitarian catastrophe, and northern Nigeria, eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and northern Mozambique continue to face violence and insecurity."

It said many member states were also seeing an uptick in civil unrest related to the increasing burden of Covid-19 preventive measures, particularly in Tunisia and Nigeria.

From the 23,000 people polled, 55 per cent cited access to income and employment as their greatest concern, followed by Covid-19 at 39 per cent and access to food at 26 per cent.

Income loss may also have had an adverse impact on access to essential health services. Cost and affordability were cited as the primary obstacles to receiving care.

Covid-19 severely impaired economic growth across Africa and plunged the continent into a recession, with average Gross Domestic Product contracting by two per cent in 2020.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), poverty increased and health systems came under severe pressure. African countries implemented strong measures to contain the pandemic and mitigate its economic impact on the populations.

IMF projects a slow recovery for 2021, with vaccine supply constraints and limited financial resources weighing on the outlook.

With health systems stretched and health care workers under-resourced and overworked, public health gains from the past several decades are either at a standstill or reversing.

Equitable access to vaccines has been viewed as a game changer in boosting economic activity across the continent.

As at early December 2021, reports show that only 12 per cent of the African population had received at least one dose of Covid-19 vaccine, while the United States had vaccinated more than 70 per cent of its population with at least one dose.

Unreliable supply and barriers to promoting effective vaccination campaigns have affected uptake to date.

“We must work urgently toward equitable access to safe and effective vaccines on the African continent,” said John Nkengasong, director of the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The PERC data shows that demand for vaccines is substantially higher than supply.”

Overall, 78 per cent vaccine acceptance was recorded by the respondents while in five surveyed countries - Guinea, Morocco, Mozambique, Tunisia and Zimbabwe - acceptance was 90 per cent or higher.

Vaccine acceptance was high among both those who trusted their government’s pandemic response and those who felt Covid-19 posed a personal risk to them or to their country.

Among the 20 per cent of respondents who expressed vaccine hesitancy, low-risk perception at 24 per cent was the prime reason, not having enough information about vaccines was second at 22 per cent and lack of trust in government at 17 per cent.

The research recommends offering better information to people about Covid-19 and vaccines through trusted sources, particularly healthcare providers, coupled with consistent vaccine supply to further increase acceptance.

Respondents’ top information sources were local health centres, television and radio.