IMPACT and REACH adapt programming to inform COVID-19 humanitarian response

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Humanitarian actors are scaling up and reprogramming their activities in response to COVID-19, both in country and at the global level. As they do so, they are finding themselves in an unfamiliar territory, lacking the required tools and information for planning their response to the pandemic. In this context, up-to-date data collection efforts and analysis are critical to ensure humanitarian action is targeted effectively and the most vulnerable populations prioritized in the COVID-19 response. In…

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Key Considerations: Dying, Bereavement and Mortuary and Funerary Practices in the Context of COVID-19

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This brief sets out key considerations for events related to death, burial, funerals (rites, ceremonies and practices) and mourning in the context of the global outbreak of the COVID-19. Further participatory inquiry should be undertaken, but given ongoing transmission, conveying key considerations for adapted end-of-life, mortuary, burial and funeral practices and related community engagement have been prioritised. The brief aims to provide practical considerations for partners working in the COVID-19 response. It is based on…

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Coronavirus in Conflict Zones: A Sobering Landscape

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The new coronavirus is spreading into conflict-affected states. Frances Z. Brown and Jarrett Blanc from Carnegie Endowment for International Peace argue that the pandemic and efforts to contain it are much more likely to aggravate and multiply conflicts than reduce or end them, and offer analyses for several conflict-affected contexts around the world. Read more

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Policy Lessons From COVID-19 in Africa

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In his blog “An Africanist Perspective”, Ken Opalo, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University and the author of Legislative Development in Africa, draws some lessons he has gleaned from African governments’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.   Read more

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COVID-19 (Coronavirus) Drives Sub-Saharan Africa Toward First Recession in 25 Years

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Growth in Sub-Saharan Africa has been significantly impacted by the ongoing coronavirus outbreak and is forecast to fall sharply from 2.4% in 2019 to -2.1 to -5.1% in 2020, the first recession in the region over the past 25 years, according to the latest Africa’s Pulse, the World Bank’s twice-yearly economic update for the region.   Read more

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Unsung Heroes: How Small Farmers cope with COVID-19

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The global pandemic has hit small farmers with disruptions in health, food security, transport, finance and demand. It has also increased the cost of doing business. Smallholder farmers, already dealing with the effects of a climate and price crisis, are taking emergency measures for resilience. At the same time, they are preparing long-term strategies to regain competitiveness. This report relays the message of smallholder farmers on COVID-19 impact and recovery. It provides insights on what…

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In-depth Analysis: What should be Africa’s strategy to counter #Covid19? A strategy for containment

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The current Covid-19 pandemic, like most of its kind, poses two closely interlinked challenges. They can be summarized as the demands for urgent actions needed to contain the outbreak; and the requirement to work on long-term strategic issues including investments directed towards social and economic recovery, and peace and security. The last part— peace and security that is intrinsically tangled with governance, the nature and the role of state, the popular and performance legitimacy and…

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“We are all fragile, but we are not all equally fragile”: Humanitarian operations amidst the COVID-19 pandemic

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As the COVID-19 pandemic is spreading across the globe, its impact touches all corners of society. What happens when the pandemic reaches areas that were already dealing with various sorts of humanitarian challenges, and in what ways are humanitarian operations being impacted both directly and indirectly? In a time where the news are being flooded with information related to the pandemic and much of national authorities’ time and resources are being spent at mapping domestic…

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COVID-19 and the impact on local peacebuilding

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As the impact of the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic grows, local peacebuilders continue working to help communities break through cycles of violent conflict. During the first week of April, Peace Direct and Conducive Space for Peace held a series of consultations asking local peacebuilders how their lives and work have been affected by this unprecedented health emergency, what their communities need, and how they see their role during this time of crisis. These consultations included…

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Lockdown is wrong for Africa

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In this opinion peace, the director of the Institute for the Future of Knowledge and professor of philosophy at the University of Johannesburg, Prof Alex Broadbent, argues that the biggest public health risk in Africa is not Covid-19, but the consequences of regional and global measures designed to reduce its effect on public health. The cost-benefit analysis of these measures yields a different result in Africa than in Europe, North America and large parts of…

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