General and Relevant Information
Synopsis: What are the likely impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on household welfare and food security and the agri-food systems in general? what are the likely impacts of the covid-19 pandemic on market access and trade? What can national governments do to provide relief to small businesses and households in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic? What works and what doesn’t? These and related policy questions arise as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on in the world. Policy makers – both private and public – are hungry for evidence-based information, for any insights on the likely impacts on livelihoods and food systems and for potent recovery plans.
IAPRI actions:
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With an eminent danger of ‘leaping from the COVID-19 frying pan into the climate fire’ and total economic chaos, IAPRI has taken steps to gather relevant and general information on the questions above. The plan is to provide updated write-ups summarizing the emerging literature on issues salient to the questions herein. These write-ups will be posted on the IAPRI website and disseminated to stakeholders in Zambia.
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IAPRI is also collaborating on a COVID-19 Policy Response (CRP) project coordinated by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy Research, Capacity, and Influence (PRCI) at Michigan State University. Working across several countries in Africa, Asia and Europe, the CRP project aims to track policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic along two different dimensions. The policy dimension tracks policy changes related to restrictions on population movements and on economic activities, health specific and social protection interventions, broad fiscal policies, farm fiscal policies, trade policies, monetary policy, governance restrictions and foreign aid receipts. The response dimension tracks how markets are reacting to changes imposed as a result of COVID-19 by looking at price changes, how citizens are reacting and the institutional architecture supporting responses to COVID-19 in Zambia.
The CRP portal is regularly updated and can be viewed below: