The response to COVID-19 and its impact on food systems

Earlier this year, the Brookings Institution provided a disconcerting view of sub-Saharan Africa’s (SSA) circumstances, when Jennifer Blanke noted that “COVID-19 exacerbated the negative effect of locust swarms in the Horn of Africa, regional insecurity and conflict, climate-change-related droughts and flooding, all of which already collectively destroyed crops and the livelihoods of millions of African smallholder farmers”.

With the year being largely