Africa Health Check EP12: Africa’s future in a post-pandemic world

The COVID-19 pandemic brought unprecedented disruptions to Africa—reducing earnings and increasing poverty and food insecurity. Africa faces a dual public health and economic crisis that risks overwhelming healthcare systems, destroying livelihoods, and slowing the region’s growth prospects for years to come. Post-COVID-19 African economic development policy would therefore need to be centered around both improving resiliency and accelerating transformation to realize sustained economic welfare gains. Strategies for resiliency should build on the COVID-19 experience, helping households, communities, and countries to strengthen coping measures that reduce losses thus allowing for a faster recovery, and investing to adapt to and mitigate the effects of future shocks.