Rethinking the role of social protection in African food systems post-COVID-19

Efforts to contain the spread of COVID-19 have further exacerbated long-standing challenges within African food systems and exposed new sources of vulnerability in people’s livelihoods. Emerging evidence demonstrates that the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic across African food systems are heterogeneous. They vary across income groups, occupations, and geographies and are closely tied to the structural features of the food systems (Egger et al. 2021; Josephson, Kilic, and Michler 2020; Kansiime et al. 2021; Belton et al. 2021; Nechifor et al. 2021).