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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). Structurally, African food systems are characterized by a highly uneven distribution of income and resources within and between actors in the system (Jayne et al. 2003; Sitko, Burke, and Jayne 2018); a preponderance of small-scale and informal actors (Reardon 2015; Sitko and Jayne 2014; Jayne, Mather, and Mghenyi 2010); limited access to formal risk management tools, including credit and insurance; and highly diverse and multivalent livelihood portfolios of many food system actors (Barrett, Reardon, and Webb 2001; Reardon et al. 2007; Davis et al. 2010; Davis, Di Giuseppe, and Zezza 2017). These unique features influence both the vulnerabilities of food system actors in the region and the potential distribution and severity of the welfare impacts caused by the pandemic (Liverpool-Tasie, Reardon, and Belton 2021). Although many countries in the region have implemented new or expanded existing social protection programs to mitigate welfare losses due to the pandemic, the majority of them have been of a relatively small scale in terms of additional populations covered, have been short in duration, and have bypassed many food system actors (Beazley, Marzi, and Steller 2021; Gentilini, Almenfi, and Dale 2020; Barba, van Regenmortel, and Ehmke 2020).