Impact of Covid-19

Assessment results will enable WAVES to formulate an appropriate Response and Recovery strategy, within the timeframe of its strategic plan – 2021 to 2025 in order to neutralize or eliminate the negative effects COVID-19 might have had on its program outcomes within its targeted communities.

The impact of epidemics generally is never gender neutral and COVID -19 epidemic has been no exception, the assessment from which our analysis has been drawn covers period – March to June 2020. The Assessors used results from phone surveys and from forecasts conducted or projected by the Government and various development partners and institutions.

COVID-19 took its economic toll on women as the pandemic hit women harder in Sierra Leone for the following reasons:

  • Generally, women tend to earn less than men
  • Women have fewer savings
  • In Sierra Leone and particularly in our targeted communities’ women are disproportionately in the informal economy
  • Women have less access to social protection
  • Women are more likely to be burdened with unpaid care and domestic work and therefore have to drop out of their gainful employment
  • Women make up the vast majority of the single parent households

With this backdrop, COVID – 19 impacted women in the following ways:

  • For single mothers in our communities COVID -19 lockdowns measures impacted their small businesses that brings food to the table
  • For domestic workers i.e. house helps, nannies, domestic cooks etc. in Bo and other big cities, it has caused many to lose their jobs as long as the pandemic lasts

For a vast majority of women in a country like Sierra Leone that has such a small and undiversified economy in addition to losing their jobs and income – unpaid care and domestic work burden has significantly increased

While everyone in our country is facing unprecedented challenges, women are bearing the brunt of the economic and social fall out of COVID – 19.

Protecting People: Social Protection and Basic Services

Food insecurity has risen sharply from 53.4% in August 2019 to 63 % in June 2020, according to the emergency food security monitoring system published by WFP and FAO. The latest estimate puts the figure at 15% of the population. The worrisome trend observed pre-COVID is now being amplified. Travel and movement restrictions and related socio-economic activities have disrupted domestic supply chains, access to the market, and limited cash grants from within the community will likely impact agricultural production. The prices have also increased (price of rice increased by 8 percent and cassava by 17 percent during the first quarter of 2020). Basic services including education, access to electricity and water supply have been impacted differently. Education has been the most affected with the closure of educational establishments generating short- and medium-term effects. Unequal access and in some cases, no access at all, to online courses and radio broadcasts are leaving children and students one semester short of services according to location and poverty levels. Whether this will be extended to a full year’s loss depends on the spread of the virus. An important spinoff, as noted during the Ebola epidemic is that girls suffer in many ways, more than boys either through sexual violence or through teenage pregnancy.

Social Cohesion and Community Resilience.

In fragile environments, the pillars supporting social cohesion are frequently under stress, and shocks of the COVID type expose fault-lines and eventually release the volcanic pressures of instability and conflict. The relatively high levels of social instability in the form of violent incidents (49 with 25 reported fatalities in the first half of the year compared to 46 with 8 reported fatalities in the entire 2019) especially between the youth and security institutions, have their roots in the frustrations derived from several factors including: manifestations of one of the highest income inequality in Africa; negative perceptions of state legitimacy; permanent criticism of the criminal justice system especially the Judiciary and the Police. It should be noted that the informal sector which would normally absorb some of these pressures is itself hit and weakened by the reduced performance due to the collapse of many small businesses in almost all fields.

From all indications it is clear that despite compensatory measures, there are still negative socioeconomic impacts of the disease, some of which may continue to spread throughout the economy well after full control of the disease. As a small open economy dependent on foreign trade, exogenous factors compound the domestically generated effects due to the containment measures adopted, most of which are unavoidable.