COVID-19 and the future of work in Africa: How to reduce income loss for formal sector employees

By Louise Fox, Landry Signé

The COVID-19 global pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to the global economy, already tremendously impacting livelihoods in Africa by reducing earnings and increasing poverty. While the scale and reach of the impact on employment will differ among countries and sectors, the main effects will be a drop in earnings (income) and increased underemployment (reduced hours) rather than unemployment. Quick action to reduce damage to livelihoods could reduce the social and economic costs this year and in the future. In this blog, we discuss how to reduce the income losses of formal sector employee earnings; in our