Firms and workers continue to be deeply impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic as it enters its eleventh month. Building on insights from COVID-19 Business Pulse Surveys, the first blog post in this series described the implications of the crisis for firm sales, employment, and financial performance, while the second discussed record levels of uncertainty and firms’ coping strategies, including adoption of digital technology. This third and final part of the series focuses on public policy responses.
Tag Archives: Resilience
Matching climate change ambition with collective action
Despite contributing the least to the climate crisis, Sub-Saharan Africa, home to over 1 billion people, continues to suffer some of the worst consequences of a changing climate. In 2019, we saw the catastrophic impacts of Cyclone Idai on millions of people in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, and in 2020, locusts caused widespread food insecurity in the amidst of a global pandemic.
Recap: The impact of the pandemic on woman and girls.
Evidence from outbreaks similar to COVID-19 indicates that women and girls can be affected in particular ways, and in some areas, face more negative impacts than men. In fact, there is a risk that gender gaps could widen during and after the pandemic and that gains in women’s and girls’ accumulation of human capital, economic empowerment and voice and agency, built over the past decades, could be reversed. The World Bank Group is working to ensure that projects responding to COVID-19 consider the pandemic’s different impacts on men and women.
COVID-19 spurs big changes in Pakistan’s education
In March 2020, the Government of Pakistan closed all schools as part of a nationwide lockdown, prompting the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFE&PT) to seek education alternatives to ensure learning continuity.
Realizing the returns to schooling: How COVID-19 and school closures are threatening women’s economic future
Returns to schooling for women are high – so says Bono and the research. A couple of years ago, in an essay in Time magazine Bono wrote: “Give girls just one additional year of schooling and their wages go up almost 12 percent.” He said the same thing a year before that at the Munich Security Conference. The source of that quote was a 2014 World Bank paper and a recent update confirms this is still the case. At the same time, girls are staying in school longer and learning more. However, these gains are at risk as COVID-19 is presenting a crisis within a crisis for girls’ education.
Prevent the next food crisis now
235 million people worldwide will need humanitarian assistance and protection in 2021 – an increase of 40% from last year.
As a result, a recordWebinar: Global Economy: Reversing the Scars of COVID-19
World Bank Live Presents : The COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions in the global economy that could have lasting adverse effects. If history is any guide, the global economy is heading for a decade of growth disappointments. Uncertainty about the post-pandemic economic landscape and policies has discouraged investment; disruptions to education have slowed human capital accumulation; concerns about the viability of global value chains and the course of the pandemic have weighed on trade and tourism.
Supporting a Green, Resilient and Inclusive Recovery on West Africa’s Coast
In Gbekon, Benin, summers come with flooding from the Mono River. Erosion of the nearby coast, along with more unpredictable rainfall, have made these floods worse over time. Each flood cuts access to the only road connecting people to farms, jobs, and public health services and put thousands of lives and livelihoods at risk. In 2020, the World Bank-financed West Africa Coastal Areas Program (WACA) built dikes and instituted other measures to manage river flows and prevent flooding, with the result that more than 3,600 households were less exposed to coastal erosion and flooding.
World Bank Supports First COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout in Lebanon
US$34 million in emergency financing will provide access to vaccines for over 2 million people in Lebanon
BEIRUT, January 21, 2021 — The World Bank today approved a re-allocation of US$34 million under the existing Lebanon Health Resilience Project to support vaccines for Lebanon as it faces an unprecedented surge in COVID-19, with record-breaking numbers of around 5,500 daily confirmed cases since the beginning of the year. This is the first World Bank-financed operation to fund the procurement of COVID-19 vaccines. The financing will provide vaccines for over 2 million individuals. The vaccines are expected to arrive in Lebanon by early February 2021.
eC2: Supporting and Strengthening Women Miners Resilience During and After Covid-19 in Mali and Ghana: A systems approach to formalization and empowerment
Deadline: 03-Dec-2020 at 11:59:59 PM (Eastern Time – Washington D.C.)
New approaches to formalization are required to combat the double vulnerabilities facing ASM communities during COVID. The present TOR seeks to hire an experienced consortium of practitioners and researchers who can pilot a new capacity building model for formalization. The pilot will document effectiveness in training and research with behavior change. The purpose being that if successful results emerge from the pilot in Ghana and Mali, a scaled model could be applied in other ASM locales.GH – Ghana
ML – Mali