Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have not been spared from the negative impact of the COVID-19 crisis. Articulating a policy response to the impact of COVID-19 requires understanding how and which households have been impacted and if households may have been able to rely on or move into specific activities that may act as a buffer in crises. Governments of five SSA countries (Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, and Uganda), in collaboration with the World Bank, are implementing several rounds of COVID-19 high-frequency phone surveys (HFPS) to monitor the socioeconomic implications of the pandemic. Agriculture is one of the focus topics included in these surveys. The sample included in the HFPS were interviewed face-to-face in 2018/19 as part of the Living Standards Measurement Study – Integrated Survey on Agriculture (LSMS-ISA) project, making comparison possible. Given that HFPS data collection coincided with the 2020/21 pre-harvest season, this piece focuses primarily on pre-harvesting using data collected from April-August 2020.
The data show that agriculture continues to be the main source of livelihood of smallholder households in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the share of households involved in agriculture increasing since the start of the pandemic. Prior to the outbreak, 76% of Nigerian households were involved in agriculture (either crop or livestock farming), but the share has increased to 84% since the start of the pandemic. Similarly, in Malawi and Uganda, 91% and 79% of households are involved in agriculture now, compared to the pre-pandemic levels of 84% and 76%, respectively.
These changes are products of the net effect of households moving into and out of agriculture; in most cases, entries are larger than exits, with the exception of livestock in Uganda. In general, the share of households that have entered into agriculture since the start of the pandemic is higher than those exiting. For instance, in Malawi, about 9% of households who were not involved in agriculture before the pandemic are doing so now, compared to about 2% that have stopped. Similarly, the share of Nigerian households who have gone into agriculture is higher (12%) than those exiting (4%).
At the subsector level, the share of households that have gone into crop farming appears higher than those that have exited. About 16% of Ethiopian households that were not involved in crop farming before the pandemic are doing so now, compared to about 3% are not cultivating crops in the 2020 agricultural season. In Nigeria, about 19% of households who did not own/raise livestock pre-pandemic are doing so now, compared to about 15% that owned/raised livestock last year but are not doing so after the outbreak. In Uganda, however, we find more households exiting livestock production (17%) than those entering (10%). Across countries, the percentage of households going into livestock production appears higher than those transitioning into crop farming. This can possibly be explained by the seasonal nature of crop production compared to livestock farming.