COVID-19: APRA’s Contribution to Understanding the Effects in Rural Africa

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020 initiated a remarkable pivot within APRA in which a new COVID focussed research programme was rapidly designed, approved and launched. The first APRA COVID-19 blogs appeared in April 2020, a comprehensive synthesis of existing learning on epidemics was published in May, and the first of three rounds of an eight-country, 800-farmer multi-phase survey, was completed in July. Over a period of two years 33 publications, 77 blogs, extensive social media, numerous in-country seminars and one international e-Dialogue were used to communicate the findings. The publications were downloaded over 10,000 times and the blogs over 16,000 times with coverage in national newspapers in most of the focus countries. This Working Paper explores these efforts to identify their impact and any lessons to be learned for improvement in future programmes.