Rapid Evidence Review: Policy interventions to mitigate negative effects on poverty, agriculture and food security from disease outbreaks and other crises

Abstract

This review was commissioned by DFID to draw lessons from previous shocks (e.g. Ebola outbreak, MERS, SARS, the food price crisis of 2008/09) that may be relevant to dealing with the consequences of COVID-19 in developing countries and especially in sub-Saharan Africa. The review addresses two questions:

What may be the consequences of disease, and responses to it, on agriculture, rural livelihoods, food systems and food security? What lessons on dealing with those consequences may be drawn from previous crises?

The assessment has been led by Steve Wiggins and colleagues at ODI and was conducted jointly with support from the Agricultural Policy Research in Africa (APRA) programme of the Future Agricultures Consortium (FAC) and the new, DFID-funded, ‘Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises’ (SPARC) programme.