The spread of COVID-19 is a global pandemic that has changed how humans live, produce, interact, and communicate. It has reached into all aspects of life and created great uncertainty, intensifying the vulnerability of struggling populations, and challenging the legitimacy of governments, creating a shared human experience that stretches
around the world. The long-term effects of this pandemic will be felt for our lifetime. This report introduces a framework to aid decision-makers in thinking about the long-term effects of COVID-19 on development and pursuit of Agenda 2063. We do this by pursuing types of inter-related research. First, we create a systems framework for understanding how COVID-19 is unfolding and interacting with different aspects of governance and development. Second, we create two alternative scenarios within the International Futures modeling platform that assess the longterm effects of COVID-19 on human development trajectories in light of previous work analyzing Choice in the Face of Great Transformation. We find that COVID-19 has particular impacts on vulnerable populations and that these must be the focus of the policy response. For example, scientific literature makes clear that older populations or those with high co-morbidities are more vulnerable to the disease. These groups of people should be protected as a policy priority. Longer-term policy should address countries that are more dependent on food imports for consumption as broader systemic disruptions in
food production can weaken food and nutrition security. Countries with dependence on imports and exports from countries that have been hard hit by COVID-19 will also experience economic downturns that will be disruptive. The continent should prioritize a strategy of “managed interdependence” that evaluates which policies will
mitigate the risk of economic dependence on the outside world and highlight internal economic resilience. Additionally, countries with weak governance institutions that cannot rapidly respond to changing citizen demands in the face of this global pandemic will be more vulnerable to the spread and socio-economic effects of the virus.
The economic effects of COVID-19 will be significant. COVID-19 reduces African economic output in 2020 by USD192 billion. Scenarios with greater or lesser economic effects range from -USD150 to -USD234 billion in 2020. Moving forward, the cumulative economic reduction is USD2.8 trillion by 2030, USD8.9 trillion by 2040
and USD19.9 trillion by 2050. In more pessimistic scenarios the cumulative reduction in GDP exceed USD37 trillion by 2050. We find that the direct mortality from COVID-19 will be significantly less than the indirect mortality driven by reduced economic output. While the direct mortality from the pandemic has not ended (and we lack sufficient testing and monitoring to understand key aspects of virulence), we estimate that, in a best-case scenario, an additional 250,000 people will die indirectly from the disease by 2030 compared with a world that did not have the economic disruption associated with COVID-19. In a worst-case scenario, the indirect mortality could
grow to nearly 3.5 million people by 2030, more than 20 times the direct COVID mortality assumption used in this analysis. This highlights the importance of continuing
policies that both save lives and livelihoods by adding a new wrinkle: governments need to save lives in order to stimulate economic activity (and saving livelihoods). If we do not save lives by limiting spread and following epidemiological science, we will undercut livelihoods and see further increases in mortality due to reduced economic
development. Saving lives and livelihoods are inextricably interrelated and the spread of the virus in Africa is not over. We explored the effect of COVID-19 on development
by comparing current projections with previous analysis published in Africa’s path to 2063: Choice in the face of Great Transformations: DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSFORMATION
Prior to COVID-19, African population was set to grow from 1,343 million in 2020 to 2,507 million by 2050 and urban population was projected to grow from 584 million in 2020 to 1,383 million. The effect of COVID-19 on long-term demographic transitions is minimal. Over the short and long-run, COVID-19 is likely to have no significant effect on urbanization. Over the COVID Base is likely to show an increase in numbers of people living in urban centers driven by both larger populations (driven by higher fertility rates) and increased GDP per capita growth relative to 2020.
