In 2015, world leaders agreed to 17 Global Goals for Sustainable Development to achieve a better world by 2030. Led by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Goalkeepers is dedicated to accelerating progress towards the Global Goals: using powerful stories, data, and partnerships to highlight progress achieved, hold governments accountable and bring together a new generation of leaders to address the world’s major challenges, says the Bill and Belinda Gates Foundation 2020 report.

 

As governments implemented necessary policies to slow the spread of the virus and people changed their behaviour to limit their exposure, global supply chains started to shut down, contributing to an economic catastrophe. Schools closed, and hundreds of millions of students are still trying to learn on their own at home, an educational catastrophe. (Data from the Ebola epidemic in West Africa suggests that, when schools open again, girls are less likely to return, thereby closing off opportunities for themselves and for their future children.) People in high- and low-income countries alike report skipping meals, a nutritional catastrophe that will make the others worse.

 

All these catastrophes are undermining the progress we’ve made—and still need to make—toward equality. At the same time, they have made it crystal clear how much progress we still need to make. In our country, for example, the pandemic is hurting people of colour the most: They are getting sick and dying from COVID-19 and suffering its economic consequences at much higher rates than white people. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 23 percent of white Americans said they were not confident they could make rent in August, a frightening enough statistic. Among Black and Latin Americans, though, the number was double that: 46 percent didn’t think they could pay for the roof over their head.

 

The widest-ranging catastrophe—the one that has spread to every country regardless of the actual spread of the disease—is economic. The International Monetary Fund projects that, even with the US$18 trillion that has already been spent to stimulate economies around the world, the global economy will lose US$12 trillion, or more, by the end of 2021.

 

That amount of money is impossible to fathom. Historical comparisons help: For example, in terms of global gross domestic product (GDP) loss, this is the worst recession since the end of World War II, when war production stopped in an instant, one entire continent and parts of another were destroyed, and 3 percent of the world’s pre-war population was dead. In those same terms, the COVID-19 financial loss is twice as great as the “Great Recession” of 2008. The last time this many countries were in recession at once was in 1870, literally two lifetimes ago.

 

In some countries, spending on emergency stimulus and social protection has kept the absolute worst from happening. But these countries are not randomly determined. They are countries wealthy enough to raise billions and trillions by borrowing huge amounts and expanding the money supply.

 

By contrast, there are inherent limits to what lower-income countries are able to do to backstop their economies, regardless of how effectively those economies have been managed. On average, the economies of sub-Saharan African countries grew faster than the rest of the world every single year between 2000 and 2015, but sub-Saharan Africa is still the lowest-income region in the world. Most countries there can’t borrow the money they need to minimize the damage, and their central banks don’t have the range of options available to the European Central Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

 

Among G20 countries, stimulus funding averages about 22 percent of GDP. Among sub-Saharan African countries, that average is just 3 percent—and of course their GDPs are much less. In short, theirs is a much smaller slice of a much smaller pie, and it’s not enough.

 

Under these constraints, many low- and middle-income countries are innovating to meet the challenges they face. Vietnam’s contact-tracing system is a global model: With a population of more than 100 million, the country has seen just 1,044 confirmed cases and 34 deaths from COVID. Ghana started pooling tests, instead of testing people individually, to conserve scarce resources while still tracking the spread of the disease. 

 

In Nigeria, more than 100 private-sector partners, including corporations and individuals, created the Coalition Against COVID and have raised $80 million (so far) to bolster the government’s response. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Export-Import Bank, and dozens of other partners launched the African Medical Supplies Platform to ensure that countries on the continent have access to affordable, high-quality, lifesaving equipment and supplies, many of which are manufactured in Africa.

 

Many developing countries are doing especially impressive work on digital cash transfers that put money directly in people’s hands. 

 

According to the World Bank, 131 countries have either implemented new programs or expanded existing ones since February, reaching 1.1 billion people. India, which had already invested in a world-class digital identity and payment system, was able to transfer cash to 200 million women almost immediately once the crisis hit. This not only reduced COVID-19’s impact on hunger and poverty but also advanced India’s long-term goal of empowering women by including them in the economy. 

 

Other countries facilitated new cash transfer systems with nimble policy changes. The eight members of the West African Economic and Monetary Union, for example, allowed people to open accounts by text message or telephone and follow up later to verify their identity in person. More than 8 million West Africans signed up for accounts while their countries were in lockdown.

 

Even so, there is a cap on how much money many governments are able to spend on the safety net, and people are suffering. IHME estimates that extreme poverty has gone up by 7 percent in just a few months because of COVID-19, ending a 20-year streak of progress. Already in 2020, the pandemic has pushed almost 37 million people below the US$1.90 a day extreme poverty line. 

 

The poverty line for lower-middle-income countries is US$3.20 a day, and 68 million people have fallen below that one since last year. “Falling below the poverty line” is a euphemism, though; what it means is having to scratch and claw every single moment just to keep your family alive.

 

These newly impoverished people are more likely to be women than men. One reason is that women in low- and middle-income countries work overwhelmingly in the informal sector, which tends to operate in now-inaccessible spaces (like people’s homes and public markets) and provides less access to government support. In Africa, the earnings of informal workers declined more than 80 percent in the first month of the pandemic.

 

Another reason is the avalanche of unpaid care work—like cooking, cleaning, caring for children and sick relatives—women are expected to do. Women already did most of it; now, with children at home instead of school, many men at home instead of at work, and many sick people at home instead of at health clinics, there is much more unpaid care work to be done, and the early evidence suggests that the distribution is growing more lopsided, not less.

 

 

 

 

We support a multidisciplinary design-anthropology project called Pathways, in which locally embedded researchers observe and participate in the lives of women in Kenya and other countries, getting to know them over the span of two years. This deep knowledge can provide the context that is sometimes missing from the design of health and development programs. When COVID-19 struck, Pathways researchers spoke to women they had come to know well to learn about the mutually exacerbating impacts of the pandemic in their lives. Sylvia, Faith, and Agnes shared details of their lives with us. Out of respect for their privacy, we don’t show their faces or other identifying details, but we use photographs and their words to welcome you into their homes, just as they welcomed us.

 

THE US$18 TRILLION in economic stimulus proves that the world understands how massive the COVID-19 crisis is. But it’s not just different in degree; it’s also different in kind. Every person on the planet shares this crisis. We need to share solutions, too.  - (ANA) -

 

 

For the full report, visit: https://www.gatesfoundation.org/goalkeepers/report/2020-report/#GlobalPerspective

 

AB/ANA/16 September 2020 - - -