COVID-19 and the Maritime and Logistics Sector in Africa
The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has taken a toll on human life and brought major disruption to economic activity across the world, precipitating an unprecedented global health and economic crisis. Although it is too early for a full assessment...
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| Language: | English |
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World Bank, Washington, DC
2020
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/830701594047530798/COVID-19-and-the-Maritime-and-Logistics-Sector-in-Africa http://hdl.handle.net/10986/34080 |
| Summary: | The COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic has
taken a toll on human life and brought major disruption to
economic activity across the world, precipitating an
unprecedented global health and economic crisis. Although it
is too early for a full assessment of the impact of the
pandemic in Africa, it is clear that COVID-19 (coronavirus)
has already brought severe hardship, especially to the
landlocked and least developed countries, and poor and
vulnerable communities. Vulnerable sectors (e.g. tourism,
oil and gas industry, maritime, air and road transport,
freight forwarding, logistics, and wholesale and retail
sectors) have been hard hit and some will not recover. The
demand for, and price of many commodities has declined
sharply, increasing the vulnerability of many
commodity-dependent African countries. The forecast
challenges include food insecurity, lack of medical
supplies, loss of income and livelihood, difficulties in
applying sanitary and physical distancing measures, a
looming debt crisis, as well as related political and
security risks. The World Bank projected that economic
growth will decline to between -2.1 and -5.1 percent in 2020
from 2.4 percent in 2019, leading to the first African
recession in 25 years. This short note summarizes the
current evidence of the impact on the maritime and logistics
sector in African countries and defines a three pillared
response for countries to both mitigate the impact of the
pandemic and increase the resilience of the sectors going
forward. It ends by discussing potential areas of
co-operation with the World Bank to those ends. |
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