The COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged a lot of countries this year and has subsequently caused adverse impacts on the global economy. Governments around the world along with different institutions have been implementing various fiscal measures to mitigate the adverse effects and provide relief for households and different businesses. In this article, we highlight the measures that have been taken through the year to provide aid and funding to the Eastern African region during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Most of the East African countries; Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, Uganda have been swift in their response to COVID-19. These countries benefited from Ebola preparations, and have over the years been dealing with outbreaks such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV and AIDS. Rwanda, Burundi, South Sudan, and Uganda all border the Democratic Republic of the Congo and were forced to respond to its Ebola outbreak in 2018 (WHO). Each country already had rapid-response teams, trained contact tracers, logistics routes, and other public-health tools and procedures in place, which they have modified to respond to the coronavirus.
“Governments took early, quite drastic action through the lockdowns at great cost to their economies,” Moeti said in one of WHO’s briefings.(WHO)
Within the East African region, economies have also subsequently suffered and a total of 262 initiatives were undertaken in the region, with 50.8% being country specific and 49.2% being multi-regional.
Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, various entities across Africa such as NGO’s like World Bank and IMF, intergovernmental unions such as the EU and the private sector have all come together to help countries respond to the COVID-19 crisis through a combination of new operations in health, social protection, economic stimulus and other sectors, as well as redeployment of existing resources.
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