Helping Africa Plan and Respond to COVID-19

The Challenge

As governments around the world scaled up their responses to COVID-19, we wanted to help them make the most of limited resources by identifying vulnerability — the potential social, economic, and health impacts within and across countries — in Africa, where data on the pandemic is scarce, and testing and infrastructure is spotty.

Our Approach

In July 2020, we built the Africa COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI), which assesses seven kinds of vulnerability for 751 regions in 48 countries across Africa to help governments, donors, non-governmental organizations, advocacy groups, researchers, and others develop more effective, data-driven responses to the pandemic.

 
Key Results
  • Our Africa CCVI won the first COVIDAction Data Challenge Award given by the UK’s Department for International Development — recognized for its impact on the pandemic in low- and middle-income countries.
  • The Nigerian National Bureau of Statistics has featured the Africa CCVI as a key resource for government planners.
  • Our Africa CCVI has been held up by The Associated Press, the Economist, Financial Times, Quartz, and other prominent media outlets as a key resource for decision makers to compare regions on different vulnerability metrics and target services and support accordingly.
 

Knowing where to focus planning and resourcing to effectively respond to COVID-19 is important, especially in Africa, where data is sparse and inconsistent, and resources are limited. Across the continent-- especially at a subnational level — data on key indicators, from non-communicable diseases to testing capacity to health system infrastructure, is often out-of-date, not localized, and not consistently measured. This makes it difficult for policy makers to identify and reach the most vulnerable communities in a targeted manner.

To address this information gap, we created the Africa COVID-19 Community Vulnerability Index (CCVI), which ranks 751 regions across 48 African countries in terms of vulnerability to COVID-19 based on seven key themes: socioeconomic status, population density, access to transportation and housing, epidemiological factors, health system factors, fragility, and age of population. It is the only index to measure vulnerability to COVID-19 across the African continent at a subnational level.  

By showing the different ways African regions can be vulnerable to COVID-19 beyond just mortality, the Africa CCVI can help predict the downstream consequences of COVID-19 that each region should plan for, and inform more precise, effective responses.  

We are in conversations with a number of African stakeholders on how to use the Africa CCVI to inform their response.

 

This includes:

  • Guiding the resource allocation of governments, donors, organizations, and companies 

  • Developing more targeted, sector-specific interventions to mitigate the impact of the pandemic

  • Targeting social distancing and shielding policies 

  • Informing the deployment and scale up of vaccines and scale up of community health workers and mobile response 

  • Analyzing the impact of Non-Pharmacological Interventions on vulnerable regions

  • Quantifying the impact of COVID-19 on other health outcomes, and how underlying vulnerabilities may contribute

COVID-19, AfricaThe Beauty Shop StudioCase Study