In a paper published in Advances in Food Security and Sustainability, researchers found that farmers in East Africa (Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda) were able to better adapt to the impact of COVID-19 than those in the Southern African countries of Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
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These regional differences, the researchers said, could largely be explained by the difference in arrival times of lock-down measures, access and adoption of technology and cultural differences in adapting to the new situation.Timing of the pandemicEileen Bogweh Nchanji, a gender specialist at the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and a co-author of the paper, said that when COVID-19 lockdowns started in southern Africa, it happened right in the middle of the harvest of legumes like beans, a key crop for food security and livelihoods."If you had to go out to sell your crops, nobody wanted to do the transport and a lot of people lost their crops," she said, adding that East Africa was more fortunate in that lockdowns hit at a more advantageous part of the crop cycle, and that relatives returning from the cities were available as labor.Lutomia Kweyu, a researcher at the Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization in Nairobi, Kenya, and another co-author of the ...
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