IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/10360.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Did Urban Household Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa Fare during COVID-19 ?Evidence from High-Frequency Phone Surveys

Author

Listed:
  • Cunningham,Wendy
  • Tchuisseu,Feraud
  • Viollaz,Mariana
  • Edochie,Ifeanyi Nzegwu
  • Newhouse,David Locke
  • Ricaldi,Federica

Abstract

While the impact of COVID-19 on Sub-Saharan African labor markets is well documented, thereis suggestive evidence that urban households may have fared particularly poorly. This paper uses data fromhigh-frequency phone surveys in 27 Sub-Saharan African countries to investigate which kinds of urban householdenterprises were most affected, what coping strategies were utilized, and heterogeneity by sociodemographiccharacteristics in the short and medium run. Using linear probability models, the paper finds that households thatrelied on income from non-farm enterprises were hit particularly hard during the early stage of the crisis, with20-26 percent reporting income declines, and women experiencing even greater losses. Few coping strategies wereutilized in the short run to counterbalance the loss of enterprise income. As the crisis progressed, wage employmentrecovered more quickly than self-employment, with faster gains for non-farm household enterprises, less poorhouseholds, and those headed by males and adults. Women, adults, and non-poor self-employed household heads were moresuccessful at leveraging external sources of support early in the pandemic, but these supports largely dropped off byAugust 2020. These results demonstrate the vulnerability of non-farm household enterprises in urban Sub-Saharan Africato the COVID-19 shock and highlight the need to expand publicly and privately financed coping mechanisms,particularly for women, youth, and poor household heads who are self-employed.

Suggested Citation

  • Cunningham,Wendy & Tchuisseu,Feraud & Viollaz,Mariana & Edochie,Ifeanyi Nzegwu & Newhouse,David Locke & Ricaldi,Federica, 2023. "How Did Urban Household Enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa Fare during COVID-19 ?Evidence from High-Frequency Phone Surveys," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10360, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10360
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/099348503132322233/pdf/IDU05bdb518202c21042910b4a901cbe0cc9b544.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joshua Brubaker & Talip Kilic & Philip Wollburg, 2021. "Representativeness of individual-level data in COVID-19 phone surveys: Findings from Sub-Saharan Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(11), pages 1-27, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gourlay, Sydney & Kilic, Talip & Martuscelli, Antonio & Wollburg, Philip & Zezza, Alberto, 2021. "Viewpoint: High-frequency phone surveys on COVID-19: Good practices, open questions," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    2. Kugler, Maurice & Viollaz, Mariana & Duque, Daniel & Gaddis, Isis & Newhouse, David & Palacios-Lopez, Amparo & Weber, Michael, 2023. "How did the COVID-19 crisis affect different types of workers in the developing world?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    3. Baumüller, Heike & Kornher, Lukas, 2024. "Inside the crowd: Assessing the suitability of SMSbased surveys to monitor the food security situation in Uganda," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344389, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    4. Martin Paul Jr. Tabe-Ojong & Emmanuel Nshakira-Rukundo & Bisrat Haile Gebrekidan, 2023. "COVID-19 and food insecurity in Africa: A review of the emerging empirical evidence," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 50(3), pages 853-878.
    5. Kassoum Dianou & Abdramane B. Soura & Shammi Luhar & Kelly McCain & Georges Reniers & Bruno Masquelier & Bruno Lankoandé & Ashira Menashe-Oren & Malebogo Tlhajoane & Hervé Bassinga, 2025. "The use of mobile phone surveys for rapid mortality monitoring: A national study in Burkina Faso," Demographic Research, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 52(16), pages 479-518.
    6. Margherita Squarcina & Eva-Maria Egger, 2022. "Effects of the COVID-19 crisis on household food consumption and child nutrition in Mozambique," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2022-169, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    7. Tabakis,Chrysostomos & Ten,Gi Khan & Merfeld,Joshua David & Newhouse,David Locke & Pape,Utz Johann & Weber,Michael, 2022. "The Welfare Implications of COVID-19 for Fragile and Conflict-Affected Areas," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10081, The World Bank.
    8. Markhof,Yannick Valentin & Wollburg,Philip Randolph & Zezza,Alberto, 2023. "Are Vaccination Campaigns Misinformed ? Experimental Evidence from COVID-19 in Low-and Middle-Income Countries," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10443, The World Bank.
    9. Semakula, Henry Musoke & Liang, Song & Mukwaya, Paul Isolo & Mugagga, Frank, 2023. "Application of a Bayesian network modelling approach to predict the cascading effects of COVID-19 restrictions on the planting activities of smallholder farmers in Uganda," Agricultural Systems, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    10. Calogero Carletto, 2021. "Better data, higher impact: improving agricultural data systems for societal change [Correlated non-classical measurement errors, ‘second best’ policy inference, and the inverse size-productivity r," European Review of Agricultural Economics, Oxford University Press and the European Agricultural and Applied Economics Publications Foundation, vol. 48(4), pages 719-740.
    11. Kanyanda,Shelton Sofiel Elisa & Markhof,Yannick Valentin & Wollburg,Philip Randolph & Zezza,Alberto, 2021. "Acceptance of COVID-19 Vaccines in Sub-Saharan Africa : Evidence from Six National Phone Surveys," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9739, The World Bank.
    12. Zezza,Alberto & Mcgee,Kevin Robert & Wollburg,Philip Randolph & Assefa,Thomas Woldu & Gourlay,Sydney, 2022. "From Necessity to Opportunity : Lessons for Integrating Phone and In-Person Data Collectionfor Agricultural Statistics in a Post-Pandemic World," Policy Research Working Paper Series 10168, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:10360. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.