Publication: Gendered Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis in Uganda and Opportunities for an Inclusive and Sustainable Recovery
Loading...
Published
2022
ISSN
Date
2022-03-09
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
As Uganda builds back from the COVID-19 shock, the Ugandan government is strengthening its commitment to a more gender-inclusive and sustainable economy. This report supports these efforts by describing the gendered impacts of COVID-19 and provides recommendations for Ugandan policy makers and World Bank Group operations to ensure women’s participation in an inclusive and sustainable recovery. It presents gender-disaggregated data from three main sources: (1) high-frequency phone surveys that track the impacts of the COVID-19 shock: one of Ugandan nationals conducted in June and one of refugees conducted in November 2020; (2) interviews with 28 representatives of government institutions, development partners, and women’s organizations in Kampala and in rural areas; and (3) a review of relevant policy and gray literature on climate change, the green economy, and women’s economic empowerment. The report is structured in five sections: introduction in chapter one, chapter two describes the methodology and guiding questions. Chapter three gives an overview of Uganda’s policy environment for women’s economic empowerment and green growth. Chapter four covers the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on women, their coping mechanisms, and their sources of resilience. The analysis is broken down by sex, age, geography, and refugee status to describe the impacts of the COVID-19 shock across select subgroups. Chapter five identifies opportunities for Uganda to pursue a more gender-inclusive and green recovery, and concludes by offering policy recommendations.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Wilman, Alys; Atamanov, Aziz; Myers, Cara Ann. 2022. Gendered Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis in Uganda and Opportunities for an Inclusive and Sustainable Recovery. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/37112 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Monitoring Impacts of COVID-19 and Other Shocks(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-06)In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), with the support from the World Bank, officially launched the Uganda high frequency phone survey (UHFPS) to track the impacts of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic monthly for a period of 12 months. In June 2022, the scope of the survey was expanded to monitor economic sentiments and the socioeconomic impact of other shocks such as the Russia-Ukraine war and extreme weather events. The survey aimed to recontact the entire sample of households that had been interviewed during the Uganda National Panel Survey (UNPS) 2019-20 round and that had phone numbers for at least one household member or a reference individual. The first round (baseline) of the survey was conducted in June 2020 and interviewed 2,227 households. Subsequent seven rounds attempted to reach the same households. This report contains the number of households interviewed and the time of each round. This brief presents findings from the eighth round of the UHFPS.Publication Monitoring Impacts of COVID-19 and other Shocks, Round 13, Jul-Aug 2023(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2024-01-23)In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, with the support from the World Bank, has launched the High-Frequency Phone Survey on COVID-19 to track the impacts of the pandemic on a monthly basis for a period of 12 months. In June 2022, the scope of the survey was expanded to monitor economic sentiments and the socioeconomic impact of other shocks such as the Russia-Ukraine war and extreme weather events. The survey aimed to recontact the entire sample of households that had been interviewed during the Uganda National Panel Survey 2019/20 round and that had phone numbers for at least one household member or a reference individual. This set of tables presents findings from the most recent round (12th) of the UHFPS, conducted in July - August 2023.Publication Monitoring Impacts of COVID-19 and Other Shocks on Households in Uganda(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-06)In June 2020, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), in collaboration with the World Bank, officially launched the Uganda High Frequency Phone Survey (UHFPS) to track the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic regularly. In June 2022, the scope of the survey was expanded to monitor economic sentiments and the socioeconomic impact of other shocks, such as the Russia-Ukraine war, the Ebola outbreak, and extreme weather events. In addition, the survey is also being used to collect perceptions on different development policies and programs. The survey aimed to recontact the entire sample of households interviewed during the Uganda National Panel Survey (UNPS) 2019/20 round and that had phone numbers for at least one household member or a reference individual. The sample was refreshed in the 13th round, conducted in July/August 2023, by adding households from the Uganda National Household Survey 2019/20. This brief focuses on the socio-economic well-being of Ugandans, as reported in the 17th round conducted in January-February 2024.Publication Coping with COVID-19 Shocks in Western Uganda(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-09)In Western Uganda, women farmers and their households were facing widespread agricultural and non-agricultural income shocks in September 2020, indicating a protracted crisis. To cope with these shocks, many households liquidated productive agricultural assets. Women who had higher decision-making power within the household before the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis, appeared to cope better with post-outbreak shocks by engaging in more income-generating activities and having better food security in the household.Publication One Year in the Pandemic(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-28)The URHFPS tracks the socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on refugees. The World Bank (WB) in collaboration with the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) launched and conducted the URHFPS. The URHFPS tracked the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic between October 2020 and March 2021. This brief discusses key selected results while providing policy options. Where possible and appropriate, findings are compared to Ugandans by using the national High-Frequency Phone Survey (UHFPS) conducted by UBOS with the support from the World Bank since June 2020.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication COVID-19, Poverty, and Social Safety Net Response in Zambia(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-03)What has the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic been on poverty in Zambia, and how can social protection programs mitigate these effects? This paper estimates the pre-pandemic poverty level in Zambia and then simulates the distributional impact of COVID-19 in the country. The paper also estimates the impact of a social cash transfer program that led the COVID response, on poverty levels. In the absence of recent nationally representative household survey data, this is done by updating the consumption distribution in the 2015 Living Conditions Monitoring Survey using annual real per capita gross domestic product growth rates for specific sectors. The study shows that the national poverty headcount rate increased from 54.4 percent in 2015 to 55.8 percent in 2019, and this change was driven entirely by rural areas. By contrast, the economic impact of COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted urban areas and exacerbated the already high poverty levels, with the poverty headcount increasing to 57.6 percent in 2020. Expanding and enhancing cash transfers have been a key policy lever that many countries have used to mitigate the negative economic consequences of the pandemic. Simulations in Zambia suggest that a fully operational social cash transfer program with the current and proposed enhanced transfer amounts has the potential to reduce poverty significantly – by four and six percentage points, respectively. Beyond this specific analysis, the paper makes a case for the innovative use of existing data to inform adaptive or shock responsive social protection, even in largely data poor environments.Publication The COVID-19 Pandemic(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2020-05-07)Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was living a learning crisis. Before the pandemic, 258 million children and youth of primary- and secondary-school age were out of school. And low schooling quality meant many who were in school learned too little. The Learning Poverty rate in low-and middle-income countries was 53 percent—meaning that over half of all 10-year-old children couldn't read and understand a simple age appropriate story. Even worse, the crisis was not equally distributed: the most disadvantaged children and youth had the worst access to schooling, highest dropout rates, and the largest learning deficits. All this means that the world was already far off track for meeting Sustainable Development Goal 4, which commits all nations to ensure that, among other ambitious targets, “all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education.” The COVID-19 pandemic now threatens to make education outcomes even worse. The pandemic has already had profound impacts on education by closing schools almost everywhere in the planet, in the largest simultaneous shock to all education systems in our lifetimes. The damage will become even more severe as the health emergency translates into a deep global recession. These costs of crisis are described below. But it is possible to counter those shocks, and to turn crisis into opportunity. The first step is to cope successfully with the school closures, by protecting health and safety and doing what they can to prevent students' learning loss using remote learning. At the same time, countries need to start planning for school reopening. That means preventing dropout, ensuring healthy school conditions, and using new techniques to promote rapid learning recovery in key areas once students are back in school. As the school system stabilizes, countries can use the focus and innovativeness of the recovery period to “build back better.” The key: don't replicate the failures of the pre-COVID systems, but instead build toward improved systems and accelerated learning for all students.Publication Risks to Poverty, Vulnerability, and Inequality from COVID-19(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-05-10)Nepal made significant progress on poverty and shared prosperity over the period 1996-2010, despite low domestic growth. With consistently high rates of vulnerability and exposure to a range of shocks, the risk of falling back into poverty has remained an enduring feature of the welfare narrative in Nepal. The past decade, from 2010 to 2020, has been characterized by a series of economic shocks that took place against a background of a prolonged political transition towards federalism in Nepal. These shocks were also correlated with declines in economic growth. The Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, which started in March 2020, is the latest in the series of economic shocks over the last decade which has adversely affected Nepal’s economy and labor market; and it is likely to have had adverse welfare effects. However, the lack of data on welfare dynamics during this period has made it difficult to track the impacts of these shocks on households, workers and firms. This light poverty assessment is organized as follows: Section 1 describes the data challenges, and highlights the evolution of measures of non-monetary welfare, pre-COVID; section 2 provides an overview of the impacts of Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Nepal; and section 3 highlights the role of pre-existing vulnerabilities and structural issues in making the Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis more costly to welfare in the short run, and in potentially deepening inequalities in the longer run.Publication Digital Africa(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-03-13)All African countries need better and more jobs for their growing populations. "Digital Africa: Technological Transformation for Jobs" shows that broader use of productivity-enhancing, digital technologies by enterprises and households is imperative to generate such jobs, including for lower-skilled people. At the same time, it can support not only countries’ short-term objective of postpandemic economic recovery but also their vision of economic transformation with more inclusive growth. These outcomes are not automatic, however. Mobile internet availability has increased throughout the continent in recent years, but Africa’s uptake gap is the highest in the world. Areas with at least 3G mobile internet service now cover 84 percent of Africa’s population, but only 22 percent uses such services. And the average African business lags in the use of smartphones and computers as well as more sophisticated digital technologies that catalyze further productivity gains. Two issues explain the usage gap: affordability of these new technologies and willingness to use them. For the 40 percent of Africans below the extreme poverty line, mobile data plans alone would cost one-third of their incomes—in addition to the price of access devices, apps, and electricity. Data plans for small- and medium-size businesses are also more expensive than in other regions. Moreover, shortcomings in the quality of internet services—and in the supply of attractive, skills-appropriate apps that promote entrepreneurship and raise earnings—dampen people’s willingness to use them. For those countries already using these technologies, the development payoffs are significant. New empirical studies for this report add to the rapidly growing evidence that mobile internet availability directly raises enterprise productivity, increases jobs, and reduces poverty throughout Africa. To realize these and other benefits more widely, Africa’s countries must implement complementary and mutually reinforcing policies to strengthen both consumers’ ability to pay and willingness to use digital technologies. These interventions must prioritize productive use to generate large numbers of inclusive jobs in a region poised to benefit from a massive, youthful workforce—one projected to become the world’s largest by the end of this century.Publication Political Prioritization of Early Childhood Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12)Despite strong evidence of its importance to the welfare of children and societies, early childhood education has been comparatively neglected as a policy priority both before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper seeks to understand what factors have contributed to the lack of priority for early childhood education in distance learning and school reopening plans, by applying a political prioritization framework to the pandemic context in four low- and middle-income countries: Ethiopia, Jamaica, Liberia, and Pakistan. Some aspects of the pre-COVID-19 status quo, which disfavored early childhood education, have continued, including a lack of cohesive support from civil society and a greater focus by international partners on norm promotion and technical assistance than financing. In other respects, the pandemic put early childhood education at an even greater disadvantage. These include perceptions that early childhood education is less suited to distance delivery than other levels of education, concerns about young children’s ability to comply with health protocols, and competition with high-stakes examinations for education ministries’ attention. Previous country experience with pandemics (in Liberia) and a strong coordinating entity (in Jamaica) were mitigating factors. These results point to an urgent need to elevate priority for early childhood education in normal times and improve the resilience of early childhood education in future crises.