What India’s COVID-19 crisis means for Africa
By May 9, 2021 India accounted for 57 percent of new COVID-19 cases anywhere in the world.
This phenomenon rippled through the interconnected economies of the world, including those in Africa. Indeed, India has risen over the past decade to become Africa’s thirdmost-important trading partner, after the European Union and China. In fact, the African market is precariously dependent on Indian suppliers for certain products, notably pharmaceuticals and rice. This is especially the case of East Africa, in which 35 percent of pharmaceutical imports come from India, and 20 percent of rice.
As India’s second COVID-19 wave raged, a concern for African countries has been the potential for economic and trade-related spillovers channeled through these trade sensitivities. There is a precedent. At the start of the pandemic, in April 2020, Indian rice traders were forced to suspend exports amid disruptions to transport links, and maritime shipping and production bottlenecks caused by lockdown restrictions imposed to suppress the spread of the virus. In a United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) survey of African businesses across the continent in July 2020, companies reported switching suppliers as a result of sourcing disruptions, with 56 percent finding equivalent products and favouring national and regional suppliers.
Fortunately, the supply-side disruptions seen in early 2020 have not substantively materialized, but the recent soaring numbers in India have complicated things for the continent. Indeed, India is more than your average country in the face of a health pandemic and is also quite notably the “vaccine factory of the world.” In being forced to redirect COVID-19 vaccine exports domestically to fight its current outbreak, India is estimated to have left COVAX with a shortfall of 190 million doses by just the end of June.
Though countries across the world are also facing the vulnerabilities of having been too dependent on Indian vaccine supplies, it is developing and least-developed countries that are most dependent on COVAX and have already fallen behind in vaccination rates. According to WHO Africa, while the world—as of mid-June—had administered 29 doses per 100 people, African countries had managed just 1.5 doses per 100 people. (Note that this Africa figure excludes Morocco, which is an outlier on the continent as a large economy with an exceptionally high vaccination rate.) A scenario is emerging in which well-vaccinated rich countries like Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom begin reopening their economies while African and other developing countries face persisting lockdown restrictions and stifled economic recoveries.
The Indian outbreak exacerbates this uneven recovery scenario. Of the vaccine doses received in Africa as of mid-May, by the time Indian supply disruptions had begun, almost one-half were from COVAX, with bilaterally negotiated supplies accounting for most of the remainder and AVATT deliveries expected in significant quantities only in the third quarter of 2021. In turn, in the three rounds of COVAX allocations the vast majority of doses (237 million) have been of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, almost all of which were made by the Serum Institute India. Only 15.4 million have been Pfizer-BioNTech, produced in a number of other sites outside India. The need to redirect Indian vaccines is estimated to have left COVAX with a shortfall of 190 million doses.
With vaccine exports from India banned until at least October, supply shortages in the COVAX initiative are likely to substantively delay the African vaccine drive and, in turn, any end to the pandemic on the continent.
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Fortunately, Africa is not helpless. Over the short-to-medium term it will be important for African countries to consider diversifying vaccine supplies. Strategies might include raising the number of approved vaccines in supply portfolios and diversifying acquisition channels, contracted manufacturers, and the geographical mix of suppliers. The 870 million vaccine doses pledged to COVAX by the G-7 at their meeting in June is a welcome start.
Over the medium to long term, African countries must increasingly look to local manufacturing of vaccines. With momentum shifting behind a World Trade Organization waiver on intellectual property rights protections for vaccines, African countries may have opportunities for expanding and ramping up vaccine production on the continent. Doing so may help African countries to fight the COVID-19 pandemic with additional vaccine supplies, once this capacity comes online, but it could also prepare capacity for other future and ongoing health challenges beyond COVID-19. In fact, progress is already underway: The Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, with support from a number of donors, is constructing a facility that aims to produce 25 million doses monthly by the end of 2022.
The collective impact on African economies
The effects of trade spillovers, disrupted vaccine supplies, and the emergence of a new highly transmissible variant have been incorporated into an updated version of the UNECA macroeconomic model to assess the impact of the Indian second wave on the aggregate African economy. The situation is rapidly developing, and such estimates are best considered initial approximations among considerable uncertainty.
Initial UNECA estimates show that the outbreak of the delta COVID-19 variant in India is forecast to reduce Africa’s GDP growth by 0.5 percentage points in 2021 and a further 0.1 percent in 2022. These drops amount to approximately $13.5 billion in lost economic output in 2021 alone. Delayed recovery in labor markets and external demand due to the surging COVID-19 cases (with resulting persistent lockdowns) are the key drivers that will drag down economic activity. The pandemic outbreak will also reduce labor supply and labor participation rates as governments tighten restrictions. Rising unemployment, declining incomes, and growing poverty induced by the new wave further necessitate accelerated vaccination to reduce the impact of the Indian wave on the African continent.
New courses out of crisis?
As the “vaccine factory of the world,” India’s need to refocus vaccines toward its own COVID-19 crisis has greatly exacerbated the challenges of vaccine access in Africa. In the words of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, director-general of the World Trade Organization, “We have now seen that over-centralization of vaccine production capacity is incompatible with equitable access in a crisis situation” and that “regional production hubs, in tandem with open supply chains, offer a more promising path to preparedness for future health crisis.”
This is exactly the course of action African governments must see through to improve vaccination rates across the continent and bring forward an end to the crisis. The Indian second COVID-19 wave has reaffirmed the agreement of the African Union Heads of State at the Africa CDC’s vaccine-manufacturing summit on the need for “establishing a sustainable vaccine development and manufacturing ecosystem in Africa.”
Decoupling economic growth from emissions in the Middle East and North Africa
Economic growth plays a critical role in raising living standards and enabling human progress. However, economic growth needs to decouple from negative environmental consequences, as these, in turn, degrade the very foundations of human development. One example of a negative environmental consequence is airborne emissions that lead to climate change and air pollution. To meet any emissions reduction target, the minimum requirement is that economic growth decouples from emissions growth. Hence, at best, emissions would be reduced from year to year, at a steady pace, even if the economy grows—a process called absolute decoupling. At second-best, the growth rate of the economy would outpace the growth rate of emissions—a process called relative decoupling.
No decoupling of emissions from economic growth in MENA
The Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) is the only region in the world where greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are not decoupling from income growth. The decoupling processes can be visualized as is done in Figure 1 for a world average as well as for Europe and Central Asia (ECA) and MENA. It plots the growth of gross national income (GNI, blue line) and carbon emissions (red line), both in per capita terms, from 1990 to 2018 for an average resident of the world, ECA, and MENA. Globally (left panel of Figure 1), relative decoupling was achieved with average incomes rising faster than per capita carbon emissions, even though emissions were still increasing over this period. In ECA (middle panel of Figure 1), absolute decoupling was achieved, with average carbon emissions per capita decreasing by around 30 percent compared to their 1990 levels. In a forthcoming report,“Blue Skies, Blue Seas in the Middle East and North Africa,” we show that North America also achieved absolute decoupling, while other regions of the world (including East Asia and Pacific, South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean) managed to decouple income growth from carbon emissions relatively. In stark contrast, MENA (right panel of Figure 1) is the only region, in which growth of CO2 emissions per capita has outpaced the growth of average incomes, making it the only region that hasn’t decoupled in some form.
Figure 1. MENA, unlike other regions, is not decoupling income growth from carbon emissions
Source: World Bank staff based on data from United Nations Development Program and Global Carbon Project.Note: Figure shows growth rates of gross national income per capita and carbon emissions per capita in percentage points since 1990.
MENA is an assortment of heterogenous countries: Some actually did manage to decouple, while most others did not. When zooming in on the individual country level, it becomes clear that while MENA as a region was not able to decouple income growth from carbon emissions growth, some countries in the region were. Figure 2 shows that while Iran, Oman, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia were not decoupling, other countries such as Tunisia, Lebanon, and Djibouti have achieved relative decoupling. Bahrain and Jordan were even absolutely decoupling (although only slightly).
Figure 2. Some MENA countries have managed to decouple carbon emissions from income growth
Source: World Bank staff based on data from United Nations Development Program and Global Carbon Project.
Air pollution emissions are decoupling in MENA from economic growth, although this is the world region where this decoupling is taking place at the slowest rate in international comparison (see Figure 3). The pattern is similar for air pollutants such as nitrogen oxide (NOx), which stems from road transport and industries but also agriculture, and sulfur dioxide (SO2), which stems mainly from burning fossil fuels by vehicles but also from energy production. Figure 3 plots differential growth rates for incomes and the respective air pollutant and while MENA has been able to relatively decouple NOx and SO2 emissions from income growth, it was the slowest region doing so. There has been an acceleration of this decoupling trend in recent years due to advances in industrial and agricultural processes; for example in Iran, NOx emissions from the agricultural sector have been reduced strongly by less intensive use of fertilizers, while the switch toward gas for energy production away from heavy oils and desulfurization of flue gas has helped reduce SO2 emissions. In Egypt, industrial NOx emissions decreased beginning in 2010, partly due to advances such as the switch from burning heavy fuel oil (so-called mazout) to using compressed natural gas in brick factories, and due to incentivization of resource efficiency and end-of-pipe technologies. Morocco has also seen positive developments regarding its SO2 emissions, which is attributable to the enforcement of strict sulfur limits in gasoline and diesel in the past years. Nonetheless, slow overall decoupling of these air pollutants puts MENA again at the back in a regional comparison.
Figure 3. MENA region is slowest in decoupling NOx and SO2 emissions
Source: World Bank staff based on data from United Nations Development Program, Hoesly et al. (2018) and World Resources Institute.Note: Figures show differential between growth rates of gross national income per capita and the emission of the respective air pollutant per capita. Growth rates are calculated in comparison to 1990 levels and the differences in growth rates were computed (and expressed in percentage points).
This blog showed that MENA was the only region to not decouple income growth and carbon emissions growth and the least successful in decoupling income growth from air pollutant growth. But what are the reasons for these failures and what can be done about it? Stay tuned for a follow-up blog in which we will discuss why there has not been decoupling in MENA and how to kick-start decoupling, and review some of the main messages coming out of the regional flagship report “Blue Skies, Blue Seas in the Middle East and North Africa.”
Who’s ready to change? Tracking adaptations during scaling in education
For the past seven years, the Center for Universal Education (CUE) has researched education initiatives that are scaling around the world and has found that they share at least one thing in common: Each has proactively and reactively adapted to changing circumstances and contexts. Whether expanding to new communities, becoming embedded into national systems, or responding to the global pandemic, each of these initiatives has needed to alter, tweak, or in some cases overhaul an initiative’s design, delivery, or financing approach.
So, the question is not will our environments change, but how do we adapt. When it comes to education, we’ve found that too often adaptations made are not systematically planned for or well documented, and the opportunity to learn from these modifications is lost. This occurs for many understandable reasons, including that those involved with designing and delivering large-scale education programs often do not have the luxury of space and time to pause, reflect, and course-correct based on new data and changes in the broader environment.
Adaptation tracking tool
In an effort to respond to this reality, CUE has just published an Adaptation Tracker designed to support education practitioners to regularly plan for, document, and learn from adaptations in order to strengthen efforts to scale and sustain an initiative.
The tool is based on the Plan-Do-Study-Act template used in improvement science and directly informed by the experiences of—and input from—Real-time Scaling Lab partners. The tool is intended to be used at various intervals throughout any scaling process, with timely data collected and analyzed to inform quick learning and decisionmaking. It involves four simple steps repeated over time:
Identify what is the overarching scaling goal of the initiative and what key scaling driver or factor contributing to this goal will be the focus of any change.
Plan what adaptation will be tested to respond to a challenge or opportunity related to this scaling driver and how it will be executed and measured.
Test the adaptation in a short learning cycle—capturing any problems that arise, spontaneous changes made, and early results.
Reflect on the results of the adaptation, including what worked, did not work, and any lessons learned. Based on this learning, determine what changes to make to the model or strategy and what further adaptations to try—continuing the iterative learning cycle.
What does this look like in practice?
In the Philippines, the Department of Education (DepEd) has prioritized the effective delivery of teacher professional development (TPD) programs in an effort to improve the quality of education across the country. One flagship program is a blended teacher professional development course—Early Language, Literacy, and Numeracy (ELLN) Digital—rolled out to all K-3 teachers in the country beginning 2019. The ELLN Digital course combines guided independent study of multimedia courseware by the teachers with collaborative learning through school-based teachers’ groups. Given the magnitude of the TPD needs within the system, DepEd faced a major challenge in delivering in-service training to approximately 300,000 K-3 teachers—how to maintain the quality of training as ELLN Digital goes to scale while ensuring the approach is well tailored to the country’s diverse contexts.
In response to this challenge, DepEd partnered with the NGO Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development, Inc. (FIT-ED) to incorporate “Plan-Do-Study-Act” improvement cycles in each school and division. These improvement cycles enable quick feedback loops to inform ongoing adaptation and course correction of ELLN Digital implementation at the school level, and data is planned to be aggregated across schools, divisions, and regions to inform future rollout to more teachers and in more schools. This systemwide iterative learning process has been possible given the space, mandate, and resourcing by the government at the central level.
Over the past three years, a number of lessons are emerging from embedding an iterative adaptive learning cycle into the rollout of a national TPD program. These include:
The need to understand readiness for scaling prior to rolling out any new initiative.
The critical importance of the enabling environment, including the political, cultural, economic, technological, and institutional conditions of the local context.
The centrality of fostering agency among implementers—in this case teachers, school leaders, and coaches—by capacitating them for problem-solving and decisionmaking, and by creating spaces for experimentation and collaboration.
The challenge of building a critical mass of expertise at local levels through—among others—professional learning communities for teachers and instructional leaders collaborating with community members and other education stakeholders.
With so many unknowns in the world, one thing is certain: Our environments are dynamic and constantly evolving. Sustainable scaling must take these realities into account and be prepared to respond and adapt. This requires fostering and strengthening adaptive capacity and the use of data for learning among different stakeholders involved with scaling. This tool, and a suite of other complementary scaling resources, are intended to support these important efforts.
We welcome any thoughts, suggestions, or questions related to this tool. To share your experience or offer feedback for future editions, please email cue@brookings.edu.
Note: This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Canada to the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development (FIT-ED). The views expressed in this work are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the International Development Research Centre, Canada or its Board of Governors; or the Foundation for Information Technology Education and Development.
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