Assessing the Socio-Economic Impact of Coronavrius in Africa

Abstract

The looming health shock of coronavirus could have disastrous impacts on the continent’s already strained health systems, and could quickly turn into a social and economic emergency. This paper, therefore, intends to assess the effects of coronavirus on Africa economies. (using its growth implication) Based on the endogenous growth theoretical approach, the link between life expectancy, poverty incidence, and economic growth was estimated using the GMM technique of analysis with 32 selected Africa countries. Findings showed that coronavirus exhibited negative and substantial impact on socio-economic situation and macroeconomic variables in Africa such as inflation, unemployment, poverty rate and economic growth, amongst others. The result ascertained that the government expenditure significantly increased during the period in a bid to curb the pandemic, but household welfare degenerated and was negatively affected with high poverty rate, this paper recommended that the government of the Africa countries should diversify the revenue base of their economies to cushion the effect of unprecedented shock due to the pandemic and provide adequate relief materials to pad the effect of loss of income to the poor and vulnerable, support in the implementation of structural reforms to enable them to build capacity and generate sufficient domestic resources or fiscal buffers to effectively manage pandemics. Keywords: socio-economic, economic growth, and coronavirus DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/13-13-01 Publication date: July 31 st 2022