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Five recently funded projects will examine the impact of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa.

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, innovations that improve food and nutrition security have become even more urgent.

Physical distancing and economic lockdowns to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic have altered everyday life and how people interact around the world.

Youth unemployment is a chronic problem across sub-Saharan Africa, where a large proportion of young people are unemployed and neither in training or gaining an education.

In Central America’s Northern Triangle, a region plagued by gang violence and branded one of the most violent in the world, Glasswing International is tackling the complex factors associated with youth, violence, and poverty.

CultiAF aims to scale up successes from the partnership’s first phase and develop new climate-resilient and gender-responsive innovations for smallholder farmers.

Millions, especially women, live with a deep sense of insecurity and experience violence in a multitude of forms each day.

From 2006-2012, 212 organizations participated in research supported by the Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (CCAA) program. Despite the lack of African institutions working on climate change issues prior to the CCAA program, some 89% of these organizations are based in Africa, and now represent one of CCAA's key results: a strong base of African expertise to conduct and communicate research on adaptation to climate change. Following CCAA funding, mentoring, and opportunities to work with international experts, these institutions and their researchers are now recognized by communities and governments in Africa and beyond as go-to experts to inform adaptation initiatives, programs, and policies.

Zimbabwe continues to experience high levels of poverty and unemployment. IDRC is supporting the University of Zimbabwe’s Institute of Environmental Studies (IES) as it explores the multiple dimensions of the country’s challenges and generates debates and ideas for reconstruction and development. The project research team conducted a baseline survey on poverty, well-being, and inequality in Zimbabwe, and worked to build the capacity of the IES’s own researchers and their contribution to Zimbabwe’s recovery and growth.

Despite recent progress, as a region, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of maternal, infant, and child mortality in the world. From 2009 to 2012, researchers led by Niger’s Laboratoire d'études et de recherches sur les dynamiques sociales et le développement local (LASDEL) analyzed government efforts in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger to increase access to health care by removing user fees.

In the 1980s, with advice from international organizations, most African countries adopted direct payment for health services as the primary means to finance their health systems. Patients had to pay for health services out-of-pocket, severely hindering access to services for the most vulnerable. New recommendations in the 2000s called for African countries to offer subsidies or abolish payments for certain health services and groups. Until now, the impacts of these reforms in francophone West Africa have not been documented.

With high rates of formal unemployment in much of Africa, the informal economy has emerged as a major source of income for poor urban households. Migrants in and from cities in Southern Africa play a critical role in the informal economy, yet the importance of that role is often underestimated and even invisible to researchers and policy-makers.

For the tobacco industry, West Africa is a lucrative market. Although detrimental to health, tobacco consumption is on the rise, particularly among young people.

There is ample evidence that addressing gender inequalities and empowering women are vital to meeting the challenges of improving food and nutrition security, and enabling poor rural people to overcome poverty.