Economic growth in Jordan potentially will come to a halt this year. This comes as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. Government imposed an economic lockdown which restricted non-essential economic activities and people’s movement in order to contain the virus. A SAM multiplier model was used to estimate the economic impact of the lockdown and to explore potential recovery pathways for the Jordanian economy. Some of the key findings from this modeling exercise are: • National GDP is estimated to have fallen by 23 percent during the lockdown period. The services sector was hardest hit, seeing an estimated drop in output of almost 30 percent. • Food systems in Jordan are estimated to have experienced a reduction in output by almost 40 percent. • Employment losses during the lockdown were estimated at over 20 percent, mainly driven by job losses in services, followed by agriculture. • Household income fell on average by around one-fifth due to the lockdown, mainly driven by contraction in service sector activities, by slowdown in manufacturing activity, and by lower remittances from abroad. • GDP growth rates for Jordan’s economy will continue to be negative through 2020, ranging from -5.7 to -7.4 percent, depending on the speed of economic recovery. A slow pace of recovery is expected. This economic recovery offers opportunities for fostering sustainable economic transformation and structural change. Economic policies and incentives should be directed towards more economic diversification, greater resilience to withstand economic shocks, and job creation.

Governments worldwide are implementing an extensive range of prevention and mitigation measures to control the spread of COVID-19 and limit its health, economic and social consequences. COVID-19 policy actions could have significant negative impacts across the food system, mainly if the policies are uncoordinated and built on limited evidence. In Jordan, the COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to cause direct harm to health, livelihoods, to people living standard and overall national economies. This articulates the importance of formulating long, medium and short-term policies to deal with pandemic priorities and alleviate COVID-19 and increase development investments in the agriculture sector as one of the most critical sectors in such these conditions. This study determines the short-term impact of COVID-19 on agriculture and food supply and identifies the positive impact of government measures taken across the country of Jordan. This rapid assessment utilized primary data and existing data related to the agriculture-food systems sector to understand the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and produced recommendations and policy actions. The assessment's general objective is to identify the effects of COVID-19 on Agri-food systems actors and recommend policies to alleviate the negative impact. It explores the range of policies, strategies and actions, in the short- and medium/long-term in the broader agriculture/food systems sector. Recommendations and suggested policies (10 policies) are formed depending on the results of the field surveys (farmers, exporters and supply chain actors survey), the results of secondary data analysis, IMF targeted policies (9 pillars), Jordan COVID-19 and Food Security Rapid Assessment-Policy

As COVID-19 spread across the globe in early 2020, governments had to make difficult policy choices to balance the socioeconomic costs of social distancing and lockdown measures, on the one hand, and the human costs of increased morbidity and mortality of an unchecked pandemic, on the other. The challenge was particularly daunting for developing countries with their often illequipped and underfunded health systems coupled with general skepticism about the effectiveness of economic restrictions to curb viral spread, especially in densely populated informal urban communities (The Economist 2020). Poorer developing country populations also tend to be less resilient to income shocks, while the social protection measures needed to mitigate against income losses are costly. With developing country governments already heavily indebted before the pandemic (Onyekwena and Ekeruche 2019), and with further anticipated losses in tax revenues due to COVID-related economic restrictions, their ability to finance palliative measures without sacrificing much-needed, longer-term public investments has remained a major concern.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended local, national, and global food systems, and put the Sustainable Development Goals further out of reach. But lessons from the world’s response to the pandemic can help address future shocks and contribute to food system change. In the 2021 Global Food Policy Report, IFPRI researchers and other food policy experts explore the impacts of the pandemic and government policy responses, particularly for the poor and disadvantaged, and consider what this means for transforming our food systems to be healthy, resilient, efficient, sustainable, and inclusive. Chapters in the report look at balancing health and economic policies, promoting healthy diets and nutrition, strengthening social protection policies and inclusion, integrating natural resource protection into food sector policies, and enhancing the contribution of the private sector. Regional sections look at the diverse experiences around the world, and a special section on finance looks at innovative ways of funding food system transformation. Critical questions addressed include: - Who felt the greatest impact from falling incomes and food system disruptions caused by the pandemic? - How can countries find an effective balance among health, economic, and social policies in the face of crisis? - How did lockdowns affect diet quality and quantity in rural and urban areas? - Do national social protection systems such as cash transfers have the capacity to protect poor and vulnerable groups in a global crisis? - Can better integration of agricultural and ecosystem polices help prevent the next pandemic? - How did companies accelerate ongoing trends in digitalization and integration to keep food supply chains moving? - What different challenges did the pandemic spark in Asia, Africa, and Latin America and how did these regions respond?

This paper combines pre-pandemic face-to-face survey data with follow up phone surveys collected in April-May 2020 to quantify the overall and differential impacts of COVID-19 on household food security, labor market participation and local food prices in Nigeria. We exploit spatial variation in exposure to COVID-19 related infections and lockdown measures along with temporal differences in our outcomes of interest using a difference-in-difference approach. We find that those households exposed to higher COVID-19 cases or mobility lockdowns experience a significant increase in measures of food insecurity. Examining possible transmission channels for this effect, we find that COVID-19 significantly reduces labor market participation and increases food prices. We find that impacts differ by economic activities and households. For instance, lockdown measures increased households' experience of food insecurity by 12 percentage points and reduced the probability of participation in non-farm business activities by 13 percentage points. These lockdown measures have smaller impacts on wage-related activities and farming activities. In terms of food security, households relying on non-farm businesses, poorer households, those with school-aged children, and those living in remote and conflicted-affected zones have experienced relatively larger deteriorations in food insecurity. These findings can help inform immediate and medium-term policy responses, including social protection policies aiming at ameliorating the impacts of the pandemic, as well as guide targeting strategies of governments and international donor agencies by identifying the most impacted sub-populations.

The Democratic Education Network (DEN) is a collaborative group involving academicstaff and students that aims to organize and support the educational experience ofstudents at the University of Westminster. DEN has inspired students to engage locallyand globally.Since the outbreak of COVID-19, DEN has played a significant role engaging studentsonline, and aiming to facilitate their learning process. This book is a compilationof papers written by both students at the University of Westminster and its partnerinternational universities. The book brings together different topics and conceptsrelated to the governance and management of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Itanalyses the political, economic, and social impact of COVID-19 on the agendas set bygovernments all around the world. This edition of the book is a manifestation of DEN’scollective teamwork.“I am so pleased to see the hard work of staff and students in the DemocraticEducation Network (DEN) come to fruition in this excellent publication. I recognisethe value of these collaborations in our turbulent times, and it is lovely to see studentsand academic staff from all over the world come together to develop meaningful,apposite, and challenging scholarship. Working in partnership with students is such astrength of the culture at the University of Westminster, and it is great to see this workdemonstrated so effectively in this text

The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and government policies to limit its spread are multi-faceted and complex. Market linkages transmit these impacts through economies, from directly affected actors to others in both the urban and rural spheres. Economic contexts, including the structure of local economies, shape the transmission of impacts on rural men and women. Because of this, the pandemic, lockdowns, and mitigation policies influence outcomes in complex ways. In most cases, the magnitudes and even the signs of impacts cannot be determined ex ante. In this study, we use multiple local economy-wide impact evaluation (LEWIE) models to estimate the impacts of the pandemic and lockdowns on rural producers and households in a diversity of economic and agro-climatic settings, using simulation methods. We also examine the likely effects of alternative migitation measures.