The Impact of COVID-19 on Children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

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This policy brief describes the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, based on recently collected data monitoring on the effects of the pandemic. The pandemic poses indirect health risks to children. It also has secondary impacts on children and households as a result of government-enacted policies for managing the pandemic, such as the re-prioritisation of financial resources away from critical child- relevant services, social distancing policies, and school lockdowns. These secondary impacts on children occur in the child-relevant sectors of health, nutrition, education, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), protection, security and social protection.

Policy responses and financing measures are crucial to protect children from the worst primary and secondary impacts of the pandemic in the short- and long-term. They are also needed to prevent long-term adverse impacts on their wellbeing, as well as the reversal of hard-earned progress made towards fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for children.

By the beginning of December 2020, over 113,000 Ethiopians have tested positive for COVID-19, of which 1,747 people have died. Ethiopia is one of the most severely hit countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, ranking second in the region after South Africa.

Children are highly vulnerable to the indirect secondary effects of the pandemic. This is due to household financial shocks and the disruption of social services and care networks, educational progress and essential health services. Already before the pandemic, two in three children in Ethiopia, and almost one in four children in Addis Ababa, lacked access to essential goods and services. More than 1.2 million children in Ethiopia, or 29.4 per cent, are monetarily poor, living in households that lack the minimum financial resources necessary for survival. In Addis Ababa, nearly 1 in 3 children are monetarily poor. A recent analysis by Save the Children and UNICEF predicted that the economic impact of the pandemic may push up to 24 million additional children living in Sub- Saharan Africa into poverty by the end of 2020, from 250 million children living in poor households to around 274 million children.1

This policy brief makes the first attempt to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children in Addis Ababa. The data are based on the results of telephone interviews with 241 households (encompassing more than 1000 individuals) in 3 sub-cities of Addis Ababa. The sampling methodology is described in detail in the next section. The results apply only to Addis Ababa and should not be used to make assumptions or generalizations about other regions, considering that monetary poverty and multidimensional deprivation incidence in Addis Ababa is the lowest in the country and that it is the most urbanized region in the country.