Modelling a Gender Inclusive Covid-19 Recovery for Zimbabwe

On March 20, 2020, Zimbabwe reported its first confirmed coronavirus disease (COVID-19) case. The pandemic, coupled with extraordinary responses to combat it, is expected to have an impact on the people and the economy. Woman-headed households are facing the biggest impact through income loss, food insecurity and care-giving burdens. Research presents preliminary modelling analysis of the impact of alternative COVID-19 mitigation and recovery scenarios. The study relies heavily on the use of a tailored Zimbabwean computable general-equilibrium model linked to a household survey based micro-simulation model. A 2019 Social Accounting Matrix and a 2017 household income survey are used to implement the models. The analysis is done nationwide and across diverse socioeconomic categories - in particular, gender and rural/urban regions, with a view to identifying the most affected and vulnerable populations and how the planned recovery policies affect them. Six scenarios simulate the impacts and recovery and response policies. As impact and recovery scenarios, we differentiate a scenario with an early recovery --resulting in relative “mild” expression of the impacts—and a scenario with a later recovery --resulting in relative “severe” expression of the economic impacts. The modelling analysis so far presents the following important conclusions: •The mild scenario is harsh, but compared to the severe scenario, it’s impact is lower. •The mitigation measures are helping, and they are helping women even more. The side effect of the mitigation measures is the negative impact on investment in the long run. •The recovery scenarios help to get the sectors back to production, which is welcome as it leads to an increase in investment. However, although the BAU values are still not reached, the economy gets closer to reaching where it would have been had there been no COVID-19 pandemic.