Preparation of COVID-19 response and recovery plan for the UN (Sierra Leone) country team

Based on ongoing data collection to track the impact of the COVID-19 on lives and livelihood in Sierra Leone, it is clear that the pandemic has affected almost every sector of the economy and has threatened to reverse most of the gains made over the years. In view of this, the UN Country team in Sierra Leone, requested the IGC Sierra Leone country team to prepare a comprehensive socio-economic response plan that will guide UN agencies’ intervention as they support government response and early recovery efforts.

The primary objective of the project is to design a socio-economic response and early recovery plan with a conflict sensitive lens which will be used as a guiding document in the implementation of an effective response and recovery programme to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in Sierra Leone. The plan, which will be based on the five pillars of the UN framework, will complement government's Quick Action Economic Response Programme.

While the Governement of Sierra Leone has prepared both a health and socioeconomic response plans to guide their response to the pandemic and UN Agencies have reprogrammed existing activities to support government efforts, the agencies lacked a comprehensive plan to guide their interventions. Additionally, the government plans were developed at the very early stages of the pandemic when very little was known about the impact it will have on the economy. Therefore the analysis and proposals were largely based on assumptions that might be redundant now that a lot of data has been collected.