To Lockdown or Not to Lockdown: A Pragmatic Policy Response to COVID-19 in Zambia

COVID-19, declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, spread geographically with great speed and a high rate of mortality, initially in high-income countries but more latterly followed by countries in the developing world. In response to the pandemic, many countries around the world instituted ‘lockdowns’ of various sorts to contain it. Globally, the policy responses to contain COVID-19 have been similar but were applied by individual countries with different levels of intensity in line with the evolution of the pandemic in the respective countries and other considerations. Data suggest that the lockdown measures put in place by governments have triggered global socioeconomic shocks as economies have gone into recession due to the disruption of economic activity that the lockdown measures have entailed. The COVID-19 state response in Zambia has been informed more by the country’s economic circumstances than global trends. With a majority of people eking out a livelihood in an informal economy and already under pressure, Zambia’s response to the pandemic was more measured against its economic circumstances. This chapter aims to analyse the COVID-19 policy response adopted by Zambia and how this served to protect the livelihoods of the majority of the people in the informal economy.