SPACE Economics of Early Response and Resilience to COVID-19: Ethiopia

The 2013 and 2018 Economics of Early Response and Resilience (TEERR) studies demonstrated the significant economic gains of investing in a more proactive response to crises. The first study was funded by DFID in 2013, followed by a more in-depth analysis in 2018 with USAID in three countries – Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. The studies estimate the relative cost of a late humanitarian response, and compare this with the early humanitarian response, a safety net response, and a resilience-building scenario (each of these scenarios build on each other and the findings are cumulative), and were seminal in changing the way that both donors fund crises. This paper builds on those seminal studies to understand what the economic gains could have been of the COVID-19 social protection and humanitarian response, primarily focusing on the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) in Ethiopia.