The Regional Studies Association (RSA) is committed to supporting the global community in researching and disseminating evidence on how regions, cities and industry are addressing the impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19). This Small Grant Scheme has been launched to support our community in this work. The money to fund this scheme has been repurposed from…
How Ghana’s COVID-19 measures locked down ‘food for the working poor’
Ghana announced its first two imported cases of COVID-19 on the 12th of March 2020. By the 7th of May, the cases had shot up to 3,091 with 18 deaths. Accra, the capital city has become the epicentre of the outbreak. To contain the spread, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) shut down and fumigated all markets…
In Paraguay, COVID-19 exposes the problems of land concentration: food imports and the limits of policies for peasant support
The government of Paraguay adopted preventive sanitary measures on March 10th, prohibiting activities that gather many people, and, later, on March 28th, adopted stronger measures for isolation. On March 13th, the government announced an increase in the value of the cash transfer programs to the vulnerable and senior population (Tekoporã and Adulto Mayor). There were…
Essential work but not essential workers?
Chile is in the WHO’s stage 4 of the pandemic, meaning the transmission of the virus among the community has become uncontrolled and widespread (WHO, 2009). Santiago’s metropolitan area, where nearly half of the Chilean population reside, was the seed of the infection in the country, as the middle and upper class returned from Europe…
The corona pandemic and Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan’s agriculture: Food imports, strong domestic cereal production and the resilience of small-scale farmers
In Iraq, including the Kurdistan region of Iraq (KRI), the current official number of people infected is 2,818 with 110 people dead. A curfew had been imposed that left no freedom to circulate other than for health workers and security forces. This is lifted to a curfew from 6 pm to 6 am with some…