A new Danish tool has predicted the displacement of over a million people in Africa, as Coronavirus cases increase in the continent.
Developed by the Danish Refugee Council (DRC) with funding from the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Foresight tool has already been deployed in both Myanmar and Afghanistan to predict upcoming humanitarian aid needs for crisis hit regions.
In some countries, such as Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger and Nigeria, the pandemic is expected to increase forced displacement by more than 14 percentage points, according to the tool.
This is the equivalent of a minimum of an additional one million people being displaced across the four countries if no action is taken.
Data shows that Covid-19 increases unemployment, lowers economic growth and weakens governance in several countries.
Based on the Foresight analysis of data for four countries there is also a quantifiable increased risk of large-scale displacement in countries hit by war, famine and natural
And figures from the UN Refugee Agency show that at the end of 2019, global displacement had surged to nearly 80 million people – a precipitous rise from the start of the century.
The tool analyses a range of factors, from economic and governmental through to environmental and stability, to formulate its predictions. It draws on World Bank, UN and other publicly available data sources to do so.
