Are population movement restrictions containing the COVID-19 cases in Sub-Saharan Africa?

ABSTRACT Governments in Sub-Saharan Africa introduced population movement restrictions as a measure to contain the COVID-19 spread. Their evaluation is paramount to help policymakers take evidence-based policy decisions. Rigorous econometric studies in the region are sparse. Our study contributes to covering this gap. Using a Panel Poisson fixed-effects model, we detect the association between the COVID-19 new cases per population and restriction movement policies across 23 Sub-Saharan African countries from February 28, 2020 to August 16, 2020. We control for the interaction of the policies with the spread of the infection, time-variant country-specific characteristics, and the countries’ preparedness level to respond to the pandemic. Our study shows that restrictive and lockdown measures contribute to the dilution of COVID-19 infections compared to a situation of no policies. Such effectiveness would be more substantial if countries intensify movement restrictions at the increasing levels of virus transmission, highlighting the importance of timely testing.