Pandemic plunging millions into extreme poverty

As a domestic worker, Amsale Hailemariam had an inside view of a richer lifestyle in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. But the coronavirus has cost the single mother even that meager living, putting that world even farther out of reach.

"Since the beginning of the coronavirus, there is no job," she says from her ramshackle tin and plastic house, in the shadow of the luxury villas where she once worked. "We are staying at home and have stopped moving out so that we don't get infected."

And because of the mayhem caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, many more around the world may soon be joining her.

The World Bank says up to 100 million people could soon fall into extreme poverty _ defined as living on just $1.90 a day.

"A lot of the gains the last 25 years are going to be wiped out," says Gayle Smithl, president and CEO of the ONE Campaign. "I think we're looking at a serious setback and a lot of very immediate real human suffering."

"Because of the global pandemic, we indeed expect _ or these models expect _ for poverty to rise for the first time since the Asian economic crisis in 1998," says Tom Bundervoet, a poverty economist for the World Bank, who has been based in Ethiopia for four years.

More than 736 million people are already in extreme poverty, half of them in just five countries – Bangladesh, Congo, India, Nigeria and Ethiopia.

For some, the name Ethiopia conjures decades-old images of famine, poverty. But the last quarter century has seen a transformation in the East African nation that is one of the world's economic success stories.

Smith says Ethiopia, like many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, is heavily dependent on foreign investment. With travel restrictions, that has come to a standstill.

"They don't have the money they need to both respond to the pandemic, but also stop the bleeding from this sudden freeze in income in capital and revenue," she says.

She says the poorer countries need more financial help – especially debt relief.

"Bilateral debt service has been suspended through the end of this year, but it's not nearly enough," Smith says. "We need to go through 2021. We need the multilateral organizations and the private creditors to come on board."

How swiftly things rebound depends on how quickly an effective vaccine is found – and how equitably it is distributed, Bundervoet says.

"If we see a kind of a normalization of the global pandemic by the end of the year, in which the pandemic is under control, cases are low, there's progress towards a vaccine, I think Ethiopia can rebound quickly," he says.

Until then, things will continue to deteriorate for people like Hailmariam.

"We are living in a state where we are above the dead and below the living" she say. "This is not life."

Until the outbreak, her daughter, Bethlehem Jafar, was studying for a career in public health. She has been forced to put that aside for now.

Hailmariam says her hopes and dreams are tied up in her daughter. And that is why she does not give up.

"So that she doesn't follow in my footsteps and go through what I went through," she says, "I singlehandedly worked hard to see her go to school and succeed."