Mitigating lockdown challenges in response to COVID-19 in Sub-Saharan Africa

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) which was first reported in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 (Luo et al., 2020) has spread across the world with remarkable speed, with the World Health Organization (WHO) officially declaring a pandemic in March, 2020. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) are now reporting an increasing number of cases, both imported and acquired locally. As of April 14th, 2020, a cumulative total of approximately, 10,757 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 520 deaths have been reported within the WHO African Region, with South Africa, Algeria and Cameroon recording the highest number of cases (WHO, 2020a).