COVID-19, Oil Exports, and Government’s Response: Systematic Reviews of Insights from Nigeria and Angola

Abstract

This article examined how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted oil earnings and the government's financial capacity in response to the pandemic. This was aimed at advancing knowledge on the effectiveness and sustainability of the government’s financial response to mitigating COVID-19 shocks in Nigeria and Angola. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) report, which disclosed that Nigeria and Angola, two of Africa's oil-producing nations, are more severely affected by COVID-19 shocks, serves as the foundation for this research. A systematic qualitative research design, which relies on reports from the country's national authorities, observation, and document analysis of the IMF's COVID-19 country focus report, as well as other empirical studies on the subject, was employed. The findings showed that COVID-19, which led to a fall in global demand for the usage of crude oil, pushed Nigeria and Angola to revise their budget. It found that the revision of the budget only aided a few positive response outcomes in the short term. It concluded that the decline in oil earnings by Nigeria and Angola hampered the government's financial capacity to effectively and sustainably respond to the pandemic.