Sixteen months after the emergence of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (COVID-19), severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection had been confirmed in almost 140 million people globally and led to >2.9 million deaths (WHO, 2021a). In April 2020, the World Bank expressed concern that high virus transmission posed the greatest risk in densely populated urban areas, especially those with poor infrastructure and service delivery systems (The World Bank, 2020). In Africa, the urban population stood at 588 million people in 2020, with 50% of this population living in informal settlements, while 70% of the population were self-employed or working in unregulated sectors, making them vulnerable to income losses and less able to adhere to COVID-19 restrictions and lockdowns (United Nations et al., 2019).
