Chart of the week: COVID-19 lockdown forces food prices to jump

The SBM Jollof Index for Q1 2020 will be published on Tuesday, 7 April. In collecting our Jollof Index data, we typically go to the markets on the last week of any given month. The month of March 2020 was different, however. In anticipation of a shutdown as a result of the COVID-19 epidemic, our researchers visited the markets twice in March. The first visit which was on the third week of March collected our routine data for the Jollof Index. The second visit, which happened on 30 March, was to test a theory that we had floated around in the office, which was that in the event of a lockdown by the Nigerian government, there would be a sharp increase in the prices of foodstuff. This infographic shows that increase.