STUDY LABOUR AND SOCIAL JUSTICE POVERTY AND IN­EQUALITY DURING THE PANDEMIC The diverging experiences of Kenya and Senegal Rudolf Traub-Merz September 2022 • The governments of Kenya and Senegal both reacted quickly to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. But they applied very different lockdown policies and social relief measures to assist vulnerable households. • This paper looks at the impact of these policies on income and income distribution in the informal economy and provides a case study that illustrates how policies can be applied to reduce poverty and inequality even during a pandemic. • The report is based on repre­sentative household surveys in the pre-Covid and post-peak Covid period and draws on data from the FES-IDOS-ILO research project on Informal Employ­ment, Social Security and Political Trust in Sub­Saharan Africa.