7 Apr 2020 Dear Ayoub, The spread of the coronavirus from China to Europe and the rest of the world is engulfing like a tidal wave many of the worthy initiatives that had come out just before, making them inconsequential. It’s not even a month since the EU published its proposal for a new strategy with Africa. Yet, it seems like a year ago and much of what is in the strategy will need to be re-written and adapted to a whole new world. Geert Laporte has taken some of the key ideas that were in that document and looked at how the Corona pandemic will affect them and the EU-Africa relationship more broadly. The virus is moving rapidly across the globe and tackling it will require urgent decisions and especially actions from the international community. Later today, the European Commission will publish its proposal for an EU global response to COVID-19. This will then be discussed by EU foreign and development ministers, who will provide their guidance on the way forward. ECDPM will soon publish a short analysis of the proposed measures and what an EU comprehensive response to COVID-19 could look like. In the meantime, you can have a look at San Bilal and Dirk Willem te Velde’s ideas on how the EU should refocus development priorities to address the socioeconomic impacts of this pandemic. One of the many needed responses to this crisis will be to develop food systems that can resist these and other types of shocks. Paulina Bizzotto Molina, Valeria Pintus, Koen Dekeyser and Cecilia D’Alessandro explain how understanding the challenges and opportunities within a food system is crucial to building more resilient societies. Finally, Amanda Bisong has written a blog post on how African policymakers will respond to the new EU visa code that will explicitly link visa facilitation to cooperation on return and readmission of their nationals. There won’t be a Weekly Compass next week, but we will be back in your inbox on 21 April. Keep safe, Virginia