In the Business Beyond Covid series CEOs and other business leaders and experts in their sectors look to the future in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. What impact has the novel coronavirus and resulting lockdown had on their industries and SA economy as a whole, which parts will bounce back first, and which will never be the same again? Most importantly, they try to answer the question: where to from here?
It is becoming clear that most — if not all — of our major social, economic and political decisions over the next few years will be made through the prism of the coronavirus and the ripple effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Already the economic effects of lockdown can be felt as informal traders and small, medium and micro enterprises (SMME) grind to a halt due to government restrictions. The effects, while impossible to fully predict, are likely to reshape the future of the continent in fundamental ways.
While our current focus is on overcoming the immediate challenge posed by the virus, business leaders also need to invest time and energy in imagining life and work post-pandemic. In my own efforts to see past the Covid-19 crisis and consider what comes next, four key priorities emerge for tech businesses operating on the continent:
Supporting and accelerating SMME growth
Due to the digital skills divide and a number of other factors, most Africans are not actively working in the digital economy. The overwhelming majority of Africa’s citizens are informal traders, smallholder farmers and otherwise engaged in some form of entrepreneurship.
About 60% of Africa’s workforce are engaged in agriculture alone. The continent’s 250-million smallholder farmers, working on plots of about 2ha each on average and earning less than $1,000 per year, produce 80% of all food consumed here. A single smallholder farmer financially supports multiple family members and makes an invaluable contribution to food security. Any intervention that supports this sector has the potential to deliver dramatic socioeconomic returns.
We can see this in Nigeria, where an initiative by the Convention on Business Integrity’s for-profit arm, CBI Innovations, has seen the deployment of a technology tool to support 850,000 maize farmers and connect them more sustainably to the agricultural value chain.
Where countries have invested in building stronger agriculture sectors, the entire economy has been lifted. World Bank data shows that Ethiopia’s poverty levels dropped by a third since 2000 mainly thanks to impressive agricultural GDP growth of nearly 10% per year.
BUSINESSLIVE.CO.ZA
May 19, 2020
