Revenues of 70% of African businesses to decrease next month, poll says

– Support for informal sector remains a priority, says Osinbajo

In a live poll conducted by Africa.com as part of its webinar series, Crisis Management for African Business Leaders, nearly 70 percent of webinar participants predicted that their business revenue will decrease by more than 10 per cent next month. Only 20 per cent indicated that they expect revenue to remain the same or increase.

About 1,500 business leaders participated in the poll. Participants came from 41 countries across the African continent, with the largest representation coming from Nigeria. The largest sectors represented are financial services and professional services, followed by energy and manufacturing.

However, Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, has said support for the informal sector in Nigeria remains a priority for the government. He made this known yesterday at a virtual conference entitled “How Africa’s Informal Sector Reacts to COVID-19”, organized by Africa.com.

Besides the Vice President, others who spoke at the webinar were President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana; Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna; Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak, Prof. of Economics, Yale University; and Amandla Ooko-Ombaka, Senior Engagement Manager, McKinsey & Co.

Hakeem Bello-Osagie, a Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer of Business Administration, and Teresa Clarke, CEO of Africa.com, moderated the discussions with participation by thousands who signed in across the world.

According to Osinbajo, “perhaps we have the advantage of being able to manage our problems in smaller measure, or by dividing them, of course we run a federation, which means that Gov. Nasir could do some very excellent work there in Kaduna, Lagos could do excellent work, Ogun state and others could also do some excellent work.

“But of course, by the very nature of this pandemic, it also means that you run the risk of everything going south if some state isn’t doing as well as it ought to.

“I think, in the end, we have that advantage that we are able to almost isolate responses, and even look at best practices across the various states and try and ramp up wherever we find that there are deficiencies.”

El-rufai spoke about the efforts of Kaduna government in containing the spread of the disease as well as mitigating the effect of some of the measures adopted to check the spread.