How can Africa reposition businesses to mitigate the effects of Covid-19?

The coronavirus pandemic is posing severe challenges to the way we live and work. A crisis of this scale has left many fearful that disruption—personal, financial, societal—will be a way of life for some time.

Many small businesses in Africa will need to make radical changes to survive. Africa Haguruka, particularly during the sphere of business, discussed deeply how best the African continent can reposition businesses to mitigate the effects of Covid-19. 

Through the insights from Mr Mike Bolton, doing business in Canada & USA, Dr James Ogundele who works at Corning Inc, Mrs Consolatta Ruboneka, Rwanda, CEO Hotel des Milles Collines had discussions around Covid-19's impact on businesses in general,  Impact of Covid-19 on tourism & responses, and also approaches to managing the crisis for Christian entrepreneurs.

When asked about the possible Covid-19's impact on businesses in general, Mr Mike Bolton argued that “Covid-19 has seriously affected businesses in different industries around the world. He said that “Statistics in North America show that around 40% of the restaurants will never reopen, migration has been high like never before.” 

He mentioned how businesses and individuals that have responded very well to the Covid-19 changes and others responded poorly. Saying that “the pandemic required businesses to quickly change the way they operate, how they interact with customers and grow the market to new customers. The challenge has been huge to companies that cannot move and change quickly because they performed very poorly in the pandemic season.” 

He encouraged entrepreneurs in Africa to take the time to analyze the situation in their businesses and do what is necessary to improve their business outcomes.  He said that “it's important to try not to do a lot but focus on the key areas that would strengthen your business results.” 

Mrs. Consolatta Ruboneka talked about the Impact of Covid-19 on tourism and responses. She gave a real example of how her hotel managed the crisis saying that “the employees continued to work but the working conditions have changed based on agreements between the employer and employees. The way of operating has changed, but there has to be adjustments in a transparent way and we believe that the employees will go back to normal conditions when the situation gets better".

Considering the effects of Covid-19, Mrs Consolatta based on her experience gave Advice to other Christian entrepreneurs who need to embrace the wind of change saying that: 

• No one knows the end of this situation, but Christians should take advantage of their faith and trust God for the promises in their lives. 
• Second, it's also important to learn and understand that change has happened so that you can better adapt to what's coming. 
• Learning to live within your means/being content with what you have for the moment and use them to achieve the best that you can. 
• Understand that there are others who went through difficulties ahead of us, and stay steadfast, strong, and never give up on what you're called to do. 

On values and working systems that Christian entrepreneurs should adapt in response to Covid-19, Dr James Ogundele said that “digitalization has become a new way of life. It's important for businesses to adapt using technology in their operations, but there has to be an element of trust because using the internet comes with a risk of being prone to hacking.” He argued that Entrepreneurs should ensure that they are using secure platforms to protect the company and the customers' data.

Approaches to managing the crisis for Christian entrepreneurs
Dr James Ogundele also retaliated that “In a crisis, private companies have to consider the level at which they rank their employees among the stakeholders and take decisions that will balance off the effects. Companies that prioritize the employees may decide to even cut off salaries of the executives and other employees to ensure that they are all sharing the effects of the crisis instead of letting them go and suffer alone.”

“Companies should also assess the impact of the decision on sustainability. Are you playing for the short term or long term? If you're playing for the long term, you should understand that your employees are growing with you in bad & good situations and decide to carry them along with you despite the crisis.” He added. 

He also said that “companies that used the long term approach are recovering quickly and doing better than how they were doing before Covid-19 in countries where the economy is getting back to normal. However, those that used the short term approach and layed off their employees are now struggling to compete because they lost the key forces.” 

He advised all Entrepreneurs to treat their employees as the number one stakeholders. He said “as Christian entrepreneurs, it's important to share in the pain of a crisis with your employees and wait to share the rewards together when things are better.”