Bailouts and stimulus packages offered by local governments, international finance institutions and funds have ensued in an endeavor to keep the global economy afloat. Consequently, it is believed that the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic will last longer than the healthcare crisis. To assess the impact of COVID-19 within a gender specific context, the MasterCard Index for Women Entrepreneurs (MIWE) Report (2020) stated that 87% of female led-businesses in developed countries such as the US, Israel, and France were impacted by the pandemic.
The discrepancy between female-led business and their male counterparts is further exacerbated when widening the scope to include factors such as over-representation of women in service sectors and industries heavily impacted by the pandemic such as tourism, travel & transport, retail, food services, accommodation, entertainment & recreation and manufacturing. As a result, only 52% of businesses owned by men were impacted by the pandemic, whereas 64% of their female counterparts saw their businesses more heavily affected. Women are also a demographic heavily affected by financial marginalization, where in developing and lower-middle income countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Tunisia, Malawi and Uganda, only 20-30% of women have a bank account which hindered their access to government stimulus funds, COVID-19 relief payments and cash. This has seen the call for a strengthened fintech sector and digital economy that will allow digital transactions and payments, furthering and accelerating the agenda of financial inclusion. African economies, in the midst of the ratification and implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Zone (AfCFTA) Agreement, have fared better during pandemic as a result of low transmission and infection rates, as well
as strict COVID-19 protocols and mobilization of private sector resources to address food and medication shortages and the temporary disruption of the global supply chain.
The African Continental Free Trade Zone (AfCFTA) is a free trade zone concluded under agreement and ratified by fifty-four (54) out of fifty-five (55) African member states with the overall objective of creating a unified single African market. With trading becoming active in Q1 2021, the AfCFTA Agreement will create a single market of 1.2 billion potential consumers and a combined market worth $2.5 trillion with all trade barriers eliminated, in the hope of facilitating intra-African trade. Nevertheless, the scope of the AfCFTA Agreement extends beyond trade liberalization; its core mandate is to accelerate economic growth and social development through cooperation and in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, encourage self-reliance and cooperation within African borders.
According to the African Union, the benefits of the AfCFTA Agreement for African economies include: 1) Stronger cooperation frameworks to boost trade capacity and social development 2) Better terms of trade to enhance global export earnings 3) Increased intra-African trade to boost revenues and livelihoods 4) Capturing trade in services to drive competitiveness 5)Stronger partnerships between public and private actors to enable trade expansion.