In a dark, ground-floor room in Lagos, dressmaker Kemi Adepoju gazes at a pile of dresses she has made but that cannot be collected due to the lockdown in force to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“This lockdown came upon us suddenly. I used all my money to buy fabric. If I had known, I would have ... used it to buy food instead,” said the mother-of-two, who runs her business from a room she rents in the Iwaya suburb of Nigeria’s largest city.
Like millions in Africa, Adepoju works in the informal sector, which accounts for more than 85% of employment across the continent and will be largely bypassed by meagre economic support measures that cash-strapped governments are rolling out.
The IMF said in a blog on the outbreak’s impact on Africa in March that “social distancing” was not realistic for the most vulnerable and the notion of working from home was only possible for the few.
Lockdowns, initially expected to last 14 days, began in Lagos and the capital, Abuja, on March 30.
Africa’s lockdowns sacrifice informal traders to save lives
Image: REUTERS/ SEUN SANNI
In a dark, ground-floor room in Lagos, dressmaker Kemi Adepoju gazes at a pile of dresses she has made but that cannot be collected due to the lockdown in force to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“This lockdown came upon us suddenly. I used all my money to buy fabric. If I had known, I would have ... used it to buy food instead,” said the mother-of-two, who runs her business from a room she rents in the Iwaya suburb of Nigeria’s largest city.
Like millions in Africa, Adepoju works in the informal sector, which accounts for more than 85% of employment across the continent and will be largely bypassed by meagre economic support measures that cash-strapped governments are rolling out.
The IMF said in a blog on the outbreak’s impact on Africa in March that “social distancing” was not realistic for the most vulnerable and the notion of working from home was only possible for the few.
Lockdowns, initially expected to last 14 days, began in Lagos and the capital, Abuja, on March 30.
The government of Africa’s most populous country has announced a repayment moratorium for government loans made to small businesses ranging from market traders to farmers, and has said it will offer similar relief to large companies.
Muda Yusuf, director-general of the Lagos Chamber of Commerce, said the self-employed in cities will not benefit from these measures because they are aimed mainly at rural areas and no relief has been offered on commercial loan repayments. “These measures are not likely to trickle down to people in the informal sector,” he said.
The government says it has begun making cash transfers to the country’s poorest households, but many hawkers and other informal traders do not have bank or mobile money accounts to pay into even if they were eligible.
There is a danger that government support will not reach those who need it most, said Tunde Ajileye, a partner at risk consultancy SBM Intelligence. “Until people can be found and tracked centrally and matched to their financial records, operations like these will at best be informed guesswork and fraught with corruption,” he said. — Reuters
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