To better understand the impact of COVID-19 on businesses in Nigeria, FATE Foundation in partnership with BudgIT Nigeria developed and disseminated a survey across Nigeria with the aim of driving ecosystem stakeholder engagement around the implementation of urgent interventions and solutions to enable businesses to thrive during and post COVID-19.
This report which details analysis of responses from 1,943 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across the 36 states in Nigeria including the FCT shows that an overwhelming 94.3% of businesses surveyed reported being negatively impacted by the pandemic particularly in the areas of Cashflow, Sales and Revenue. The report also shows that despite the negative impacts of the pandemic, about 47% of the respondents were positive that their businesses will survive the pandemic. 30% of the respondents however reported that their businesses will not survive while about 22% were unsure their businesses will survive.
Financially, a good number of the businesses were doing poorly as about 13% reported having enough cashflow to stay operational for 1 – 3 months while about 33% had enough cashflow to stay operational for only 1 – 4 weeks and about 27% for only 1 – 7 days. A number of jobs were also impacted as 82.8% of the businesses reported that they were likely to lay off 1 – 5 employees.
While almost 50% of the businesses were able to identify opportunities despite the negative impacts of the pandemic along the lines of creating new products and services, expansion and diversification etc, most businesses reported needing support with cashflow and sales, and would like support in the area of funding, access to markets and business support.
With regards to next steps and recommended interventions, this report also provides in-depth recommendations for government, enterprise support organizations, private and development sector stakeholders on policy and program design as well as implementation approaches.