Leading Experts Share Insights on How African Women Entrepreneurs Can Navigate Their Businesses with Confidence During the Pandemic

Speakers at the AWEC Virtual Leadership Summit

This piece is part of our ongoing look at the impact that COVID-19 continues to have on women-led SMEs in Africa.

African women-owned businesses were particularly the hardest hit and almost overnight, had to evolve their business practices as a result of social distancing measures, take care of their children full-time as schools closed, and deal with the financial repercussions of a world economy on lockdown.

A survey conducted by ImpactHER, in partnership with UN-Women and The African Development Bank, with over 1,300 women SME owners across 30 African countries, revealed that most women-led SMEs are at risk of permanent business shutdown as a result of the pandemic. In responding to how COVID-19 has affected their business operations, 80% of the respondents reported that they had to temporarily shut down their business.

Confronting Challenges With Confidence 

AWEC's first-ever Virtual Leadership Summit, held during the week of 21 September 2020, welcomed speakers and experts who shared insights and advice on how best to transform their businesses in order to navigate through the crises. 

In her Opening Keynote, First Bank of Nigeria’s Chairman, Mrs Ibukun Awosika, implored AWEC Fellows not to get overwhelmed, telling them: “The first thing you need to know is that the challenges around the world are not peculiar to you, because everybody is going through one thing or another, nations are going through stuff, let alone individuals...Right now you are having to deal with situations that in many cases were not anticipated. As business leaders the first commitment to your business is that it survives. 

Women have the tenacity and capacity to reinvent ourselves within circumstances. Draw on your humanity and femininity, strength of character and depth, think through the situation and do not get overwhelmed. Take some time away and think through the business, what the vision is, what the agenda was for the year; look at the strategy you are executing and how far you got to before you started facing the pandemic.”

Mrs. Awosika also offered thought-provoking and practical advice to weathering the storm:

• Be transparent with your workforce and make sure your stakeholders are aware of what you are thinking.

• Allow your team to contribute to the process. Draw ideas from them.

• The decision for your actions is 100% yours. Every bit of information or advice you get only adds to counsel.

• Have the humility of spirit to make the hard call if your business needs to be shut down.

• Ask yourself; what are the emerging opportunities that your skillset or assets can address?

• The pressures of this current season will manifest in different ways. As the captain of your ship, your state of mind is important to the survival of your business. 

Thriving in the Midst of Disruption 

The outbreak of COVID-19 and its rapid spread around the world has had serious implications for the international economy, however, environments of disruption are not new or unique to businesses and organizational health is even more critical in times of constant change and extreme uncertainty. 

The ability to quickly align, execute, and renew can be the difference between floundering and thriving.

“Most of the challenges companies are seeing existed before the crisis but the pandemic has made them more visible”, said Dr. Frannie Léautier, Partner and CEO of SouthBridge Investment, during the Virtual Leadership Summit’s ‘Ask Me Anything’ Session. “A common thread we see from businesses that are thriving during this time is in the way they respond to the challenges, their ability to think differently and then learn and apply quickly.”  

She shared a few strategies with our Fellows, on the best ways to thrive in the midst of all the disruption and stay relevant in an ever changing market. 

• Moving from reacting to responding - Leverage the energy of a disruption to your competitive advantage.

• Using the opportunity to sense and learn from others in the field day by day.

• Synthesizing information in a way that you can bring it to scale, repeatable and making it transferable from one environment to the other. 

• Look at what you are producing and why and what your customer or clients think about it so that you can improve what the clients like or don’t like. Some things automatically become irrelevant.

• Learning from what your customers say to you tells you what is relevant and what is not.

• How you serve clients and the platforms you use become a test for relevance of your business.

Leadership Best Practices that SMEs Can Learn From

While it is reasonable for entrepreneurs to be concerned about the outbreak of coronavirus and the impact on their businesses, it is extremely important for them as leaders to maintain perspective during this time. 

“The pandemic will pass but the economic damage effects will last”, said Sam Palmisano, the Chairman of The Center for Global Enterprise and former President, CEO, and Chairman of IBM. 

Drawing on his extensive experience of leading one of the world’s largest companies in the midst of previous global catastrophes like the 9/11 attacks and the financial crisis of 2008, Sam shared his observations on the organizations that have successfully navigated through critical challenges and outlined key strategies that these business leaders used to reap positive results, even during the pandemic. 

• The leaders that are doing the best immediately stepped up and took charge. They focused on the issue at hand and went to work.

• They stabilised their staff and also stabilised their companies financially by getting access to credit to stay alive. 

• They had to keep serving their customers innovatively and quickly to minimize the efforts of the pandemic.

• The companies further along in their digital journey did better than those who were still largely analog. 

• Small businesses took advantage of e-commerce and logistical partners got involved to deliver goods to customers. 

• Healthcare evolved quickly in this short period through fast government interventions. Distribution of pharmaceutical care has been streamlined, with Ghanaian startup mPharma being a good example. 

Unlocking Opportunities for Growth Through Business Continuity Planning 

Finding glimmers of hope in the midst of uncertainty might seem challenging especially when the odds are stacked against you, but having to navigate in a space where no one like you has done it before is nearly impossible. 

As in the case of Monica Musonda, Founder and CEO of Java Foods in Zambia, the story of the battles she has faced during her hard but exciting entrepreneurial journey is one that all the women in the AWEC cohort could relate to. “Sometimes I ask myself, ‘aren’t people tired of hearing my story?’ but this year, where things have been very difficult—we’re all learning through COVID—I think it’s actually really important that we continue to tell our stories, particularly as women entrepreneurs; we can share what we’ve gone through and learn from each other.”

Having to navigate Java Foods through the pandemic lent itself to four top points in continuing to run businesses in a crisis:

• Lobby governments for stimulus packages for key sectors of the economy. Governments say all the  right things so call them up on it. It opens the door for other products that come after you.

  • Start with using industry associations so that you have allies.

  • Make it less about a product and more about a sector.

  • Try to use a spirit of educating people to get them on board to help you lobby.

• The opportunity of the COVID craziness renews the importance of supporting local producers and regional exporting. 

• Ensure employees are safe both at work and at home. 

For her fourth point, Monica acknowledged the work that AWEC does and urged Fellows to recognize the power of the cooperative, leverage their networks and take advantage of new partnerships or collaborative opportunities that appear as a result of COVID. “I wasn’t as fortunate—or perhaps I had my head down looking at the business for so long—before I realised the importance of having a strong network of other women who have perhaps done it before you, are doing it now or even failed at it. I’m grateful for forums such as AWEC because you get to meet and network with other women in other countries and I would encourage you very much to use these sorts of platforms to get some form of mentorship or see how others have done it.”

AWEC’s mission is to equip African women entrepreneurs with practical knowledge that empowers them to build and grow resilient and sustainable businesses. Fellows in the program also gain access to a priceless network of ambitious women from across Africa and the diaspora. To learn more about how you can get involved, visit our Supporters page.