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The coronavirus pandemic has plunged into the sadness of many companies around the world, giant and small, and it turns out that times will be harder to come as governments deal with the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.
But while some corporations are collapsing and possibly won’t reopen, others so far have been in favor of the tide.
Amid store closures, task cuts and tensions with advertising asset owners, some marketers in Africa have calmly taken the pandemic and capitalize on converting customer demands.
Here are three firms in different industries from across the continent that still hold hope for the future.
In recent years, the development of average elegance of Africans has led to the realization that there is a need for tailor-made products that particularly satisfy the wishes of African consumers.
Africa’s good-looking industry is booming as an increasing number of marketers expand product lines tailored to African frame types.
An example of this is Native Child, a South African hair and hair care logo that uses only herbal ingredients, which was founded through the amount of Sonto Pooe in 2015 in your kitchen.
Activity had grown at a steady pace, but government-demanded coronavirus blocking measures reduced retail sales and the cost of purchasing materials soared, affected by the fall of the South African rand.
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Fortunately, Ms. Pooe’s business remained open because it was classified as an essential service, so she and her team began to solve the disorders overcoming a lot of challenges.
Packages are still shipped to consumers, and as many stores have closed, Native Child has won many new consumers online across the continent.
However this brought more problems, as the firm then found it was struggling to keep up with demand. It had to keep working out solutions to supply chain problems, as it became too expensive and too difficult to import some raw materials.
“There is a specific product we use in one of our formulations, which is a combination [of several] raw fabrics to make a definitive product. We had to create a combination, buy it already pre-arranged Array … to make sure the production continues,” Pooe told the BBC.
Due to the blockade, the e-commerce aspect of Native Child’s business has taken off so much that Ms. Pooe has to completely outsource control of the company to another company, as there are now more paints that Native Child can handle.
Gradely is a Nigerian-generation startup founded in August 2019. The company has a personalized online learning platform for young people that uses synthetic intelligence to assess students’ strengths and weaknesses.
Schools in 144 countries remain closed and parents are having to pull double duty as both bread winners and teachers.
While the platform is still in its first year of operation, the coronavirus lockdown has served to accelerate the start-up’s progress in developing the product, as frazzled Nigerian parents turned online for support.
“Little by little the pandemic stood out. People are now coming to track us down and there has been a massive increase in demand, but it has also put us in a position where we have to show and develop the strength of technology,” says Boye Oshinaga. , founder and CEO of Gradely.
Because the platform uses synthetic intelligence, the formula is reported and eventually collects valuable insights into how young people are informed and spaces in which they are struggling.
Mother Chinyere Ogunbi told the BBC that she had struggled to get enough paints and gadgets to give to her son.
“Gradually, they have a wider base where they control the child, identify the spaces in which we want assistance and concentrate on those spaces,” he says. “That means I don’t want to be with him [all the time]: he can go up to the platform, do whatever he wants to do, and get feedback on his progress.”
Mr. Oshinaga firmly believes that personalized learning is the long term of education: “Parents use us daily and we are already tracking the progress made through young people for a month or two, so that we can show the world that this is not the case. only generation for the sake of generation – can make a genuine difference in learning each and every child.”
Africa Finance Corporation (AFC) is a pan-African investment grade multilateral finance institution that is run by sovereign African states.
It focuses on addressing infrastructure shortages and increasing investment for economic development, and in recent years shipping and communications have been the top priorities.
The company was founded in Lagos, Nigeria, but also painted across the continent, and at least some of its staff travels all the time. The coronavirus blocking measures imposed through many governments put an end to this, and the company had to absolutely follow the way it operates so that all staff can simply paint transparently at home.
The company has also focused on fitness infrastructure, ensuring the budget for building hospitals quickly.
So far through lockdown, AFC has built an emergency 110-bed hospital in Lagos, as well as a 340-bed hospital in in Abuja, the federal capital of Nigeria.
The firm has also secured financial aid for five African states and is now working to extend that to another 10 African nations.
“We’re looking at what kind of development support solutions we can provide to enhance the capacity of the healthcare delivery system on the continent and to generally cope with liquidity and the sovereignty challenges that we know most of our institutions will face on the continent,” AFC chief executive Samaila Zubairu tells the BBC.
He added that the monetary sector hopes that the coronavirus crisis “will become some kind of merit and arouse the appeal of the continent” that will motivate African nations and vendors to carry “centers” of production and production activities.
“The crisis has revealed many well-known structural deficiencies in the way African economies are established and how we trade with the rest of the world,” he said, explaining that African countries spend a lot of cash on exports. products to other countries where production takes place, and then more cash is spent loading products in Africa.
“We have the continental lax industry agreement that will soon take effect. We will have to take advantage of this pandemic, not waste this crisis, to make sure that we have production facilities [where] we produce at least 30-40% of what we need for the industry within ourselves on the continent, and then we will continue to build on it in the future.
You can tune into In Business Africa every Friday at 18:30 GMT on BBC World News.