Figure 3.15: Challenges faced by businesses pre and post COVID-19
Challenges before the COVID-19 pandemic
After collecting responses from the applications submitted to Rollo Africa, we proceeded in the ranking of the criticality of the challenges as expressed by the respondents. The less the score obtained by a particular challenge, it meant, the respondents were clearly dissatisfed and / or critical with that specifc challenge. Clearly, Government support, Corruption, taxes and Access to Finance are the major challenges faced by the African SMEs before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic
The above challenges are ranked based on their score and represent the severity of challenges during and post the COVID-19 challenge. This fgure means that the most dissatisfying elements remain the same even during and post pandemic and these are, Government support, Access to Finance, and Taxes. However, corruption is no longer the worrying challenge, but the clarity challenge becomes a critical challenge to address too. Specifcally, the clarity challenge refers to Lack of consistency / clarity in confnement measures / hours of functioning / curfew / measures to be implemented to close down and to reopen etc.
Change in reported challenges before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
We were interested in evaluating the changes that occurred on the encountered African SMEs. What challenges witnessed an enhancement from the respondents point of view? Which
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