African SMEs’ Performance and Behaviors during COVID-19

- 3.5 average years of operation per company. - 50% of the applied companies have operated for 2 years. - The average number of employees per business is 8 employees. - 392 (80%) of businesses employ full time employees. - 348 (71%) of businesses employ part time employees. - 324 (66%) of businesses employ women in their team. - 133 (27%) of businesses outsource some of their work to third parties. - 178 (36%) hire consultants and freelancers. - 86 (17%) of applicants employ historically marginalized communities. - 67 (13%) of businesses have disable people within their team members. - 58 (12%) of businesses have African Diaspora within their team. - The 490 enterprises employ around 3662 employees. 3- Shortlisting and Interviews

We shortlisted the 490 business to 120 businesses (360 participants) to be distributed over 10 local bootcamps. The shortlisted was based on the following 7 criteria:

Scoring Matrix

Description

Weight

1- Business Case Project Idea

10%

Relativity to the Simulated case

20%

Business stage

15%

2- Team

Financial Awareness

15%

Background and capacity

20%

Diversity (Diaspora, women.. etc)

15%

3- Covid Impact

Positively/Negatively

5%

Table 1.1: Shortlisting Criteria

4- Implementation and simulation results:

In December 2020 and January 2021, We implemented 2 simulation boot camps in each country. Thus, we divided the 120 businesses to 10 diferent bootcamps. Each boot camp hosts 36 participants from 12 businesses. Participants were asked to manage a manufacturing company (Rollo Inc) which produces 2 diferent products and sell it in three diferent market areas: Africa, USA, France. Each team competes with the other teams in the same business environment for 6 rounds. Each round represents one fnancial year in real life.

The following represent the results and the relative performance of the selected mSMES in their respective bootcamps:

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