Africa: Informal Sector in Africa Tackling Covid-19

25 January 2022

Informal traders these are the street vendors and market vendors who are most preferred by many in Africa as they sale goods at very cheap prices , thus making it possible for the less privileged to be able to wear and eat better. They are also the highest employers as many countries in Africa are sustained by the informal market and business.

In 2019, a majority of African economies which are sustained by the informal market faced a big challenge of being driven to the depths of poverty by the rise of a new pandemic which was labelled COVID-19.The disease brought with it a new dawn, a new way of living which would mean disaster for informal traders and the economic sector at large. After the coming in of the Covid 19 pandemic, African governments feared that they could not be able to fight the pandemic if it decided to carry out a full scale attack on their countries, thus they decided to prevent rather than cure. As a result, African leaders imposed strict restrictions to combat the disease, and prevent a full scale man slaughter. The restrictions included restrictions on movement, transport, total city and trade place shutdown and closure of boarders. As the African countries thought that they had prevented a manslaughter by the disease they had in turn caused an economic massacre as they had unknowingly crippled their economies and brought poverty to its level high as it is estimated that 80% of workers in the sub Saharan Africa are employed in the informal sector.

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