Author name: Dr Maxwell Ampong

The current set of circumstances create an ecosystem that happens to be the perfect condition for some enterprises to thrive and thrive really well. But that’s like discussing all the benefits of fire while your house is burning to ashes. It wouldn’t be the best time, would it? Nonetheless, The New Normal will catalyse many pending changes that was told to be forthcoming while sparking the innovation of many brand new ways of conducting business. Take automation for instance. The trumpet on automation replacing the jobs of millions was sounded a long time ago. After seeing how this pandemic affected human resource, there’s no stopping it because the sense it makes has now gotten more evident. Machines can’t catch a virus. And this is only one instance of why people need a Plan B for their source of income or a more strategic Plan A. The New Normal will prevail even after this coronavirus. Companies will not stop using Zoom and Microsoft Teams for correspondence. If some things worked well during the pandemic, they will be retained as norm. Everyone is now fully aware of the indisputable fact that the world will never be the same again. It is the people who get a workaround to the issues of this novel coronavirus that will come out on top. One way of coming on top is to start pursuing avenues that are hot right now because of the current set of circumstances creating an ecosystem that happens to be the perfect condition for some enterprises to thrive and thrive really well, as mentioned earlier. It’s simple, really: in a time of need, people have… well… needs, needs they otherwise wouldn’t have, be it an increase in the number of already existing needs or the emergence of new needs. If you fulfil any of the suddenly abundant needs as a service, you get to help others and also get paid in return. A double win! I’m not selling sure-bankers. These are all facts, and this is an opinion piece. ______________________________________ CONTENT CONSUMPTION: Ghana might have lifted the partial lockdown but around the world, most countries are still very much inside. During these lockdowns, billions around the world have started consuming more content; Netflix, YouTube, Facebook, TV Shows, Books, you name it. The increase in demand also meant that people create more content now and there has been the emergence of new content creators that are creating for the first time. They are going to need help. If you possess the requisite skill or can direct your services at them, then helping these new content creators can be a new line of income. They’d need help to better focus their content. Editing is another big way of improving on the work of first-timers. One could offer services that repurpose content for more varied consumption. We are definitely going so see an increase in the number of services that help content creators. You should get in on it now.  STRUGGLING ARTISTS: Shatta Wale has been very vocal about how the industry isn’t helping artists like musicians. Well, he’s worth millions of dollars and currently doesn’t qualify for the tag of “struggling artist” but artists are struggling. Artists have been struggling and during this pandemic they’re struggling even the more. Artists do have one sellable commodity in abundance: talent. If you can create a medium (app or others) where various artists teach others their craft, there’ll be a huge audience you can pander to. During this pandemic, many have upped their consumption of electronic content. Many are using this time to learn new things and the opportunity to learn from a talented artist would be enticing. Don’t forget that famous artists will offer an already existing set of customers that’ll eagerly engage with your medium for access to their favourite artists. By putting on other artists that need this source of income, it can be a win-win for everybody when your paid-service offers them just that. UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES: This category of the population have their main problem already concisely explained on their label: they’re educated but unemployed. The pandemic barely affects their employment status. But when you have to start looking at The New Normal and how it has changed corporate protocols, you’d realise many companies are suddenly very ok with remote work. With those companies on one hand, look at the other hand of a very big pool of academic talent that would otherwise have had trouble breaking the shackles of unemployment. Lightbulb, cha-ching. This is the time that companies will be open to remote work solutions. With the number of graduates out there with bankable skills and no money, you should be able to shop their skills to companies open to remote work. They get quality yet affordable human resource, the graduates get work and you should be able to get some work done in the middle of all of that.  If you can reach skilful graduates willing to work, and companies open to remotely employing for their kind of business, through a medium you create, it could work out great. PUBLIC SPEAKING: The pandemic has hit professional speakers badly. I should even add speakers at religious gatherings like the Pastors to this category, and Comedians. After the partial lockdown was lifted, that on gatherings remains in place. International Speakers cannot travel because of flight restrictions as well. Speakers need help. The biggest meeting location has always been the internet, the web. Now, it’s like that’s all we have. But not many old-timers understand how to harness it’s power. With a lot of their followers flocking to the web, you can earn decent amounts of money helping speakers book virtual gigs if that’s something you’d be interested in mastering. There’s a lot of virtual conferences happening right now and you getting them such gigs will be something speakers will be ready to pay for. Or, think bigger and help speakers create their own conferences and other events. Or think even bigger and turn some of their past speaking engagements into books. Most of these speakers say

THE LOGISTICS & TRANSPORTATION SECTOR is absolutely crucial in this fight against COVID-19. The role it plays in the supply and delivery of resources makes it necessary that we mitigate the impact of the novel coronavirus in this sector so as to enable us mobilise effectively during this war. Transportation of products is simply the movement of said products from one point to another. The logistics of this is not that simple. Logistics management involves knowing the right products, and how much and how many is required, and what’s the correct time to get it at the right location, and getting it there in the right condition after all that. This would make transportation a subset of logistics.  Logistics is transportation plus everything else in between, including storage, packaging or repackaging, etc. The key to optimising our logistics and transportation is to find a good balance between efficiency and cost. But these times of need, when we cannot complain about the water bill when our house is on fire, the deployment of efficient logistics protocols is ever necessary to get what is needed by those that need it the most to where it’s needed on time and in the right condition, no matter the cost. Whilst logistics and transport companies have over the years enhanced their systems by investing into technology and other structures in order to harness more business opportunities, the COVID-19 pandemic seem to have temporarily dashed that hope, at least for the time being. When COVID-19 first hit the industry, the initial widespread response was to safeguard employees by following the guidelines set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the governments of the countries they operate in, such as providing hand sanitizers and working from home. These measures were implemented with the main goal of securing essential goods for the millions of people across the globe. Logistics companies have made continuous movement between states and cities possible through the networking of ports, suppliers, and manufacturers, in addition to intra-country and last mile deliveries.  Keeping goods and services in motion has gone from being an unceremonious motto to a definite agenda. When Presidents and Prime Ministers comes on to deliver their speeches on how they’re going to send aid here and there, and how they’re going to order this and that for him and her, the task falls on logistics firms to facilitate such orders in a manner that befits the urgency of the situation. When Wuhan was the centre of the COVID discussion back in early February, UPS offered free air freight services to China for millions of face masks and huge quantities of other PPE’s. The toll on our frontline workers is also ongoing. The impact of the work of our brave frontline workers is watered down when we don’t have effective logistics and transportation systems in place to get them what they need on time. According to Satyanarayana Chava, Founder & CEO of Laurus Labs, a leading pharmaceutical company in India, “Logistics are taking longer and freight rates have gone up… this is also leading to shortage of manpower”. A shortage of manpower in Ghanaian places of business was very evident during our recently ended partial lockdown. As with many other sectors across the world, the logistics and transportation sector has taken a peculiar hit such that there has been a simultaneous lack of both supply and demand, in varying degrees. On one hand, the billions of people on lockdown at home or observing social distancing protocols at work ends up creating a lack of the needed levels of logistics services supply to match an increased reliance on delivery services for all the many incoming purchase orders. Then on the other hand, many factories across the globe that utilise logistics and transportation services have shut down, resulting in a lack of demand for logistics and transportation services. Current frustrations of many world leaders with the ordering of test kits and other PPE’s are partially a result of the current difficulties within the logistics and transportation sector. If money is not the problem, then when goods are ordered, then they must be delivered. Yet, as we read early on in this article, logistics is a lot more than just transport. COVID has hit this industry hard and the effects are rippling across the other sectors of industry. Air freight has been a vital part of time-sensitive supply chain and logistics management systems across long distances. With COVID-19 practically bringing the airline industry to its knees, especially for the delivery of vital medical equipment, pharmaceutical supplies and food, airlines have had to resort to using their grounded passenger jets as cargo planes. Luckily enough the lockdowns don’t seem to have had a huge impact on cargo handling as essential goods and services are still open. Availability is relatively stable but demand however seeing an edge. This does have some effect on pricing which is seeing some increases. Certain charges and other economic restrictions have been waived to make room for this. Also, the increase in demand for air freight does mean cargo planes are filled faster. Maritime cargo appears to be harder hit by the pandemic than air cargo. Restrictions in border movements have seen cargo ships locked in other countries in regions such as Europe and Asia. The prices for maritime cargo is also largely stable. Availability tends to be challenging especially with regards to equipment shipment. This definitely has an impact on the logistics and effective planning of some companies that work with heavy machinery. For the vessel chartering market, there appears to be little to no impact. Prices continue to remain stable whilst availability continues as usual. The impact of social distancing rather implies crew management has become a challenge and the possibility of infections and early isolation and quarantine of some crew members have been reported to pose some challenges. Distribution by road freight has very obviously also been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. With lockdowns being in effect across the world in varying degrees, it’s creating a

Coronavirus cannot be Defeated for any of us until it is Defeated for all. The coronavirus has over time proven to not only be a health pandemic, but also a potentially devasting economic catastrophe to billions worldwide. It is the society’s weakest and poorest that are likely to be worst hit. It’s not far-fetched to say that no economy is exempt from the negative impact of another. It’s a global village after all, as advertised. Thus, current times make it stupendously ill-advised to leave Africa’s economy out of conversations on reducing the fiscal impact of COVID-19 now and after we beat it, specifically the threat to the poor and needy. It is no longer a secret that should this coronavirus continue to spread into the coming months, for the poorest of us, the plunge from prosperity to peril will be as swift as the switch to lockdown protocols. The 2020 economic growth rate for the world and that of individual countries have already declined to very low values, implying no improvement in standards and cost of living for those that are already at the bottom of the barrel. That is focus of what you’re about to read, a spotlight on those at the bottom of the barrel and how this pandemic will likely mean much worse for them. Rya Kuewor is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Refugee Integration Organization (RIO) and an Agenda Contributor with the World Economic Forum. Simon Turner is a Consultant with the African Health Innovation Center and a Director at Founder Institute. Both are Migrant Reintegration Consultants with SOCIAL IMPACT, an organization that has been instrumental in designing and implementing innovative qualifications and start-up support for socially disadvantaged groups. These are all facts, and this is an opinion piece. Enjoy the read! ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ —- ♕ By Rya Kuewor and Simon Turner While it is fair to say that to some extent COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, it’s also a given that once it starts to hit the world’s poorest, marginalised and most vulnerable, inequality will yet again prove to be a devastating curse. With little or no access to clean water, shelter, information, healthcare, food, or even the luxury of “social distancing”, the world’s poorest and most vulnerable are at increased risk of suffering the worst from COVID-19. Adding up the 25.9 million refugees living in camps, and the 41.3 million Internally Displaced People (IDPs), as well as the 900 million people who live in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) – most of which are African nations – over a billion people are at risk and almost 50 countries face the risk of catastrophic failures. The Problem While recognising the importance of learning from other countries like China, Italy, Germany, and South Korea, African leadership and its citizens should not think Africa, as sovereign nations and as a continent, will experience similar timeframes with regards to the time it will take to get a handle on the extent of COVID-19 pandemic. As of today (10 Apr, 2020), there are just over 13,000 recorded cases in the whole of Africa, but celebrating these relatively low numbers as a win would be a mistake, because they are at least partly a result of insufficient testing.  We are also potentially being lulled into a false sense of security by taking as gospel the possibility that the disease is less infective in warmer temperatures. Even if it were the case, “this will be a source of concern for Southern Africa, which is heading into its colder months and “flu season,” and so their healthcare systems – already creaking – will quickly be overwhelmed. The outlook for the rest of the continent is equally bleak, with most countries unprepared to cope with the pandemic for a prolonged time. This coping ability is contingent on how soon robust measures to combat the viral spread are enforced and/or a vaccine or other solution is developed (which is unlikely until before 2021), but most African nations currently cannot effectively implement these measures.    The Impact The public health, economic and social devastation the world has seen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic will be many times more severe in developing countries if the viral spread is not contained. In normal times, low-income countries are familiar with poor infrastructure, social amenities and healthcare (not to mention conflict) – with Africa alone carrying a quarter of the world’s disease burden but is responsible for only 1% of global health expenditure – meaning that adding on the ravages of COVID-19 further worsens the situation of many African nations. Africa quite simply is unlikely to be able to follow most of the world in locking down countries and regions to help contain the spread of the Coronavirus. While the US, European, Australasian and Asian countries are able to enforce quarantines, they can also cushion the impacts of the quarantines on their citizens. From direct financial aid to households, to corporate bailouts of up to 2 trillion dollars (in the US), these nations and regions are far better prepared to deal with the pandemic and its immediate aftermath. About 85% of Africans live on less than $5.50 dollars a day, many earning daily wages in low-skilled work. Enforced quarantines and stay-at-home orders will abruptly upend the livelihoods of these people, many of whom do not have the reserve resources to shelter in place. For the people who live hand-to-mouth and in extreme poverty in Africa, many living in shacks and slums with little chance of social distancing, insufficient potable water or sanitation, their communities could easily become a nexus for the viral spread. Because more than a quarter of the world’s hungry live in Africa, the imminent dilemma of either starving or maybe catching COVID-19 will become a bleak reality for many poor families, some of whom may be forced to risk infection.  For some of these vulnerable communities, particularly in refugee camps and for many IDPs, the threat of pandemic is but another of many life-threatening situations they have had to navigate for years. In addition, following how Ebola caused grave stigma against survivors, COVID-19 may engender how survivors or infected persons are treated. Facing the potential for vigilante violence, some already marginalised infected people may decide