COVID-19 takes toll on 50 million African Women Speak project
Following the successful development and global launch of the 50 Million African Women Speak Platform (50MAWSP) in November 2019, everything was looking up for this first-of its-kind intervention to empower women in the COMESA region and the wider African continent.
National launches were supposed to follow. Statewide marketing campaigns had been mooted. National Content Developers, responsible for collating the platform content were on the ground. Then Coronavirus (COVID-19) happened.
The first case of COVID-19 in the region was reported in February. What followed was the full or partial shutdowns of COMESA Member States; restrictions on travel imposed by COMESA Secretariat and most Member States; banning of public gatherings and restrictions to the conduct of work activities which are deemed to be non-essential.
The 50MAWSP is a three-year project funded by the African Development Bank, jointly implemented by COMESA, East African Community and the Economic Community for Western African States in 36 countries. Its objective is to empower women entrepreneurs by providing a digital platform that enables access to financial and non-financial information needed to develop or grow businesses.
One of the major activities planned for the project in 2020 had been the national launches in the first half of the year (from February to June 2020) and the marketing, publicity and enrollment of users to the platform. By the time the COVID-19 took root in Africa, only one national launch (for Zambia in February 2020) had been conducted. Fourteen other national launches had been planned but have now been postponed indefinitely. In March launches were scheduled in Zimbabwe and Seychelles, while Ethiopia, Eritrea and Eswatini were planned for April and the rest of the countries in May and June.
The national launches were a critical entry point for the 50MAWSP platform into the consciousness of key stakeholders, including government/public entities, private sector, media, civil society and women’s associations, among others. They were expected to offer the first grand avenue to sell the platform, engage potential partners and offer opportunities for practical illustrations of the usefulness of the platform through user trainings. They would also serve as the launchpads for dedicated platform marketing activities which would be conducted through workshops, traditional media and digital media.
Restriction on the movement of people also meant that Consultants who were recruited as National Content Developers (NCDs) have found themselves unable generate content for the platform. Similarly, all offline sensitization activities have been cancelled or postponed, including workshops with women entrepreneurs in DR Congo and Tunisia and planned engagements with women in Zambia and Sudan.
While online platform promotion remains an option, this has not been fully utilized as the focus of the target audiences, at the moment is on messages relating to COVID-19. To compound this problem, the numbers of users accessing the platform has recorded drops of between 6% and 30% from the second week of March when Member States began preventive measures. It can be inferred from these statistics that the onset of COVID-19 in Africa lowered the consumption of content on platforms such as 50MAWSP as many sought information on COVID-19 instead.
From a project implementation standpoint, if the COVID-19 pandemic continues in the COMESA Member States beyond the second half of the year, the 50MAWSP activities lined up may be not completed before 2020 ends, thereby impacting disbursement of planned expenditure.
