Economic Impact of COVID-19 on the Development of Kaduna State Nigeria
Chapter One
Purpose of study
The purpose of this study is to;
- To examine how Kaduna state affected by the Covid-19 outbreak
- To examine the effects of the pandemic (COVID-19) on different sectors of their economy
- To identify how the Kaduna state government dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Pandemic
Dianjun (2019) sees endemic as a generic term for the disease with regional features which is closely related to natural environment, human life and production. It can occur in any country but are mainly distributed in under-developed countries and regions where there are no centralized administrative organization for its prevention and control. Unlike Dianjun, John (2001) sees endemic as constant presence of a particular disease or infectious agent within a geographic area or population. Yang (1998) considered endemic disease as one confined to a certain region. In other words, it is associated with and frequently occurs within certain region. These all means that endemic diseases are region restricted or population restricted but can occur in any country, either developed or under-developed. To Mazyck (1920) endemic diseases comes with low death rate but high sick rate, a large proportion of the community more or less incapacitated for mental and physical work day after day gradually slowing down business and production to a point where economic progress is halted.
Christian (2016) considers epidemic to be an unexpected widespread rise in disease incidence at a given time. According to Mazyck (1920), epidemic break upon community often with little warnings, strike terror into the community, demoralize businesses, reaps the harvests of victims, leaving physicians, nurses and the general public exhausted as well as dumb founded by what just happened. To him, epidemic disease range for a while upon particular group or restricted population and disappears.
EFFECTS OF COVID-19 ON NIGERIA ECONOMY
There is a popular saying that “health is wealth”. In the same vein, David and David (2006) asserted that the Gross Domestic Product per capital affects and also ignores the potentials for duplicating the longer term but very significant changes in education, productivity, export and import, exchange rates, price of oil per barrel, fertility rate, consumption and savings rates that may have resulted from the influenza epidemic. He further stressed that a country’s wealth (and/or health) can often be enhanced by traditional measures such as opening up to trade, promoting exports, restructuring inefficient state-owned enterprises, improving infrastructure, unemployment, inflation, decrease in labor forces, investment in health, and investing in education. In no time, outbreaks have caused economic stagnation to the Nigeria economy. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), they revealed that global unemployment rate has reduced by 25 million since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in November, 2019.
Outbreak disease in Nigeria accounts for a complex effect. This shows that epidemic and pandemic can affect the economic prosperity of any nation especially in a developing nation like Nigeria, of which several diseases in recent years has accounted for clear negative economic effects. Following from the HIV/AIDS pandemic, it was then recorded to have significantly affected per capita GDP which in turn has effects on household and their standard of living (Bloom et al, 2004) in David and David (2006). The effect of this pandemic (HIV/AIDS), has reduced the savings and then brought about a drastic increase in the consumption of individuals. According to them, the long-term costs of HIV/AIDS, and in particular has a vast scale on which the social and economic effects is likely to be felt due to decrease in the investment on human capital (Bell et al, 2003). According to the World Economic Forum (2004), it was asserted that AIDS also affected businesses of about 8,719 firms from a global survey conducted by the World Economic Forum. Developing nations revealed a rise by 35 percent, and in Sub-Saharan Africa by 45 percent. However, as the novel pandemic (COVID-19) is affecting the economies of many nations globally. It also has an unhidden effect of the price of crude oil, education, health, tourism, and other facets or sectors that makes the economy, it has also posed an unavoidable effect on citizens.
According to Hays (2005), pandemic is simply an epidemic on a very wide geographical scale, a large area of the world. However, no quantitative measure exists to establish that an epidemic becomes pandemic. Christian (2016) also agrees with the views of Hays (2005); he however noted that pandemic cannot occur without a dense or mobile population.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The study used descriptive research design. A descriptive study involves collecting data that test the validity of the hypotheses regarding the present status of the subjects of the study. In this study, the design was used to determine the effects of Covid 19 pandemic which was the independent variable on development of Kaduna which was the dependent variable in this study.
Population and Sampling Design
Population
The target population for a survey is the entire set of units for which the survey data are to be used to make inferences (Cooper and Schindler, 2001). Thus, the target population defines those units for which the findings of the survey are meant to generalize. Establishing study objectives is the first step in designing a survey. Defining the target population should be the second step. Target populations must be specifically defined, as the definition determines whether sampled cases are eligible or ineligible for the survey. The geographic and temporal characteristics of the target population need to be delineated, as well (Cox, 2008). Cox and West (1986) describe a population as a well- defined group of people or objects that share common characteristics.
A population in a research study is a group about which some information is sought. Most researchers cannot include all members of the population in their studies and must resort to limiting the number of subjects to only a sample from the population. The target population in this case was business owners in Kaduna North, Kaduna State. The target population in this study was 205 in number.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF RESULTS
Demographic Data of respondents
CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND CONCLUSION
Discussion
Three of the respondents stated that they have not been too negatively affected by Covid-19 and have therefore not made any major changes in their business operations and the business environment is almost the same as before. Digitalization is a key factor as to why some of these companies are not being too affected and Buer et al. (2018), explains that digitalization is a core element for creating an effective plan and control in a company. The authors argue that digitalization allows these 3 companies to have all the resources they need to operate as normal as possible during these times, and it allows the employees in the firms to have less human contact but still being able to work, as they can do it through digital channels. These companies being e-commerce further allows them to operate as usual and still have customers during a pandemic, as they don´t have to think about closing the store or adjust their opening times like physical stores have been forced to during the pandemic and this also relates to Wigand (2006), who stated that electronic commerce has shifted the definition of a company due to the abilities they have. The interaction between a company and customer no longer needs to be physical and they can instead interact trough
Business models should be adaptable and cope with uncertainties, complex, and rapidly changing environments (Al-debei, 2008), and the external environment has really changed since Covid-19. The changing environment has mainly impacted Royal Design and their current business model has not been able to adapt to it, due to them not being prepared for the consequences which the pandemic has brought and not having the sources to support enough employees. The effects that Royal Design is experiencing can also be a result of having specific suppliers that have not been able to adapt to the changing environment and due to circumstances with strict quarantine and social distancing in some countries, for example, Italy where it has been harder to ship products to companies in other countries. Company X and Outnorth are adaptable firms and they have only changed and adjusted a few things in their business environment and business models, and they are still up and running almost as usual through this complex and rapidly changing environment that Covid-19 brings. Nordiska Fönster has not yet been impacted to the extent where they have to adapt their business model to the situation, however, they are confident that if things were to escalate or change, they would handle the changes, case by case. Hem.com seems to not have adapted to the changing environment either, in a way where they still can operate as usual. Instead, they are taking the approach to work mainly from home as much as they can, make revenue from existing inventory, and mostly wait for the situation out. Keen and Williams (2013), states that the business model should be designed and developed for future planned businesses, and in comparison, to other respondents from the data, Royal Design is in the process of developing their business model which has been affected negatively due to the external environment.
Conclusions
The novel pandemic, coronavirus (COVID-19) affects every facets of individual’s life, the economy and the society at large. The Nigeria government adopts her policies as against the virus on her economy. The policies are both monetary and fiscal policy. Moreover, the adverse effect of this pandemic is much felt by the government and her citizens, though necessary measures have been taken the government and also adequately supported by NGO’s to ease the burden of the government. Despite response recommendation by the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) to curtail the spread of the disease; to avoid close contacts with people who are sick, always wash and sanitize their hands at least every 20 seconds, avoid putting their hands into their eyes, mouth and nose, while sneezing, sneeze to their elbows and should make use of tissue and properly disposed after use, avoid social and religious gatherings, clean and disinfect frequently touched objects and surfaces, also stay home when you are sick and prompt visit to the medical centres.
Despite these, monetary and fiscal policies are taken to curb the nation against facing another recession.
Recommendations
- Nigeria being the giant and major player to Africa economy, it should thendiversify and transform their economies by strengthening the productive capacity of African private sector to transform raw materials locally. According to them, this will help to improve domestic resources mobilization and reduce the continent dependence on external financial flows, which stands at 11.6% of Africa’s GDP compared to 6.6% of developing economies’ GDP as strongly recommended by the report of African Union (AU, 2020).
- Their further suggestion is also applicable to the Nigeria economy,recommending that there should be an increase in agricultural production thereby enhancing the food value chains to meet domestic and dependable exporting consumption by other
- Setup and implement strategic job opportunity programs to reduce the alarming rate of unemployment within
- After the novel pandemic (COVID-19), more expenditure should be channeled to the educational sector so as to increase the nation’s investment in human capital in the long
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