PurposeDuring the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic lockdowns, stay at home or work from home, many have argued that the westernised non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) do not provide remedial in low-income countries like Nigeria, where informal job seekers, street traders, informal labourers and artisans depend mainly on the informal economy. By applying social solidarity (SS) and community-based approach (CBA), the authors evaluate individual acts (trust, altruism and reciprocity) during the lockdown and how these practices evolve from individual approaches to collective actions.Design/methodology/approachThis study reflects on pragmatism research paradigm that enables researchers to maintain both subjectivity in their reflections and objectivity in data collection and analysis. The authors adopt a qualitative method through purposeful and convenience sampling procedure. Data were analysed thematically to identify elements of SS, individual acts, collective or community actions and perceptions.FindingsThe findings reveal that COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact (lack of food and a fall in daily income) on workers, informal job seekers, informal businesses operators and the poor households. As such, the study developed a reflective model of solidarity exhibited by individual acts and collective acts (practices of resource pooling, information sharing, women empowerment, distribution of palliatives and donations) within trusted circles that helped people cope with the lockdown experiences.Practical implicationsSolidarity represents beliefs, practices of values and norms. The SS exhibited by people through NPI would have implications on planning and monitoring the effectiveness of public health programmes during a pandemic in the future.Social implicationsThe findings of citizens and community actions have implications related to the process of building communities – coming together – and solidarity that enhances social development with implications on community health policy agenda during disasters, emergencies and health pandemic.Originality/valueThis is one of the first studies to analyse the relationship between trust, altruism, reciprocity, SS and CBA during the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, it seems reasonable to clarify the concept of SS given the lack of clarity about the definitions from previous studies.

This study analysed financial literacy and access for women entrepreneurs in Nigeria. The study is qualitative in nature and adopted an interpretive research design which employed an in-depth interviews with mainly well-informed women entrepreneurs to evaluate their interpretations and perceptions of the influence of financial access and literacy on woman entrepreneurship in Enugu Metropolis, South-Eastern Nigeria. A purposeful sampling approach comprising twenty women entrepreneurs was employed for this research. The results indicates that financial literacy was a critical factor in the growth of women-owned business, this is found especially in the business start-up phase Furthermore, our analysis revealed that revealed that financial skill is critical to the growth and smooth operation of female-owned business.

No abstract

This paper analysed the relation between the stock market indices and the developments in the international energy market using historical monthly data from January 1985 to December 2017. Energy prices as applied in the study are composed of changes in the prices of crude oil, natural gas (NGS) and liquefied NGS (LNGS). We employed the traditional vector autoregressive techniques in estimating the linkages between the variables of interest. Our findings showed that changes in energy prices did not have significant influence on the stock market. Although there was evidence of a long-run relationship between the two variables, no causal relationship was found to exist between them; this entails that past values of the prices of crude oil, NGS and LNGS were not vital in predicting the developments in the stock market. Likewise, lagged values of the stock market indices were not instrumental in forecasting the movements in energy prices. Thus, we conclude that the stock market could be more responsiveness to other macroeconomic indicators other than the energy prices.

No abstract