COVID-19, Agency and Resilience: The Experiences of Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (MSMEs) in Ghana

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic that occurred in March 2020 resulted in the global economy grinding to a halt because of the various measures that were put in place by governments to stem the tide of the pandemic. While various sectors of the economy were hit hard, the micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) sector is believed to have borne the brunt of the economic shutdown that came about because of COVID. The focus of this paper is therefore to examine the experiences of MSMEs with COVID-19 in Ghana. Based on the experiences of 25 business owners in the MSME sector that were interviewed, it is argued in the paper that given that the pandemic exacerbated the challenges that MSMEs already faced, the development and implementation of various support programmes to the sector would be crucial to the economic recovery that would hopefully occur in the post-COVID period. The attempts to ensure the continued contribution of MSMEs to Ghana’s economy in the post-COVID period would be dependent on the adoption of policies that entail the provision of financial support through loans, loan guarantees and grants; and assisting MSMEs in their use of digital technology to help them with communication and marketing to their customers would be a step in the right direction.