“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s laws wrong, it learned how to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping its dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared.”
This is from a poem written by late rapper Tupac Shakur. In the poem he refers to himself as a rose and uses ‘concrete’ as a euphemism for the unnurturing environment he grew up in. “Proving nature’s law wrong” is a phrase used to highlight the seeming impossibility of succeeding without the necessary tools, support, systems and structures required. Against the norm and very much an exception to the rule, Tupac sees himself as a rose that grew from an environment in which growth should not have been possible – and for this he is celebrated.
Very little grows from concrete, a hard structure without soil, nutrients or water. Concrete is not an enabling environment and in it, nothing can take roots or bear fruit. So when something grows from it we can celebrate the anomaly, but we must also ask ourselves what would happen if the environment was fertile, and more enabling? How much more growth would we bear witness to, how much more success?
Take Nigeria’s MSME sector, which makes up more than 90 percent of businesses in Nigeria, from hair salons to food vendors, market stalls, corner shops, airtime kiosks, roadside hawkers and beyond. These businesses are the fabric of Nigeria’s society, and our country’s economic survival is very much dependent on their collective survival. MSMEs have an uphill battle navigating the already difficult business environment in Nigeria and are excluded from the few opportunities that exist within it. Nevertheless there are the rare success stories that emerge as roses from the proverbial concrete. One example is Cosmas Maduka of Coscharis Group who started out as an automobile apprentice and now runs one of the most successful luxurious car distribution companies in Nigeria. In a similar manner, the duo of Sunday Egede and David Ojei who formed the successful Prince Ebeano supermarket chain emerged from a precarious situation. Sunday initially served as an apprentice at his brother’s provisions store. Like many Nigerians operating in the informal sector, David tried several businesses including running a barbershop, a failed supermarket, re-sale of ogbono seeds in Lagos, which also crashed before he returned to the retail business.
While acknowledging that stories like Cosmas Maduka, Sunday Egede and David Ojei are encouraging and motivating, they are the exception and not the rule. For every Cosmas Maduka, Sunday Egede and David Ojei, there are millions of people who work hard and are barely able to earn enough to survive, much less thrive. People living either on the precipice of or below the poverty line, one of almost 83 million people, a number that is set to increase by about 15-20 million by 2022 given the current economic circumstances. Success stories like this can also be dangerous because they imply that everyone who is not a business success is a failure. “Just look at Cosmas Maduka, Sunday Egede and David Ojei who came from nothing and succeeded – what’s your excuse?” Imagine telling this story to Mama Risi, a single mother struggling to feed her entire family on a daily wage of N1,200; her profit from selling pure water supplemented by work she does at night as a hair braider. She gets only a few hours of sleep before having to get back to her pure water business in the early hours of the next morning.
Success has a lot to do with opportunity, and access to opportunity is largely determined by the environment in which one exists and transacts their businesses. Unfortunately, countries like Nigeria in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) have a myriad of unfavourable factors that inhibit growth, including slow to no advancement for small businesses, an unprotected informal sector, low to varying standards and quality of technological content, difficulty accessing markets and information, and more.
Where flowers need water, sunlight and nutrient-rich soil, an enabling environment in the economic sense requires clear policies and regulations designed to increase access to opportunities that can improve people’s socioeconomic outcomes, access to formal finance and other financial services, education, a formally recognised identity, targeted incentives and concessions, relevant capacity building, access to information, markets, and more. It is these things that allow businesses to build the resilience required to withstand shocks like COVID-19, to scale businesses, to grow and to subsequently extend those opportunities to others in the form of job creation and wider economic contributions. However, where existing policies and reforms do not adequately consider the peculiarities of the informal sector, they become a burden that further obstructs the growth of the businesses owned by poor groups, thereby limiting or blocking their access to facilities that could support and improve their chances of leading more successful businesses. For all businesses, but especially for MSMEs, the support will have considerably more impact in the long term if these issues were treated as an integrated challenge and tackled together. It could result in a more MSME-friendly environment, the kind that enables sustained growth.
The COVID factor
COVID-19 did not create many of the conditions that MSMEs are in; in fact, many MSMEs were struggling under the weight of the operating environment. But the virus has exacerbated these conditions and continues to have a far-reaching impact on MSMEs’ ability to survive. The impact since March last year, when the first measures were put in place to contain and curb the spread of the virus, has been staggering. All businesses have felt the effects but there is a disproportionate effect on MSMEs who depend on local physical markets and people traffic. The pandemic created a lack of liquidity, increasing cash flow constraints and impacting business continuity for many micro businesses, and many of those that continue will see inhibited growth as a result.
Data compiled, between August and December 2020, by Nigeria’s Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and 60 decibels with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation showed that businesses operating in the Nigerian informal sector were adversely impacted since the outbreak of COVID-19 in Nigeria. From the findings it was discovered that pretty much everyone had a story of woe to tell, 9 out of 10 GEEP clients recorded drops in their income levels. Businesses struggled to stay afloat due to government-imposed closures, low footfalls and constrained supply chains. In a bid to survive the period, GEEP clients had to rely on their savings, borrowed heavily and reduced percentages set aside for household and business savings or stopped outright. The data also showed that 35 percent of GEEP respondents had to close down their businesses, 66 percent recorded fewer customers and 84 percent have been using their savings to cope with current hardships. These solutions, while they solve the immediate needs, have a longer impact that is not sustainable and could pose more problems in the future. GEEP is an empowerment initiative with the main aim of offering interest- and collateral-free credit to MSMEs operating at the bottom of the pyramid across Nigeria.
The data was gathered through eight rounds of surveys administered amongst GEEP clients. As at December 2, 2020, 4,940 people living across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones had been interviewed. The surveys are ongoing with plans to publish a final report by May 2021 after completing an additional 10 rounds reaching more than 11,000 GEEP clients.
Containment policies will continue to ease as we move beyond the immediate crisis created by the COVID-19 pandemic and the government is already considering what policy interventions are necessary to deliver the environment required to drive growth and build a more resilient and robust economy. As regulators of the environment in which MSMEs operate, government stakeholders must also seek to be facilitators and advocates, recognising that growth in the informal economy is growth in Nigeria’s economy. The IMF has put the contributions of Nigeria’s informal sector to GDP growth at approximately 65 percent while the World Bank in its projections of Nigeria’s unemployment rate estimates that the informal sector accounts for 53 percent of the country’s labour force.
One major focus will need to be the existing issue many MSMEs face in accessing finance and financial services like microloans and microinsurance (an issue that has been compounded by the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic), whether through tax incentives or credit sureties, or co-financing or other medium. But for the environment to be supportive of MSME growth post-Covid, this needs to be on the policy agenda. Beyond finance, the pandemic has given us an opportunity to take stock and review, and deliver broader more sustainable reforms that can #buildbackbetter a more resilient informal economy and deliver a stronger national economy.
Roses grow better in fertile soil than they do in concrete
I can’t help but wonder about the many people who are trying to grow out of cracks in concrete – the hawker on the side of the street, the tailor in his one-man shop, the mechanic with his petrol generator, the small bakery – all of these people deserve access to the kinds of opportunities that can improve their socioeconomic outcomes.
The poorest of the poor in any country have an uphill battle improving their socioeconomic outcomes but when they do not have the bare essentials – literacy, recognised identity, financial services, infrastructure and access to information and markets – that hill is made much steeper. While success stories give hope to many people in Nigeria’s urban centres and rural poor, living on the smallest wage, a wage now threatened by shocks and unforeseen events like COVID-19, we must also recognise that many hardworking Nigerians trying to grow these people out of cracks in the concrete are stifled largely because of an environment that suffocates rather than promotes growth.
Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Yes. But we now need to make sure that there’s enough fertile soil to grow gardens of roses, sustainably.
