When the COVID-19 pandemic reached El Salvador, it delivered a blow to Fátima Meléndez, owner of Lafá Cake Boutique in San Salvador. Most of the company’s business came from providing cakes and dessert tables at weddings, which were cancelled indefinitely when El Salvador entered a strict, months-long lockdown. Lafá saw its sales plummet and even had to suspend two of its employees
Half the world away in Nairobi, Kenya, the pandemic was also creating challenges for Candy Waithaka and her small retail outlet, the Hebron Cereal Shop, which sells grains and other basic foodstuffs. Customers shied away from the store due to fears of COVID-19, and disruptions in the supply chain led the prices for some of her merchandise to rise at just the same moment that consumer purchasing power in her vulnerable community declined. Soon, Candy found herself selling just $7 of grains per week
Lafá Cake Boutique and Hebron Cereal Shop are not alone. The COVID-19 pandemic unleashed a rapid and unprecedented crisis upon businesses across the developing world: by May, 87% of small business owners in Africa feared that their businesses would not survive the crisis, and in July UN-ECLAC reported that 2.7 million businesses in Latin America are at risk of shutting down, Some of these fears materialized: in a late-October study, about a quarter of small and medium-sized businesses in Sub-Saharan Africa and 15% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean were closed. More than 70% of entrepreneurs in Africa and 60% of those in Latin America and the Caribbean reported difficulties covering their living expenses.