Information about the Program in Ethiopia

Mastercard Foundation COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Program

Updated April 17, 2020

Objectives

In Ethiopia, there are five key objectives:

Ensuring MSMEs remain solvent, retain their employees, and create more innovative and timely jobs by establishing the Mastercard Foundation COVID-19 Recovery and Resilience Program – Enterprise Loan Guarantee Facility.
Support digital innovation to avert the spread of the virus and its possible impact.
Promote e-learning-based training for education institutions.
Promote engagement in Green Economy initiatives.
Provide support on repurposing the production of capable firms towards the production of medical supplies and supporting immediate needs.

Ensuring MSMEs remain solvent and retain their employees.

Establishing an enterprise rescue and revival loan guarantee facility is an essential undertaking to decrease the loss of jobs. The facility will be allocated to ensure that enterprises survive the crisis, retain their employees, and continue to operate with minimum capacity to ultimately revive post-COVID-19. Three categories of enterprises will be targeted, defined by the intensity of shock that they face and their ability to compensate through other offsetting mechanisms:

High Vulnerability: Registered micro-enterprises and informal firms (self-employed)
Moderate Vulnerability: SMEs who will likely face extreme slowdown of service-related businesses and major interruption or cancellation of orders.
Low Vulnerability: Medium enterprises within the service and manufacturing industry that have seen a gradual decrease in revenues and don’t face major business interruption or order cancellations (export and domestic market).

Supporting digital innovation.

Innovation that will avert the spread of the virus and its possible impact is a critical undertaking. The digital innovation and systems introduced during this crisis could last and add value well beyond the pandemic period.

Remote working/learning

Digital solutions that can facilitate remote working and remote learning for workers and students are in high demand these days.

Cashless payment and marketplace: Since cash notes are a medium of transmitting the corona virus, and its use is inefficient, this presents a new opportunity of digital payment/mobile payments and digital marketplaces.
Digital innovation on COVID-19 solutions: Given that the required investment is already in place, it is timely to support innovations that mitigate the spread of the Coronavirus, and focus on contact tracing, treatment knowledge resources, and many other medical services. Such innovations can save lives and improve medical care. Additionally, the program will stage competitions for tech firms to develop COVID- 19 solutions.
Promotion and development of e-commerce platform and technology backed delivery and logistic services: E-commerce and delivery companies can play a key logistical role. For example, as lockdown measures have increased the demand for home delivery of groceries, e-commerce companies have created in-app features for contactless delivery. This support will benefit the users, the service delivery enterprises, and the producers.

Promoting e-learning based training for education institutions.

The closures of learning institutions have created a significant demand for distance and online learning. Ensuring the continuity of teaching and learning during the crisis is essential. The program will focus on strengthening online instruction so that institutions can provide distance training during this pandemic.

Promotion of engagement in Green Economy initiatives.

Developing a get-to-work program, using the currently out-of-work labour force from the construction and manufacturing sector to plant billions of trees across the country, could provide employment and help solve global and local climate-change issues.

Repurposing of the production of capable firms towards the production of medical supplies.

Incentivize current firms (those in textile for example) to repurpose their production towards COVID-19 medical equipment and critical supplies (masks, sanitizers, etc.). This will help to fight the virus, meet the increasing local demand, and it also presents an opportunity to supply products to the continent.

Supporting immediate needs.

This will include the provision of support for health personnel, first responders, and frontline organizations, public health campaigns, emergency funds for students, and tracking tools.