Businesses have big role to play in coronavirus pandemic battle

Transport boxes for portable care ventilation equipment are pictured on April 1, 2020 at the German armed forces Bundeswehr's supply and repair centre for medical supplies in Blankenburg/Harz. PHOTO | JENS SCHLUETER | AFP

What you need to know:

  • Governments, civil society, businesses and the various interest groups need to join hands driven by purpose rather than profit.

There’s nothing on record in the past 100 years that has confronted humanity with the ferociousness of the coronavirus pandemic.

It’s testing our governance systems, our healthcare infrastructure, our economic models and, indeed, our very civilisation.

Covid-19 has turned our world upside-down: children are home from school, flights are grounded, borders closed, businesses shut down and humanity upended.

The spread of the virus seems to borrow heavily from the permutations class in mathematics. Sadly.

According to data by the United Nations, it took the world three months to reach 100,000 confirmed cases of infection. The next 100,000 occurred in just 12 days. The third took four days; the fourth only one and a half.

“We are at war with a virus — and not winning it,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres in a March 26 G-20 virtual Summit on the pandemic. “This war needs a wartime plan to fight it.”

That means a whole lot. The secretary-general then appealed to conflict protagonists to stop.

STAND TOGETHER

The world is at war with coronavirus, and conflict, now more than ever before, doesn’t make sense.

In a BBC TV interview, Mr Guterres added that this is the time for international cooperation on global supply chain issues, best practices and managing the movement of populations.

But the extraordinary circumstances in which we find ourselves affirm the critical point made at the 2015 launch of the UN Sustainable Development Goals: humanity needs to pull together and stand together.

Governments, civil society, businesses and the various interest groups need to join hands driven by purpose rather than profit, interests and short-term gain to ensure no one is left behind.

There can’t be a time that that reality was starker than this poignant moment when humanity faces an enemy who is choosing neither class nor race or creed.

As policymakers shore up the public health infrastructure to take care of the ill, businesses and other interest groups must step in with the secondary and tertiary lines of support and defence so that we can come out of this stronger.

MOBILE MONEY

Around the world, businesses are stepping in in different ways. Manufacturing lines have been adjusted to produce the much-needed medical equipment to support the frontline soldiers: the medical professionals.

I’ve also seen those who are literally buying food packs and distributing them to the most vulnerable. All these efforts are commendable.

Yet so much more remains to be done, and the requisite assessments by all of us need to be continuous.

In the immediate aftermath of the reportage of the first case in Kenya, we at Safaricom took it upon ourselves to see how we could pivot our network, assets and products to respond to the pandemic in the short- and long-term.

We offered to reduce the cost of moving money by dropping charges for sending under Sh1,000 via M-Pesa.

We doubled, at no cost, the fibre-to-home capacity to support those working or studying from home or seeking alternatives means of keeping themselves busy at home via the internet.

We also partnered with KCB in a Sh30 billion stimulus package that will go to supporting individuals and SMEs who draw a financial lifeline from KCB M-Pesa.

COLLECTIVE FUTURE

Several other businesses and non-governmental organisations are beginning to evaluate the situation and identify possible areas where they can offer interventions.

Granted, these responses will take shape in the fullness of time as the very fluid situation evolves, but every little additional help counts for our collective future. No one can tough this one out alone.

This is the one time when all businesses must discover the meaning of purpose; that we exist to place people before profit; that companies cannot thrive when the very communities we conduct business in are not thriving.

The consumers of the goods and services we provide face an existential threat, as we all do. It behoves us to stand with our communities in every way to save our collective future.

Mr Joseph is the outgoing CEO of Safaricom PLC. [email protected].