Challenges and Opportunities From COVID-19 vis-à-vis Informal Cross-Border Women Entrepreneurs Scenario in Zimbabwe

Introduction

Recently, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant economic crisis around the world. It is common knowledge that this pandemic has caused a catastrophic effect on the business of both large and small operators (Maritz, Perenyi, De-Waal, & Buck, 2020). It is within this context that informal cross-border women entrepreneurs were not an exception. This pandemic has seriously threatened the sustainability of small businesses across Africa, Asia, and Latin America since the majority of entrepreneurs in these areas are necessity-driven entrepreneurs. To curb the spreading of COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have managed to come up with stringent measures such as lockdowns, social distancing, shelter-in-place orders, and quarantines. While the effective implementation of these measures has yielded positive outcomes in the context of health, negative impacts in terms of economic performance have been witnessed in form of retrenchments and massive closure of companies as well as a decline in disposable income. This means that entrepreneurship resilience plays a crucial role when it comes to the economic crisis (Liguori &Winkler, 2020; Bullough & Renko, 2013).

It is worth mentioning that the Informal Cross Border Trade (ICBT) has been witnessed around the world since time immemorial. For instance, countries like the United States of America (USA), China, India, North Korea, Pakistan, Thailand, Myanmar and other countries in Eastern Europe have witnessed the existence of ICBT (Hastings & Wang, 2018; Taneja & Bimal, 2017; Xheneti & Welter, 2013; Pisani & Richardson, 2012; Aung, 2009; Sword, 1999). Although ICBT is witnessed all over the world, it appears to be more practiced in Africa due to a myriad of socio-economic, legal, and political problems. Notably, ICBT is generally defined as an unofficial or informal exchange of goods and services between international borders (Kahiya & Kadirov, 2020). However, it is deemed necessary to mention that ICBT as a phenomenon has attracted much attention in the academic community in the past decades due to an upsurge in the contribution of the informal sector to economic development and growth. For instance, it is encouraging to note that the actual contribution of the informal sector to GDP in the context of Latin America during 2009 was about 43% and 40% in the case of Eastern European countries (Lesser & Moise-Leeman, 2009).

In light of the above discussion, African economies are dominated by ICBT activities in the face of fragile economies associated with extreme levels of poverty and youth unemployment, high levels of import and export duty levies, and complex tax frameworks. In fact, ICBT contributes approximately 30-40% in respect of the intra-Southern African Development Community (SADC) trade of which women significantly contribute to informal cross-border trade (Peberdy et al., 2015; Ama, Mangadi, & Ama, 2014; Makombe, 2011). For instance, informal exports in Uganda were USD231.7 million during 2006 which translates to approximately 86% of all formal export flows of Uganda and then the informal imports of Uganda were approximately USD80.6 million which translates to an estimated 19% of all formal imports of Uganda (Lesser & Moisé-Leeman, 2009). Similarly, Ethiopia is also experiencing an upsurge of informal cross-border livestock trade with Kenya since there is a high demand for cattle species from Ethiopia. In this respect, women dominate the ICBT in Ethiopia as they account for about 70-75% of participants in ICBT (Berhanu, 2016).