Moreover, the COVID-19 crisis has spurred action in the e-commerce sector. As much as 40 per cent and more of the respondents’ businesses have been or are involved in either public-private sector collaboration initiatives or pure private sector ones. For those not involved, lack of awareness of the initiatives and limited professional networks were the main reasons. Only 14 per cent of all respondents managed to obtain more funding. While 65 per cent of the businesses surveyed had tried to obtain additional financing, only one out of five had been successful. Respondents have highlighted the need for e-commerce enabling measures in COVID-19 recovery plans. For the majority of the survey respondents, having a well-defined national e-commerce strategy was seen as a top priority for the COVID-19 recovery plans. Reduced costs for Internet and broadband access, as well as for mobile and other electronic payments were the other top measures recommended to be taken to support the economic recovery. International cooperation and a strong multi-stakeholders’ partnership is needed to boost countries’ efforts for inclusive e-commerce development. Building on a successful track-record of implementation of recommendations outlined in eTrade Readiness Assessments (eT Readies),5 UNCTAD is working with many partners, including United Nations Resident Coordinators, to ensure that e-commerce is mainstreamed into national development plans and development partners’ development cooperation frameworks. Methodology This paper is primarily based on a survey that investigated the different aspects of COVID-19 impact on e-commerce businesses and policy responses. It focused on 23 countries in Africa and the AsiaPacific region which have benefitted from UNCTAD’s e-commerce capacity building programmes (eTrade Readiness Assessments - eT Readies - and national e-commerce strategies). UNCTAD built on in-country Focal Points and networks to identify pertinent e-commerce market participants in June 2020. In addition, the list of e-commerce stakeholders from previous eT Readies was also used. The private sector questionnaire, conducted in French and English, targeted two types of businesses i) companies selling at least part of their goods and services online, and ii) third-party online marketplaces. Where relevant these two types of businesses responded to separate sets of questions, tailored to the specific type of business. The questionnaire was tested early June 2020 by a selected group of representatives of the two target groups, as well as some resource persons from Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Samoa, Senegal, and Uganda. Based on their feedback, the questionnaire was revised before dissemination started in early July 2020 via SurveyMonkey. In parallel, Focal Points were asked through a short questionnaire to inform about government measures related to e-commerce for COVID-19 crisis recovery plans. Twelve countries complemented the survey with their questionnaire responses.6 The survey was closed in the first week of August 2020.
In depth responses from 257 respondents representing online businesses. To gather respondents, the survey invitation was sent to 699 contacts. In total, 345 individuals responded. The survey was targeted only at those businesses that were involved in e-commerce. Of the 345 respondents, 301 met the assessment criteria, i.e. to be part of a business selling, at least in part, online, while 44 were not selling online. For the latter group, the survey ended after this question. Figure 3 presents an overview of the number of survey respondents per stage of the survey. Out of the 301, a further 44 discontinued their responses after the initial screening question despite not being filtered out. Therefore, this paper is based on an initial sample of 257 respondents, from 245 distinct businesses.
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