The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an additional 97 million people living in poverty in 2020, causing a setback in the goal of ending poverty by 2030. Nigeria, among other countries with low human development, has a low Human Development Index (HDI) due to poor social infrastructure, high-income inequality, institutional corruption, and other development challenges.
The pandemic has added further stress to Nigeria’s budget and economy, exerting additional pressure on the low foreign reserves and poor debt profile of the country resulting in a drop in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows. The fall in FDI inflow could lead to financial instability, weaker infrastructure, a drop in the standard of living, and increase unemployment. The Covid-19 pandemic created a crisis where market volatility intensified and the stock market fell. These have had negative impacts on Nigeria’s economic activities and caused increased uncertainty among investors and adjustment of economic anticipation resulting in high prices of goods and services and services.
As countries recover from the COVID-19 outbreak, Nigeria needs to explore innovative financing mechanisms to accelerate growth, development, access to jobs, improve livelihood, as well as improve its HDI. There is a lot to do about how donors, philanthropists, development finance institutions, and governments mobilize funding to address the issues of social needs and increase the inflow of investments in Nigeria, using mission-focused investing that delivers social and financial returns.
