Digital Economy and the COVID-19 Pandemic

© 2020 March Oyinki

The year 2020 will go down in history as one of the most disruptive period humankind has ever experience since the World War II genocide of the Jews in the early and mid-40s. The outbreak of the Corona virus, which started in China and later sweeping through many countries and cities of the world with almost 3 million cases and leaving behind sad memories of pain and death. Countries most affected include United States, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, UK and China to mention a few. The death toll in the first four months in the year exceeded 134,603 with the United States having the most death with 28,529, followed by Italy, Spain and China.

The spread of the COVID-19 virus was so rapid and devastating that countries around the world had to go on a lock-down to prevent further spread of the virus, a situation that crippled the economies of all the nations of the world. Businesses, religious worship place, air, road and rail transportation system, sporting activities, recreation and leisure as well as all other non-essential commercial activities grinded to a halt.

This large-scale disruption by COVID-19, according to a United Nation report, could cost the global economy over US$ 2 trillion with the most hit sectors being the airline industry, leisure and recreation, entertainment and sports. The losses recorded during this short period surpasses any other period in history and is impact will be felt many years down the line, even after over-coming the corona virus.

As the global battle against COVID-19 continues and many companies remained shut down there were quite a few other companies in some key sectors that remained operational. The medical sector, supply chain management, agriculture, medical supplies, financial sector, food retailing, media, telecommunications and the Internet are some of the businesses that that the global economic disruption did not affect, rather some of them flourished. 

Sectors such as medical supplies, health, grocery stores and the Internet experienced a boom. The Internet particularly, witnessed its all-time high in the number of active users, so much, that companies such as Google, YouTube, Netflix, and Facebook reduce the quality of live video streaming from high definition (HD) to standard definition (SD), to help prevent the sudden increase in the number of active users during the global lockdown from overwhelming the Internet. 

The near total economic shutdown experienced across the global because of the pandemic has witnessed increased online activities. Many businesses that were hitherto unwilling are now compelled to use the Internet, even churches and mosques were compulsorily started online services due to the lockdown and social distancing. The COVID-19 pandemic, while disrupting physical economic activities, it has led to rapid digitalization and transformation in both private and public sectors, therefore, helping to speed up the growth of digital economy.

Social distancing and the use of face masks has encouraged increased social media interaction, teleconferencing, e-learning, ecommerce, drone delivery, 3D printing, Internet-of-Things (IoTs), robotics and Cloud computing has gain huge patronage. Tele-medicine has also received a big boost.

In as much as the COVID-19 pandemic comes with much pain, agony and death across the world, it also has some bright side. The pandemic has created a boom for Internet services providers, telecommunications and technology based companies. Other positive sides of COVID-19 includes the reduction of fossil fuel emission and radiation from night light, especially in large cities and capitals around the world, which has helped reasonably, to the slowing down of the depletion of the Ozone layer.

In the medical front, research efforts to find a vaccine for cure of the corona virus, has led to major advancement in vaccine production, with shorter period for both lab and human testing. Additionally, it has also led to an increase of the number of sophisticated medical laboratories and health care centers.

COVID-19 will result in dramatic changes in how we conduct business, significantly eliminating human -to-human contact, and speeding up the development of digital economy as the new business frontier. The technology sector will also receive tremendous boost and in the coming years, robotics, 3D printing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G technology, electric cars and many such new technologies will take the center stage of economic activities worldwide. 

Above all, the smart city project will come alive and that will spur major advances in areas such as transportation, logistics and supply chain management, crypto-currency, bitcoin and