Five areas will shape the global operating environment for business in 2022 – report

Kearney developed its annual detailed report that reflects the impact the pandemic has had over the past two years and identifies key predictions for the year ahead.

CAPE TOWN, February 8 (ANA) – The aftershock of Covid-19 and its impact on economies around the world is still pushing many governments to the brink, according to Theo Sibiya, partner and managing director for Kearney Africa, a global management consulting firm.

“Amid the uncertainty, where does one even start to rebuild economies? But it is exactly now that forecasting plays a bigger role than ever before,” said Sibiya.

Kearney developed its annual detailed report that reflects the impact the pandemic has had over the past two years and identifies key predictions for the year ahead.

The consultancy said governments worldwide will mount campaigns in 2022 to address behavioural and economic scars left by the pandemic on youth, but it thinks it is too little, too late.

Governments and companies alike will face mounting social and political pressure to take genuine action on ESG (environmental, social and governance) challenges, starting with measurable progress on climate change in the wake of the UN COP26 summit.

Virtual health care will expand to unprecedented levels, reshaping the industry.

Lithium will reach an inflection point in 2022 as geopolitical, economic and environmental forces collide.

A semiconductor boom will be a silver lining, but the Great Shortage will persist, said the agency.

Last year, annual predictions cautioned about a highly uncertain year ahead. The conventional wisdom was that the introduction of promising vaccines would push humanity into a post-pandemic period marked by rapid economic growth.

Unfortunately, the reality has been more tumultuous, while also pointing to some silver linings, said the report.

According to a recent study by the Sage Journals, the negative economic implications of Covid-19 have not been evenly spread across the population in South Africa.

The World Bank predicts that Covid-19 threatens to push three million South Africans into poverty. Survey data by Ranchhod & Daniels in 2020 suggests that traditionally more vulnerable groups, such as women, black Africans, youth and less educated groups, have been disproportionately negatively affected.

The report found that for young people in particular, the lockdown during the second quarter of 2020 left approximately 13 million students without adequate education in a country where 80% of students experience learning poverty (defined by the World Bank as being unable to read and understand a simple text by age 10), and the high unemployment rate among this segment of the population has been further aggravated by the decline in economic activity.

The report also outlined important inflection points for technology and energy. First, virtual health care will gain even more momentum this year as broadband infrastructure improves. Further, innovation and investment in the semiconductor sector will propel it to new heights. And as lithium mining continues, greener solutions to the practice will emerge.

“And the lasting damage inflicted by Covid-19 will not only impact trade. Governments and businesses have the important task of not only ensuring that supply chain challenges are mitigated, but also that Covid-induced mental health challenges inflicted on the world’s youth do not leave us with a lost generation,” said Sibiya.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher