COVID-19 has locked down cities for billions of people worldwide, and the pandemic disproportionately threatens developing countries, not only as a health crisis but also as a devastating social and economic crisis. The World Bank’s assessment of the COVID-19 impact on global economies, due to prolonged lock down measures, is that it will cause advanced economies to shrink seven per cent. That consequently will affect the outlook for emerging market and developing economies, who are forecast to contract by two and a half per cent as they cope with their own domestic outbreaks of the virus.

In this live online panel discussion, we discussed the impact of COVID-19 on the CivicTech start-up portfolio within the GSMA Innovation Fund. The founding teams of CivicTech organisations, Sudpay (Senegal) and Qlue (Indonesia) focused on what working as a start-up meant in the midst of a global pandemic; how they have each evolved and adapted their services to address the new needs of their users; and what impact the pandemic has had on their business and partnerships.