The writer is a professor of economics and public policy at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government

African economies were beginning to catch up with the rest of the world. Four well-led countries — Ethiopia, Ghana, Rwanda and Senegal — were recreating in Africa the processes that transformed the east Asian economies of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore. But the pandemic is wrecking this African success story.

Two in three jobs in sub-Saharan Africa are in the informal sector. There are no economies of scale or specialisation. Small is not beautiful, it is unproductive. Africa needs more companies capable of organising a workforce into specialised, collaborative teams, disciplined by competition. Yet even the firms that Africa has are bleeding from the economic impact of coronavirus.