It is an established fact that the Covid-19 pandemic had a persistent economic uncertainty effect than health uncertainty. In this study, the researchers examined the effects of expanding sales online on the financial resilience of enterprises in sub-Sahara Africa (SSA) during the economic downturn. The researchers measured financial resilience by the extent of sales and cash-flows decline during the pandemic. The researchers collected 4751 unweighted data from the World Bank’s Enterprise Survey and it Covid-19 follow-up survey. Findings from the bivariate probit model and the predictive margin probabilities showed that most enterprises in SSA adopted or expanded proportion of sales online during the pandemic. Increasing the proportion of online sales exerted a decreasing effect on sales and cash-flow declines and thus improved financial resilience at a threshold of 40% during the pandemic. Large enterprises were observed to be more resilient than small and medium enterprises, yet domestic and foreign enterprises had the same level of financial resilience during the pandemic. For enterprises in Africa to realise the 40% threshold of online sales, the researchers encourage enterprises to invest in advertisement for product legitimacy.

Equity crowdfunding broadens access to entrepreneurial finance but also exposes retail market participants to information asymmetry and platform-related risk. This study examined whether perceived regulatory frameworks are associated with perceived investor protection in Ghana, whether institutional trust mediates that association, and whether platform governance conditions the relevant paths. Institutional and Signalling theories guided this study A quantitative cross-sectional survey obtained responses from 323 retail investors and prospective investors reached through purposive and snowball sampling. Data were collected with a structured questionnaire containing demographic items and four multi-item scales. Data were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling in SmartPLS 4 using 5,000 bootstrap resamples. Regulatory frameworks had a positive direct association with perceived investor protection (β = .247, p < .001). Institutional trust carried a larger indirect association (β = .315, p < .001), representing 56.1% of the total association. Platform governance strengthened the path from regulatory frameworks to institutional trust (β = .094, p = .040), but its interaction with institutional trust on perceived protection was not statistically significant (β = .083, p = .068). The conditional indirect association rose from .283 at low governance to .347 at high governance, although both interaction effects were small. The model explained 58.1% of the variance in perceived investor protection. The study concludes that formal regulation reaches perceived protection mainly because it is filtered through confidence in the institutions expected to enforce it, and that platform governance matters chiefly while that confidence is forming rather than after it is established. It recommends that the Securities and Exchange Commission Ghana publish enforcement actions, licensing status and complaint outcomes on a regular cycle; that crowdfunding intermediaries standardise disclosure, due diligence summaries, conflict of interest statements and grievance procedures; and that investor education reach the women, older adults and less digitally engaged participants underrepresented in this sample. Because the design is cross-sectional and the sample is non-probability based, the results establish associations rather than causal effects.

The author group has been updated above and the original article [1] has been corrected.