When we last analysed ASEAN e-commerce trends it was March 2020, just over one year ago. Few of us, if any, could have imagined then that we were only at the beginning of a game-changing catastrophe that would be remembered for years to come. In the following months, worst-case scenarios came true and the COVID-19 pandemic dragged the world into what is now a radically different reality from the one we knew before. Social interaction, work, travel and many other aspects of our daily lives have changed, some of them forever.
If one takeaway of the Myanmar election of 2020 is the unquestioned adoration of the country for its icon Aung San Suu Kyi, another is surely the West’s poor understanding of this country, its ethos and its complex history. From August, while international journalists, consultants and political analysts were busy forecasting chaotic scenarios of a weakened NLD (the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi), and speculating about unlikely coalitions with ethnic and military-backed parties, a red river of NLD flags, T-shirts and stickers (including red face masks) was flooding every corner of Myanmar, with flocks of young supporters celebrating Suu Kyi’s success weeks before the election day.
Ma Ma Lwin is a talented Myanmar entrepreneur. With her gentle manners and her ‘light version’ of Myanmar dishes, intercepting the Western tastes of a growing group of expats willing to experience the local food, she has transformed an abandoned rooftop in a Muslim district near downtown Yangon into a successful restaurant. In early 2020, it was time for her to scale up. With the money she had earned, she opened a new restaurant in the heart of the old city, paying advance rent for the whole year. But as Yangon enters its ninth month of lockdown, and expats have left the country en masse, Ma Ma Lwin is now nearly broke.
Agriculture and agribusiness still represent a crucial slice of most ASEAN member countries’ GDP. However, the sector is changing, increasingly leaving behind traditional, labour-intensive production and transformation processes in favour of more advanced and highly technological practices. And it is looking for partners.
A larger population and increased purchasing power have led to substantial growth in global demand for food in recent decades. While the contribution of agriculture to world GDP has, with very few exceptions (i.e., Ethiopia and Argentina), seen a constant decline, agrifood production has increased significantly since the end of World War II, and it is expected to double by 2050.1 More efficient farm structures, technological innovations and better inputs are among the major contributors to this global miracle.
