When Abdella Mohammed, 35, moved to China, he was a teenager, sent by his family to pursue an education in international business management. He spent 18 years there, most the time in Shanghai, working for a medical equipment manufacturer after finishing school. Three years ago, Abdella returned with grand plans of establishing a medical textile manufacturing plant, inside Meqelle Industrial Park, in partnership with two Chinese businessmen.

Things started smooth. Their company, Royal Medical Textile Manufacturing Plc, rented a 3,000sqm space inside the Park for 6,000 dollars a month. With a total investment of almost eight million dollars, equipment and machinery were imported and installed. They were about to plug the socket in and begin production.

Ironically, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic meant that a company set to begin producing personal protective equipment, in high demand due to the virus, could not get off the ground. Travel restrictions and lockdowns in China prevented Abdella's partners from making the trip to Ethiopia. The plant in Meqelle never started production.

In April 2020, a state of emergency was declared, schools were closed, large gatherings were prohibited, and a sharp sense of cautiousness had gripped the country. With its plans disrupted, the company leased another space in Kilinto Industrial Park in the outskirts of Addis Abeba. Though the new space was smaller, 1,000sqm for 2,000 dollars a month, the manufacturer raced to begin producing an item in high demand – face masks.

When production started at the Kilinto plant in September that year, around six months following the first recorded case of COVID-19 in the country, the pandemic had already taken the lives of 1,000 people. Individuals were not allowed entry into banks, public offices or transportation without wearing face masks. All this was positive for Abdella and Royal; the company continued to rake in the cash as the pandemic went from bad to worse.

With 136 employees, Royal Medical churned out masks at around half of 1.5 million daily production capacity. By late 2020, Royal sold as many as 700,000 masks a day at a unit price of 1.8 Br to dozens of pharmacies, a handful of government offices and agents in Mercato. Pretty soon, it became normal to see youths hawking them on the roads of Addis Abeba. Royal's light blue masks, in particular, were ubiquitous.

Royal is not the only business born from the ruins of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many establishments have capitalised on what has been a highly disruptive phenomenon for almost all sectors of the economy. Producers of sanitiser and providers of disinfectant services have also benefited from the opportunities presented by the pandemic. The volume of sanitiser produced domestically jumped from 480,000lt to 12 million litres last year while the number of manufacturers producing face masks grew from just three to over 50, according to data from the Ministry of Trade & Industry.

The figures are impressive but the opportunities were proven to be short-lived. Somewhere along the line, demand slumped.

In late 2020, the government lifted the state of emergency, loosened restrictions on public gatherings, and reopened schools to curb the negative effects the pandemic was having on the economy. Taking place against a backdrop of the unbearable impacts of the pandemic, Ethiopia's economic growth plummeted to just two percent in the year after COVID-19, according to the IMF.

The relaxing of restrictions was welcome news to many and allowed things to go as far back to normal as possible, but it came with its own consequences. As the public sank back into its usual routines, protocols and caution were casually thrown to the wind. It was a measure that surfaced in contrast to the number of the sick and dying, which were not showing any signs of slowing down.

By the end of last year, almost 10 months into the pandemic, around 125,000 cases and almost 2,000 deaths had been recorded. The number of cases has tripled, while casualties from the virus have doubled since then. Crowds began to gather, students went back to school, and demand for personal protective materials like face masks and sanitisers, as well as disinfection services, began to drop. It hurt businesses and individuals involved in the market.

Noah Yemam, 32, a pharmacist and employee of Ami Pharmacy in the Lancia neighbourhood, is one of those affected.

In March 2020 and the months following, people were flocking to his pharmacy to buy face masks and sanitiser. As the number of cases and the death count continued to climb, protective equipment continued to fly off the shelves.

“I was selling up to 60 cartons of masks a day, charging up to 20 Br for a single mask," Noah said.

Each carton contained 50 face masks. On some days, the pharmacy sold as much as 60lt of sanitiser. Not anymore. Barely a customer walks in asking for face masks; a whole day goes by without selling a single mask. Sanitiser sales are even more discouraging.

"Maybe one customer bought sanitiser last week," Noah recalled.

Tafesse Bekele, 23, works as a parking attendant in the Lancia neighbourhood. To him, sanitiser is nothing more than a waste of money, especially considering the meagre income he makes from his job.

"It's been months since I used any sanitiser," says Tafesse, adding that he does, however, use a face mask when boarding public transportation though he only buys one or two of them a week.

The fall in demand has also affected Spotless Cleaning Services, whose revenues were boosted by providing disinfection services. It was established in late 2019, just months before the first COVID-19 case was recorded in the country.