GLOBAL TRADE AND THE SUPPLY CHAIN CRISIS IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted worldwide commerce and supply lines, resulting in significant uncertainty. Predicting the exact status of global supply chains and commerce in the post-COVID-19 era is currently challenging. This paper presents possible global trade and supply chain challenges, examining, in particular, the future of Nigeria’s post-COVID-19 role in the world industrial revolution. Adopting a quantitative research approach using a well-structured questionnaire with a focus on manufacturing companies in Nigeria. This analysis demonstrates that the pandemic has inflicted significant damage on manufacturing businesses, jeopardising all aspects of their supply chain, from raw material procurement to the distribution of completed products to customers. Consequently, the disturbance propagated from both upstream and downstream throughout the value chain. With insight from the Nigerian Flour Mill, this research examines the significance of supply shifts to the value creation on operational sustainability of the manufacturing industry in the Southwest Region of Nigeria. Data were collected from three hundred and sixty-eight (368) staff of prominent Flour Mills in the focused region. Multiple regression analysis was utilised to analyse the research data. The findings of the study revealed that supply shifts towards product-value creativity significantly influence the economic viability of the Flour Mill industries, as indicated by a strong positive correlation (R-value of 0.912) and an R2 value of 0.832, suggesting that product-value creativity in the supply chain manager accounts for approximately 83.2% of the variations in the economic viability of the manufacturing industries. Conversely, the influence of process-value creativity devised by supply-chain managers on environmental sustainability was found to be minimal, with a Multiple Rvalue of 0.716 and an R2 value of 0.512, indicating that process-value creativity accounts for only 51.2% of the variations in environmental sustainability. In conclusion, while product-value creativity plays a substantial role in enhancing the economic viability of the manufacturing industry, process value creativity has a limited impact on environmental sustainability. This underscores the need for manufacturing industries in the southwest to focus more on product-value creativity to drive global economic trade while seeking other strategies to improve environmental sustainability.