Reactions And Responses

The opening game of the World Cup at Soccer City in Johannesburg between the host nation South Africa and visitors Mexico, was an exercise in careful mutual respect, and measured engagement.

The motivation for this controlled encounter was the fact that the world was keenly looking to judge the winner or loser and set a tone for world opinion thereafter. Gladly for both sides, the result was a one goal all draw which not only gave each side a positive review, but also treated the world to two goals as an added bonus.

After the opening game, the rest of the world cup games demand strategy, innovation when required, and measured and deliberate engagement. This is much the same as starting a new business. The key issue is to respond to the challenges, and not to react to the unfolding outcomes.

The world cup games show some insights on how Africa reacts rather than responds to evolving situations.

The Argentina versus Nigeria game recorded that Nigeria took half the number of shots at goal than Argentina. Possibly due to the weaknesses in the Nigeria defence, the Nigeria goal keeper Vincent Enyeama was forced to single-handedly defend the goal, and as a consequence, became Man of the Match.

The South Africa versus Uruguay game saw South Africa go down by three goals to nil. The game saw the South Africa goal keeper sent off and a penalty awarded to Uruguay. South Africa shots on goal amounted to half of those shot on goal by the Uruguay side. The South African supporters reacted to the goal keeper send off by walking out of the stadium before the end of the match and abandoning their national team to absorb the then imminent defeat on their own.

The Nigeria versus Greece game recorded a red card for a Nigeria player which motivated the commentators to characterise him as Monster of the Match, and thereafter Nigeria was exposed to a battering from the Greece strikers. The game ended with a two to one score line in favour of Greece, and a gruelling amount of work for Vincent Enyeama yet again as he was left to defend the goal line single-handedly.

Much of the analysis of the three games comes down to reactions to the evolving situations in the games, rather than responses that require re-planning, innovation, strategy, and calculated actions.

Africa may exhibit the most prized soccer players in the world today as they play in Europe and the Americas, but engaging these players in Africa and for Africa, becomes an elusive dream much like the development of African economies which have vast resources but continue to struggle to survive.

African economies are plagued rather than blessed with resources. Much of Africa finds itself entrenched in reactive action when faced with economic challenges rather than responsive motions that should lead to incremental improvements in the development of local economies.

The lessons to be learned from the experiences of member states of the Southern African Customs Union are seldom incorporated in the design of new similar initiatives such as the COMESA Customs Union or the ECOWAS trading block. Africa seems to want to learn by individual personal experiences even though history informs us of some dangers to look out for than can be avoided.

It may be useful to critically analyze and assess the roles of the Bretton Woods institutions and other donor partners that have a foot in African economies.

Like in soccer, we may want to look at the statistics. In soccer we look at how many corners for and against us, we note how many shots on goal for either side, and we keep a record of the number of yellow cards issued, all in an effort to strategically play a better game with the ultimate goal of winning the match.

With the economy, African countries often look to their outside partners to support them with infrastructure development where the partners feel it is useful, and thereafter most of the support is focussed on reacting to social and economic disasters that affect the daily lives of Africans across the continent.

As Africans, it may be worth considering and taking stock of the contents of our own developed strategies. We may want to step back and look at our own goals and develop a home grown program that addresses our own special conditions. We may consider re-engineering our options such that outside intervention becomes a supplement to our own efforts, rather than letting the intervention become the primary program for our development.

China, India, and the Asian Tiger economies have developed on the basis of following their own goals while responding to the global challenges. The sustainable future will be determined by a focussed attention to carefully developed responses to the evolving domestic, regional, and global economic conditions.

The African Union looks to experiences across the world which has impacted on the social and economic development of selected countries. South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Libya are examples of countries that were excluded from interacting with the wider majority over several decades. History revels that these countries focussed on developing domestic capacity to fill the gaps that are usually filled by foreign intervention. The net result has been that these economies have developed more rapidly than those that remained good members of the world club of nations. There may be some lessons to be learned from these experiences.

The continent of Africa is the last bastion of a wide range of resources available to the world. The choice of programs that each African nation selects as a means to trade the resources for various forms of social and economic development will determine the future well being of their nationals for decades to come. A program based on responses rather than reactions will prove to be the way forward.

Africa to Africa collaboration is the primary mandate of many regional economic groupings across the continent. The last two decades have taught Africa that there are more efficient ways to trade by eliminating the middleman in Europe and North America, and trading directly with the source which as been clearly defined as Asia in respect to the vast majority of goods imported into the African continent.

Similarly, African countries can eliminate the need to always process development initiatives through the west and seriously adopt some milestones set by the African Union where the movement and transfer of human resources and knowledge moves directly across the continent thereby developing capacity within the continent. When will African countries cooperate, collaborate, partner, share, support, and embrace each other in the quest for Pan African development through deeds that backup the rhetoric often marketed at continental conferences and meetings?

By the end of June, the World Cup games in South Africa will have eliminated all the African nations. It will be ironic that yet again, Africa will be the playground that Europe and the Americas will have free reign over, while Africans stand on the side lines and sit in the galleries as they gasp at the great achievements of those exploiting their fields.

Published 22 June 2010

Processing Food

It is refreshing to note that private businesses in Zambia and Tanzania have acknowledged the power of food processing as both a viable business sector, and a natural and necessary food security option.

Over the last two decades Zambia has seen food processors come and go, and some have actually stood the test of time and survived the good times and the bad times.

In the last three years some old food processing investments have resurrected under different names but essentially on the same premises with the same old machinery and equipment.

New entrants to the food processing sector have emerged with options for citrus fruit processing that look to the Luapula and North Western Provinces for out growers under new schemes that should encourage rural farmers to invest in fruit orchards. The cashew nut plantations in the Western Province have also been targeted as a source for inputs in a nut processing plant.

East African investors are reported to have invested on the Copperbelt in an edible oil processing plant that will supplement the current processing capacity which is mainly focussed on Lusaka.

History teaches us some interesting lessons about the food processing sector in Zambia.

First, it is very important that the food processing industry should be able to access competitive pricing for water, sugar, electricity, and oil based fuels if it is to flourish and remain sustainable. These requisites all go towards the cost of doing business.

Second, the food processing sector must be able to access cheap money from the financial markets such that the sector can grow and expand.

Third, training institutions must support this sector by providing courses that support the relevant human resource development requirements which ensure that the food processing industry is adequately staffed with professionally trained personnel.

Fourth, bottling, canning, and packaging capacity must be upgraded to meet regional and international standards.

Fifth, quality and quantity standards must be set and maintained through the assistance of the Zambia Bureau of Standards (ZABS) and the Zambia Weights and Measures Agency (ZWMA). These standards comprise a mixture of both mandatory standards and voluntary standards that ensure that Zambian processed food is regionally and internationally accepted.

Sixth, food processing companies must learn to collaborate and consolidate so that they can target markets beyond the Zambia borders where quantity and consistency of supply is essential.

Seventh, there must be a sufficient number of investors in the sector to ensure competitiveness for producer crop pricing, and to comprise an industry that can afford some pullouts and failures.

Tanzania has opened up its food processing industry to foreign investment and aims to target markets in the region, the Middle East, and possibly markets further abroad.

In order for the export goals to be realised Zambia and Tanzania must coordinate all the necessary mechanisms to create a scenario where food processing will not only succeed, but will become a major foreign exchange earner for the local economies.

The current environment promotes an uphill ‘go it alone’ philosophy for the development of the food processing sector.

West Africa, Asia, and South America have invested in developing the food processing sector to the extent that dozens of products have been put on the shelves using sweet potato, mango, guava, cassava, banana, yam, soya bean, and other easily grown crops as input raw material.

Food processing allows new cuisines to be developed with relatively very little input.

What Zambia considers surplus and useless seasonal fruit and crops, a food processor regards as valuable input for the factory and could alter the balance between characterising a country as poor and food deficient, or healthy and food self sufficient.

There are glimmers of hope in the supermarkets, airports, and markets when new dried fruit products are displayed on the shelves. Interesting flavours of roasted ground nuts can be purchased at selected shops. A variety of dried vegetables are now available in major supermarkets. Dried meat is now packaged in small portions for the snack meal.

These above products are commonly seen in South African shops but represent only the tip of the iceberg of processed and packaged foods. A whole industry can be aggressively built around food processing that will mop us the wastage that is experienced in Zambia through every season of selected fruits, crops, vegetables, honey, fish, meat, and even exotic edible insects.

The constant emphasis that Zambia has placed on the need to process and add value to the huge amount of copper that is mined in the country, should also be put on food processing which has a more profound impact on the quality of lives of local people.

The investment and other requirements to process copper are far more extensive and complex than the investment required to process food products.

This may be an opportunity to take stock of what really matters to the average person. Is food availability and access more important than the goal of adding value to copper? Which option comes out tops on the priority list? Which option is easier to realize?

Published 15 June 2010

Closing Ranks

Since the advent of the global crisis in 2008, the world has recognized the need to close ranks in respect to domestic economic development.

The various forms of closing ranks ranges from domestic private sector collaboration with their respective governments, to regional and international development initiatives across a variety of economic programs.

The wake up call was not only initiated by the global economic crisis, but was propelled by the realisation that several Asian countries led by China, have over the last three decades built robust and resilient economies that withstood the pressure coming from the upheavals in the developed world.

As a result of this realisation, many developed countries have now adopted previously discouraged initiatives such as subsidies, protection, import quotas, and other non tariff barriers in an effort to stimulate domestic production in their own economies. These previously frowned upon and considered anti development mechanisms by the World Bank (WB) and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have become the survival tools for developed economies and have forced the Bretton Woods institutions to shut up and stand aside.

The WB and IMF are now compelled to innovate and dream up some new economic development initiatives that will not condemn the actions taken in the developed world, and yet seemingly offer some convincing strategies for Africa’s development.

The natural way for Africa, and more specifically for Zambia, is to close ranks within the country as a primary strategy, and to close ranks within Africa as the continental strategy. The various regional economic groupings offer a series of development paths towards a consolidated Africa through the initiatives of various groupings such as COMESA, ECOWAS, SADC, EAC, and several others.

It is quite clear that the government in the United States of America was rightly compelled to financially bail out several banks and insurance companies, and engaged to protect their timber industry, while the airline industry quickly embraced amalgamation and mergers in an effort to maintain a viable and competitive economy.

The United Kingdom and other European countries followed suit with similar bail outs and mergers, while unsalvageable companies were allowed to file for bankruptcy and shut down in the best interests of the economies in which they operated.

In Southern Africa, the initiatives and strategies undertaken by COMESA, SADC and the EAC are challenging member states to think domestic, and to think regional. Developments in the region must address the challenges of promoting regional integration through easier communication and interaction amongst member states. SADC, EAC
and COMESA must engage with each other and the rest of Africa to ensure that African nationals can visit each African country in a hassle free manner that favours the movement of Africans across the continent. The current status of African Commonwealth countries interacting more efficiently and in a facilitative manner at the expense of ECOWAS countries that are mainly Francophone, only contributes towards dividing Africa and supporting a polarised and non collaborative continent.

When will Africans be able to visit each other and obtain visas at the border of entry? When will Africans promote all Africans irrespective of which country the individuals hail from? When will Africans look to other Africans as development partners before scuttling off to Europe and America to engage in an inequitable economic relationship?

In Zambia, the challenges are immense. The economy is developing steadily and there are many opportunities for domestic ‘closing of the ranks’ for Zambian businesses. Government contracts for the supply of various goods and services need to be targeted on domestic suppliers before they are offered to foreign companies. Many options for this targeted development are available and cover areas such as bore hole drilling, tourism and conferences, airline services, steel production, skills development, and sugar manufacturing, to name but a few.

Government can play a key role in offering domestic businesses opportunities to develop, grow, and become significant contributors to taxation and production in the country. The links between growing the tourism sector and the hosting of regional conferences through collaborative programs is already being established albeit in a small and non formalised manner.

Collaboration between a strictly domestic routes airline and another airline that offers regional routes has developed bigger capacities for both companies and create bigger economies of scale in terms of volume of business. There is potential for the sugar producers to compete in the domestic market, and to collaborate to service the regional markets developed through the COMESA Customs Union. The young steel producers sector is challenged to collaborate while the sector is still in the development stage. Options for supplying steel to the region are open to Zambian producers and the success of exploiting these options may rest on how organised and collaborative the producers become, when challenged with fulfilling regional orders consistently.

Zambia and Africa must develop new benchmarks for economic development that are relevant to domestic and regional development. New milestones to measure achievement and progress must be generated. The milestones should measure economic development within each country, and development within the region.

It is quite clear that the development benchmarks and milestones imposed on Zambia and Africa by Prescriptive Partners are not for the benefit of African economies directly, but are key issues that impact on foreign direct investment and foreign government aid programs.

The challenges for Closing Ranks for Zambia and Africa can be compared to a bus that has broken down en route from one town to another. The passengers on the bus have a choice. They can either stay in their seats and hope that the driver and his crew can miraculously push the fully loaded bus to start the engine and continue on the journey to prosperity, or they can all realistically disembark and help to push the lighter loaded bus so that their journey continues relatively unbroken and their goal of arriving at their destination in a much shorter time is well within their sights.

Closing ranks through collaboration, partnership, and boosting domestic capacity offers Zambia and Africa a positive route to economic development that can be owned and managed by Africans.

Published 8 June 2010

A Woman's Lot

The role of girls and boys, men and women, and mothers and fathers, has been the subject of much debate in the last four decades.

Religion and laws have segregated the male and female roles for centuries. The segregation has moved away from the basis of obvious biological differences to cultural and social constructs that have deliberately favoured one gender over the other depending on the issue or circumstances.

The gender debate is far from concluded, and is just as far from arriving at a consensus across the world. The discussion and dialogue continues to evolve with time.

On the ground however, evidence shows that in Zambia just as many girls are enrolled in primary school as boys. This equity stops there as statistics begin to reveal that more boys end up in secondary school than girls. The trend continues at tertiary education where the numbers start to dramatically change in favour of males.

Some explanations include the fact that girls are socialized at an early age to take up domestic work in the home and soon become child minders and home builders even while there are in primary school. This situation then makes it cost saving to withdraw the girl child from school to replace domestic workers and yet compel the boy child to go to school as a means to keep him occupied and out of mischief.

Many secondary school girls tend to fall prey to pregnancy and have to leave school to tend to their new born child while the father of the child gets away with paying a ‘charge for damages’ and continues in school without any further responsibilities towards the child. The Zambian law theoretically protects pregnant girls from being expelled for becoming pregnant (the correct term is actually falling pregnant which graphically illustrates how pregnancy makes a girl fall from favour, society, school, and freedom), but the reality is that pregnancy physically knocks a girl out of school because of the logistics and costs of having a baby and looking after a baby.

The girl child who develops into a young woman soon becomes mentally and physically more mature than her male counterpart. The combination of childhood experiences, exposure, and maturity generally makes the young woman more aware, awake, sensitive, and deductive in such a way as to exhibit good business sense and a much talked about attribute commonly known as ‘woman’s intuition’. In short, young women are far sharper, and are better judges of character, than their men folk.

Alas, the lot for a woman is not as hopeful as that of a man. Many women will find themselves with not much more than basic education as they enter adulthood. Many women negotiate life with the domestic skills that they have developed in their homes, and tend to emphasize on their looks rather than their brains in an effort to secure a good life.

Those women that have managed to make it to the top with low education and good domestic and family building skills, have had to settle for miserable relationships and constant verbal and physical abuse from their spouses, because they have no place else to go.

It is said that access to money is access to power. For many women the power is in the pockets of their spouses and this power develops an imbalance in the relationship to the extent that the man often reminds his woman partner that she can either take life his way or go away and fend for herself. Most women do not want to be put in a position to have to make the choice because going away from comfort and security is not easy.

Laws have had to be made to protect women in the work place from harassment and abuse from their male co-workers. The fact that these laws are now in place I many countries across the world is testimony of the prolific existence of harassment of the woman worker.

The modern woman is faced with experiences of covert harassment in the work place, the prospect of being dumped with young children when her spouse decides to up and leave for better prospects, disrespect from family and society for not having a good education, insufficient earnings due to poor work skills and training (outside the hospitality industry), oppression and ridicule from a better educated and higher earning spouse.

This is a woman’s lot today if she has a humble education and set of skills that relegate her to the role of domestic worker for the family and low income earner.

This lot should not be the case if the girl child can be kept in school, attain a university education, and use all the life skills that she has developed, and all the experiences that she has been exposed to in her youth, to become a top earner and performer in her chosen career. The rise of women in Zambia to top positions in government and industry is proof that a women’s lot is largely determined by the focus on education in youth and in early adulthood.

Women can avoid needing a sugar daddy to pay the bills. Women can stop being marketed as prize possessions. Women can prevent the situation of being viewed as family assets much like livestock and property. Women can change the notion of being described as the weaker sex.

Empowered women are the ones that take their lives into their own hands by jumping into the driver seat and steering the course of life either on their own, or with their spouses, as contributing, confident, and respectable partners in building a home and a future.

A woman’s lot can be by design and not by default as has been the case in the past. The woman of today has some influence on her present life and the future, but with the assistance of her family, she can chart a path to happiness and success with a good and relevant education as the driving mechanism.

Published 6 June 2010

Legends And Icons

Each successive generation looks to the previous generation for legends and icons to serve as role models that handover values and knowledge that is vitally required in the continuum of progressive social and economic development.

For many people the legends and icons are represented primarily by parents, and can be supplemented by teachers, church leaders, work colleagues, and even political leaders.

My personal legend and icon has been my father. A man that always said ‘I may not leave you with wealth, but I will certainly leave you with a good name’. For some, a good name is the greatest wealth that a parent can bequeath to them, while for others, cash in the bank and property is their life long dream being realized. Sadly, my father passed in Lusaka on Saturday 15 May 2010 at the ripe old age of 86. I am very fortunate to have received his good name and may his blessed soul rest in peace.

Now what remains behind for us are the lessons of life that we can use to navigate our own lives much more strategically as the errors and successes of our legends and icons become part of our own living history.

We celebrate Africa Freedom day every year and yet to many of us all we experience is another day off work and seldom do we fully appreciate the opportunity that the day commemorates in respect to uplifting our lives, and the lives of our children as we look to the future.

One might question the significance of legends and icons in relation to social and economic development of any country. For some it is obvious that there are linkages from one generation to another and the human development paradigm is channeled through this mechanism. For others there are options of books and the internet to provide all the necessary history and background that is required to propel development in this modern age. Albeit that all literature and even the internet has information mostly based on the perception of the author rather than on hard indisputable facts. This may explain why the world is in such a big social and economic mess at the moment.

Africa’s lack of rapid and sustainable development may be as a result of looking outward for the answers rather than looking inward for the legends and icons of our time.

Our minds have become so busy with conflicting information, irrational ideas, and wishful thinking, that we have mostly closed ourselves from other more progressive options that are right at our doorsteps.

Today, the lessons passed on by Nelson Mandela during the post democratic dispensation in South Africa, and the lessons that he articulated while in detention on Robben Island, risk being relegated to anecdotes rather than the blood, sweat and tears that they truly represent. Is modern day South Africa now more cognizant of the socially and economically marginalized lives of the poor masses across the country? When will this model nation of African development finally eliminate tin shack dwellings and almost zero education amongst its poor?

While the rest of Africa endeavors to emulate the South African city skyline and highway network, it may be useful for South Africa to look closer at the achievements made by Zambia and other African countries in the struggle for equitable access to decent housing and basic education for the vast majority of their people.

The legends and icons of Africa include Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Kenneth Kaunda, Julius Nyerere, Nelson Mandela, Samora Machel, and Anwar Sadat. The history books written outside the continent tend to label these great heroes as dictators, delusional leaders, terrorists, and troublemakers. African literature records these leaders as champions of freedom, liberators, inspirational icons, promoters of Pan Africanism, and legends of our times.

Recent events bring to the fore some notorious icons such as the alleged drug lord and master criminal in Kingston Jamaica who commands such a strong following that members of the public are willing to put their lives on the line to break him out of police custody and set him free. One can reasonably conclude that a situation exists in Kingston where either the official system of government has failed the people and the alleged drug king has stepped in to provide the local people with opportunities and options for a livelihood, or the public have been corrupted and coerced into a life of lawlessness and anarchy.

The legends and icons of our time can therefore either bring us motivation, hope, and expectations for a better and brighter tomorrow, or they can help to plunder us into submission, misery, and darkness for the foreseeable future.

Zambia can begin to domestically build a living history of the legends and icons that have contributed to advancing the social and economic development of the country since the days of colonial rule. There are many silent heroes in our villages, towns, and cities whose lives and stories remain unspoken and undocumented. There are treasures of traditional and cultural oral literature that remain in the homes and eventually graves of unsung Zambian heroes. There is pride, confidence, and great lessons that are buried each day in our burgeoning cemeteries as great people bid farewell to this world and take their experiences and thoughts with them to the after life.

The legends and icons that survive in our communities today seem to be the mockers of integrity, the attackers of honesty, the fighters against sincerity, and the killers of truth. The generations of our youth that are exposed to this kind of icon have a bleak future ahead of them because the lessons that they learn are usually lessons on self destruction that can only bring shame and poverty to the nation.

It is every citizen’s responsibility to flush out the bogus legends and icons and usher in and hold up high the true heroes of our nation.

Every hard working man, woman, and child in this nation is material for tomorrow’s new legends and icons. Every honest and sincere person has the ingredients to become the hero of tomorrow.

The virtue of integrity and humility has the potential to fashion the character of the generation of tomorrow which is faced with the challenges of globalization, regional integration, and nation building in a hostile and very unfair world order in which the barbaric principle of the survival of the fittest and strongest still reigns.

Published 1 June 2010