Africa doesn’t know the meaning of business

Apparently I had been nudged awake, either by the nice Indian boy on my left, who accompanied his mum to Houston to enroll his elder sister in University, or by the hostess herself. The air hostess plunked a flat plat of oyibo breakfast in front of me, but I was still groggy for a while, […]

Apparently I had been nudged awake, either by the nice Indian boy on my left, who accompanied his mum to Houston to enroll his elder sister in University, or by the hostess herself. The air hostess plunked a flat plat of oyibo breakfast in front of me, but I was still groggy for a while, jet-lag on track.
I started fiddling with the items in the breakfast plate.  The economist (or is it the busy-body) in me always flips things like these over to see where they were made, instinctively. And then I panicked. Had I got on the United Airlines or US Airways flight in Houston in error, instead of Air France? Or was I on Delta Air, which sometime collaborates with Air France? Why? Everything… Everything on the plate in front of me was made in the USA. There was Jam from Ohio, Orange Juice from Atlanta, Yoghurt from Virginia, Butter from Massachusetts. Everything was manufactured and packaged in the USA.  I collected my senses after a while, and made a note to see what happens on the connecting flight from France to Abuja.
Of course it was the exact opposite. On the flight from France to Abuja, everything was French. Cheese, Butter, Water, Wine, Fruit Juice, Fruit cuts.  The whole shebang!
Your guess is as good as mine that on the way out of Nigeria, there will be absolutely no Nigerian products on the menu. Nothing to project Nigeria’s or Africa’s image or add to the capacity utilization of our farms.  Nothing to ensure that the wastage of farm products in high season reduces. Nothing to ensure our companies keep prospering. Here, we have been told never to support our companies because it is inefficient to do so. But the masters of capitalism understand the RACE FOR CAPITAL, and are doing, have always been doing all within their power to project, protect and prosper their own. Nigerian entities and the government in particular still find it sexy and enlightening to farm out every job to foreigners, from construction to contractors, even to farmers. I understand many locals mess up and may not be up to scratch. But there is a strategic imperative to begin to look inwards, big time.
That all the products served in the Air France flight from the US, were totally US products was not by happenstance. The US must have insisted, and negotiated, arm-twisted and hit some body blows on their French counterpart in order to get this done. It may have become a convention among them. There are many conventions that African countries are excluded from; basic and important stuff that is seen as global best practice. I was one lectured about how some sea pollution conventions were craftily excluded from African countries.  That Marine Convention, which precluded ships from dumping toxic wastes in international waters, was signed but the west and east coast of Africa were exempted because they didn’t just know about it or the delegates they sent were emasculated. But thankfully in this age of social media with information flowing more freely, perhaps we can make some corrections to past omissions and commissions.
Africa does not understand business. And by this I mean black Africa – those parts governed by people of colour. Exclude South Africa.  That country has enough wine being produced, enough milk, cheese, butter and bread, by its own people, its own countries, that on any South African Airlines flight out of that country, that is what they will serve. The trick is that when you can your food, and preserve them, your farmers can produce more, food can be even cheaper and more available, your companies will grow and make profit and of course your image will be available all over the world. If South Africa does not even have an airline, its Shoprite is all over Nigeria pushing its products. Nigerian elites are only interested in the photo opportunity and the elite ‘creds’ that go with shopping in Shoprite, rather than Emeka’s shop down the road. Not that Emeka stocks local things anyway, but at least the profit, the capital will remain with one of our own.
Earlier in the past week, I had been speaking with several people among which was a representation of the US Department of Commerce. He proudly told us that theirs was to get the backs of their own companies anywhere they were in the world. I was also in a meeting with a certain local government ‘chairman’, indeed less than a local government chair, but named the President of a District within Houston, whose vision and achievements, as well as presentation will put EVERY president in black Africa to shame.  More on this another day.  Suffice to say that I left that meeting with a bitter taste in my mouth.
So, maybe deliberately or otherwise, black African leaders have no idea what is going on in the world and are not in a hurry to learn. Or maybe the constrains holding them from achieving are too many. But I doubt. Most of them are given to hubris, noise, self-aggrandaisation. They see themselves as very akin to Mobutu SeseSekoKuku NgbenduWaZaBanga, in English “The All-Powerful Warrior who, because of his endurance and inflexible will to win, goes from conquest to conquest, leaving fire in his wake”. Imagine the bloated self-importance behind such a name. But at heart, they know they are cowards because most of them never work for their people but are easily tucked into a back pocket by their foreign masters.  And then they die.  The silence that precedes the passing of many an African leader is usually deafening. The sirens stop.  The fawning ends – at least around them. Those who projected them as the only solution to their country’s problems, all the while milking the countries, turn against them and their families in their hour of need and when they are gone. Those same sycophants are the same ones who stab them behind, cursing them and stealing from their grieving families. Maybe it’s a genetic problem.
I realized just how mediocre we are. A governor builds a bridge and becomes a hero for life. Just one bridge. Does that not mean that our default existence is to go around naked and live in trees? If we are like this, then how can we possibly understand the sophisticated space of international business? How can we respond at all when the people we compete with decide to up the ante by causing a few wars here so that their munitions companies can sell, or when they ensure their own well-established companies crowd our upstarts out?  We haven’t even started. Let nobody project himself in the mould of a hero. There are no heroes in these lands.