Picture this: It is Wednesday, 05, July 2012 morning. Malawian and South African dailies are carrying the following story:
‘…In an audacious regional cooperation deal, Sharp-two Malawi, Goods Trend Malawi [true names withheld] and a renown consortium of YAMBAs [Young Ambitious Malawian Business Achievers]—popularly known as “DziYambakata”—have entered into a Twenty-three billion Malawian Kwacha deal per year. It is part of the Malawi-South Africa duty-free trade agreement… The deal involves the Malawians exporting quality and reasonably priced agro-processed products into South Africa—to be disposed in South Africa by outlets belonging to the two major trading organizations…
’…As part of their social corporate consciences, Sharp-two Malawi, Goods Trend Malawi will allow the YAMBAs to use their fleets’ idle back-haul capacity to carry Malawian products and distribute in Sharp-two, Goods Trend outlets in South Africa... Described as an innovative coup: fleets of these two have been running into Malawi—month-end and mid-month—restocking their shops but generally running empty back to RSA. Now, that will be a story of the past—!’
Cut.
Back to present-day Malawi with her economic situation worsening due to lack of forex and shortage of fuel. Authorities—the central government, NGOs and many others—continue agonizing on how to resolve the problem in the face of falling sales of tobacco—Malawi’s main fast-dying forex earner.
Looking more like a designer ‘kantini’ or ‘spaza’ [to use a South African parlance], the Malawian economy is increasingly a shop with hardly any customers looking in. Meantime, the kantini-owner—faced with a bevy of hungry children screaming hunger—must contemplate alternative solutions!
Answers—quick, prompt and away from the tobacco vexation—are needed and everyone is lightly talking of diversifying Malawi’s ‘export bouquet’. Agriculture is bandied as the quickest means out of the current balance-of-payment maze [see Maravi Post, 13 May 2011]. For good reasons too; given Malawi is generally mineral-challenged.
But if there is one thing we have in abundance: its lots of hardworking Malawians. They are full of ideas too! The only problem is that they do not sufficiently vocalizing these. Worse they are generally bad on follow up.
Indeed if there was an area we failed: it was to harvest on the ‘corporate social responsibilities’ [CSRs] of Sharp-two Malawi, Goods Trend Malawi when they were entering the Malawian market. Today, walk around South Africa—the home country of those two—and everyone will proudly point out:
‘Goods Trend built that school... Sharp-two donated that and that and that…’ Firms in South Africa are tripping over each other ensuring they give back to communities supporting their business success stories.
But not in Malawi—it was business unusual when they arrived. They came, they built shops and we were excited out of our gums. We enthused: “we can now locally get what we used to trek across borders to buy”.
And the story ended. No one bothered to ask for their CSR contributions. And I can reassure you the two would have readily obliged. I can bet those resources—already earmarked as such—probably disappeared into their fat bottom lines.
But this piece is not about acrimony. Its about seeking alternatives to our dire importing tendencies. CSR is their birth gift to us: we just didn’t ask when opportunity came knocking. However, all is not lost—'nkhani si'wola' . We can still approach them—not to demand what we failed to ask before—but for new forms of cordiality between us.
I’m sure—going back to their delivery fleets—the two giants are aware of the need to find some back-haul cargo. It simply doesn’t make economic sense to run empty one way even if the empty-run cost has been factored into shelf prices. However, it is us who are ‘imva-ring m’mimba’! So let’s us point out such opportunities.
Others may argue about ‘complementarity problems’—that South Africa produces literary the same—if not better agricultural goods—to Malawi. Damn! But I can reassure you they don’t produce their products as efficiently and cheaply as hardworking Malawians do. They wouldn't be looking for Malawians to provide cheap labor on their farms, would they now? It’s the transport cost that makes us expensive and less competitive—silly! We have always had a natural low-production-cost and competitive advantage in almost any agro-processed good you can think of.
Meantime, the two South African shopping groups have fleets—‘going-back-empty-anyway'—let's 'piggyback’ on those! Thus, the true shipping cost—if they agreed to do their CSR part-in-kind—would be pretty much close to zero, isn’t it? But to ensure we do not break WTO and Malawi-South Africa Trade Agreement rules [we could be accused of dumping!] we have to be seen to contribute something towards transportation costs of our goods. So we are still going to pay single-leg transportation costs on their vehicles. That's allowed under 'consolidation' laws—let the detractors look into their statute books.
Of course, there is a further CSR sweetener here. Once our goods are down there—Sharp-two, for example—would ensure our products are sold in their outlets. I see no problem here. I know of certain South African outlets already involved in similar regional agreements. On the other hand—Goods Trend could try the Pepsi textbook case where Pepsi promoted a ‘barter’ agreements in another country just so they could sell more Pepsi Cola while supporting that country’s balance of payments problems. Imagine Goods Trend allowing farmers to bring in bales of tobacco in exchange of TV sets. Of course, not in exactly those terms! But, it is the way forward. Goods Trend and/ or Sharp-two cannot expect to maintain or even grow their profits when Malawians can’t export or earn forex? It’s called ‘khonza kapasi!’
Come YAMBAs let us put our shoulders to the wheel!
