I've been to Lusaka for five days, mostly doing the legwork for getting the small agribusiness that I'm partnered with up and running. This involves the hidden minutiae of details that come with a finished product; in our case, that is packaging and supply chain development (in that order). It's a surprisingly long and rather expensive process to get what looks to be as simple as a printed plastic bag manufactured; considering that we operate pretty much without any sort of Internet communication makes the effort that much harder. It's not that email doesn't exist or is used, but there is a certain level of trust that must be achieved between suppliers and consumers before they bother to email you back. This is especially true of the mainly South Asian community that seems to be the ubiquitous owners of most the manufacturing and mid-level retail shops in Lusaka; they rely more on actual meetings where they can size a customer up and find out if they are legit or not.
I realized mid-writing that I don't or haven't written much about what I actually do for a living. It's pretty sample; I hunt snipe with a slingshot, or something along those lines of difficulty. To put it shortly, I work with a farmers' cooperative union here in Senanga; my main goal is to build up their agri-business (with assistance from Concern Worldwide) whereby they purchase share-holder farmers' produce (paddy rice, groundnuts [peanuts], and sunflowers) and do value-addition (read: food processing) to make polished [white] rice, peanut butter, and cooking oil. We are trying to do the processing, packaging, marketing, etc., etc. It's a walk-off in theory; we can process and sell foods locally, bucking the high transport costs that are incurred bringing processed foods all the way from Lusaka, 700 km back east. Easy, huh?
In my former life as an programmer / analyst consultant (I don't believe it either), I was mentored by two guys; Bert and Jerry, who were 10 and 20 years older than me. Not officially mentored; most of the knowledge-sharing occurred at the bars of Jefferson City. They were both ex-Air Force, and had seen something of the world; I attribute some of my decision to leave the world of corporations and mainframes behind to their rather sage advice that you only get one chance. (Thanks fellas ... I'm broke, can barely use a PC anymore, worry over brain-damage from too much malaria prophylaxis, peregrinate all over a country I didn't know existed while I knew you, and am finally and thoroughly happy). Anyway, Bert had a great saying, ostensibly to explain our good salaries and our suicidal workloads in comparison to our partners we worked with ... "If it was easy, everyone would do it."
All our capital investment has to travel those same 700km from Lusaka. Costs are therefore 10 to 15% higher as a result from the word go; a pocket [bag] of cement costs about $5.00 more; our welders seem to be entirely devoid of materials; we have no gum [eucalyptus] trees for electric poles; our pipes are too small; our government offices have no supplies; stones are hard to come by for pouring the foundations; our masons have questionable credentials; our nails are overpriced and seem to be made of leftover tin; our agency's paperwork is glacial in its size and complexity; we can't seem to recover more than 10% of the loans we gave out over the past two years; we blink and stare in response to the scope of the costs.
To put an even sharper edge on the issue, we are on a short timeline; the Minister of Agriculture is coming at the end of this month to officially open our new production site where we'll make all this wonderful food, we are essentially 90% of the way there. Unfortunately, the according to the old "90/10 ~ 10/90" rule ... our last 10% that we are waiting on are the electricity (Zambia Electrical Supply Company (ZESCO)) and the water supply. The first is one of the last national-level government-run, i.e., "parastatal" companies, and the second is sort of a regional parastatal, meaning it is a government-run parastatal within Western Province.
My economics knowledge is pretty spotty, but African parastatals are basically the result of Keynesian theory gone hog-wild and becoming interlocked with good, ol' "big-man" African politicism. You see, not long after Independence, the Kenneth Kaunda government nationalized pretty much the entire economy, mostly driven by copper mining. There were any number of "Zam-" companies ... Zam-Beer, ZamBeef, Zamchick, NAMBOARD; hell, even the grocery stores were all under one national body, but I forget their name. The idea was that everything would be centrally planned by the wise old elves running the country, and that an economic / social utopia would doubtless result.
Unfortunately, the parastatals weren't long around before becoming domains of patronage, nepotism, favoritism, and so forth. The lack of competition birthed a lax work attitude, an utter lack of innovation, no real alternative for the consumer, etc. The gross inefficiencies were papered over thanks to the high price of copper in the 60's and early 70's; however, when the bottom dropped out of that respective market in 73/74, the government didn't respond by cutting back or reforming the system. They tried to borrow to cover the deficiency until the copper price rebounded; however, that didn't happen for almost 30 years.
Needless to say, things really got tight by the late 80s when the IMF and the World Bank were pushing structural readjustment hard, the pressure to move to a multi-party democracy from the West, and the degradation of social services became acute. The KK govt. was voted out in 91, and the successive administration wasted no time slaughtering almost all the sacred cows. Down went Zambeer; NAMBOARD; the grocery stores; everything really fell apart fast. However, there was no time to adjust, no public debate as we see in the midst of our current American economic doldrums; it was a case of dismemberment by fiat, there today, gone tomorrow.
Too bad about Zambeer ... I understand it was quite good.
Anyway, the short-and-dirty is that not all the cattle were led down the chute. ZESCO was left intact. So were most of the water & sewarage companies. NAMBOARD was killed, but later resurrected as FRA. They reached for full economic liberalization, but the backlash was too much, and fear of political consequences kept some of the patronage houses upright.
I can't say outright that ZESCO here is a patronage gig, but it is the picture of inefficiency. The W & S is not bad, but they simply have nothing to work with (e.g. pipes, pumps, well-drills, etc.) I attribute much of the reasons to a surfeit of Zambian patience and no mechanism through which customers can complain; with no need to worry about customers flying the coop, no one would listen to them, anyway. Also, these guys can't really do a lot on their own; orders come from above, and initiative (though actively preached) is rarely practiced.
Furthermore, poor performance in these outfits doesn't result in any punishment other than being transferred; if you goof up, they ship you further away from the centre of the country, but almost never fire anyone. In my experience, I've seen teachers so drunk on duty their eyes lacked coordinated movement; clinic officers hand out incorrect dosages resulting in sickness or death; managers using government funds to fuel trips to remote fishing grounds to purchase bream to resale for personal gain in towns; unexcused absences lasting months.
I've never seen anyone fired, though. I can't figure why; maybe the act of dismissing someone is so inimical to the Zambian persona that it doesn't happen, or maybe there is fear of repercussions ... who knows?
(exhaling) ... but like the Catholic prayer instructs, I can't change any of that, so I beg for the patience / strength to do what I can. I apologize for my writing being so spotty, but it is cathartic. And it's a blog, for pete's sake.
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