Globalti
Legendary Member
I'm going through a really annoying time with a potentially massive customer in Uganda at the moment. Most of my export customers are actually the owners of their company so there is never any request for brown envelopes. However at this big Ugandan company I am forced to deal with a team of "executives" who are in Kampala on a short contract of a few years only and are apparently determined to enrich themselves at their employer's expense before returning home.
So even though I know my product works better and will save them money by being more cost-effective they are making it impossible for me to submit a meaningful quote because they are satisfied with the existing arrangements. Thus the "executives" are forcing the company to use old, outdated raw materials, which puts them at a disadvantage compared with their local competitors and at the same time they are defrauding their employer of an additional percentage of profit, which could be used to improve the company or pay for better staff. (Or enrich the directors, cynics might say!)
I despair for the future of Africa while this kind of practice is so rife.
In a similar vein, I have been visiting Lagos twice or thrice a year for the last 27 years and in the last two years the city has undergone an amazing transformation. It is still chaotic, congested, dangerous, anarchic and sometimes frightening but the place is actually improving. When you travel out to other places like Kano you remember how bad Lagos used to be in the bad old days. And the reason? The present state governor Babatude Fashola is thought not to be stealing all the money but is allowing some of it to be invested, which is creating jobs, which is putting money into society from the bottom up. You can see the result; the streets are being cleaned, roads are being repaired and built and there is a sense of optimism. All Lagosians need now is a public electricity supply - as I write this my colleague there is telling me by BBM that there is "light" in his area this afternoon but the voltage is fluctuating between 80v and 300v!
(No money has been spent on electricity generation because certain ministers are enriching themselves so much on kickbacks from the import of generators that the government has no interest in investing in power generation.)
So even though I know my product works better and will save them money by being more cost-effective they are making it impossible for me to submit a meaningful quote because they are satisfied with the existing arrangements. Thus the "executives" are forcing the company to use old, outdated raw materials, which puts them at a disadvantage compared with their local competitors and at the same time they are defrauding their employer of an additional percentage of profit, which could be used to improve the company or pay for better staff. (Or enrich the directors, cynics might say!)
I despair for the future of Africa while this kind of practice is so rife.
In a similar vein, I have been visiting Lagos twice or thrice a year for the last 27 years and in the last two years the city has undergone an amazing transformation. It is still chaotic, congested, dangerous, anarchic and sometimes frightening but the place is actually improving. When you travel out to other places like Kano you remember how bad Lagos used to be in the bad old days. And the reason? The present state governor Babatude Fashola is thought not to be stealing all the money but is allowing some of it to be invested, which is creating jobs, which is putting money into society from the bottom up. You can see the result; the streets are being cleaned, roads are being repaired and built and there is a sense of optimism. All Lagosians need now is a public electricity supply - as I write this my colleague there is telling me by BBM that there is "light" in his area this afternoon but the voltage is fluctuating between 80v and 300v!
(No money has been spent on electricity generation because certain ministers are enriching themselves so much on kickbacks from the import of generators that the government has no interest in investing in power generation.)
