Breaking the African Curse of Mediocrity

My dad had a particular thing about people throwing litter out of car windows. You’re driving along the highway and enjoying the drive while eating snacks. Suddenly someone opens the window and throws an empty packet – perfectly normal to some I’m sure. Within a split second, the brakes would screech on and the car would stop some 20m ahead. My dad would turn around and almost calmly ask you the culprit, to get out and pick up your litter before we resume the trip. The quote, “who do you think is going to pick that?” comes to mind. Even with oncoming traffic! It didn’t matter how old or respectable you were, you had to do it.

That memory brought me to constantly recognize the importance of respecting the environment we live in, the sanctity of cleanliness and the privilege of living in the beautiful natural environment bestowed to us all across Africa.

Sadly though, we rush to visit and admire Western cities and yet when we’re home and especially in high density areas, we find it perfectly okay to denigrate our own environment. Throwing litter at will, dusty shops with equally dusty product, buildings constructed haphazardly, kids jumping over running streams, dusty road networks in disrepair, urine stenched sidewalks, tangled electricity cables hanging precariously on wooden poles, counterfeits, table top vendors proudly “merchandising” their unkempt wares and calling for customers.

Informal retail is one of the largest contributors to the mediocrity rot. Setting up anywhere in informal structures, make-shift copy-paste merchandising display standards that date back to the 60’s, table tops with branded supplier zimbrelas sprawled everywhere, or an industrious lady just spreading a plastic on the ground and proudly piling her vegetables along the roadside. “Woe” the person who steps on that traders’ tomatoes! City officials suddenly have a perfect personal revenue source as a grey battle line for rate collection arises.

City officials, governments and persons of authority responsible for encouraging the move to the promise of cleanliness or even maintaining the environment are quick to fly to western countries to do observer missions but ultimately return with hefty allowances and zero implementation. Greed and corruption overrule the need for any form of action. I recently heard the quote, “eat first, work later”, meaning they will earn corruptly first before they begin to serve. Serving being primarily at the time of re-election. On an aside, when do the corrupt feel they have eaten enough?

This rot is synonymous across most developing nations; however, I must admit that it is refreshing to see efforts made in some cities over the last few years to clean up. Fight on corruption appears to be the core solution; meaning municipality rates collected can be seen to be making a real difference in building and maintaining formal trading structures on the ground, municipality by-laws are enforced transparently, refuse collection is scheduled and done on-time and modern amenities are put in place against rational public ratios.

The private sector can certainly help. The retailers themselves can do with a fresh dose of perspective on customer service. Simply looking at shopping habits in those markets, you realize that value for money matters most and the traders who offer the best service, normally get the most transactions and their prices don’t matter as much.

My question; can we who live in these environments actually change our mindsets towards development and aspire for that Western look to be in our cities. Can we walk away from creating grey man-made corruption opportunities? Can we agree that this is not too far flung a notion and that we can have people flooding to our nations for inspiration and fresh air?

Farayi Ziswa is a specialist consultant on traditional retail trade and route-to-market retail strategies within Eastern and Southern Africa. Get in touch...