It is one of those grey-with-colorful-edgings dreams. Just imagine I am now the national Minister of Marketing and my YAMBA team and I are flying out of LaGuardia: a signed agreement—with an African-American consortium—under our belt. The Americans will be taking a good chunk of the pork products a bunch of gung-ho YAMBAs and I are producing in Malawi—under an ‘expedited piggery and pork production’ strategy. That is after I pitched the Chinese—following their premier’s visit to England and proposing—in exchange of China building a high-speed train—that England sell pork to the nearly two-billion Chinese market. Incensed—we then lobbied the State President to tell the Chinese where their loyalties ought to lie; arguing—rightly or wrongly:
‘What are the chances the English would raise 32 million pigs, year on year to meet the Chinese market needs? We have the land space and youthful labor to do just that!’
Eventually, the Chinese conceded before backtracking. They had left us with a million live pigs and hefty bank loans. But not to be deterred we had found alternative markets—including the African-Americans. At 25 kilograms—pork and products—per person per year that is some pork market and we love it! Then last week they called us demanding more of our succulent pork. Hence this top-up deal in our briefcase. It will push our production to nearly 5 million beasts per year—real billions of American dollars for Malawi! Who cares about tobacco-smoking bans anymore? While we are at it, why not turn all tobacco estates into pig farms! But I am running ahead of myself.
Between the Chinese tail-twister and the first African-American deal, I had blogged about an ideal National Marketing Model for Malawi. That model led us into quite a few money-spinning ideas and caused the guys on the Hill to come up with the whole idea of a Minister of National Marketing—
Damn it’s just a dream and suddenly I am awakened by noises outside my tin shack. Despite the idea being as old as nationhood, there is no National Marketing Ministry in Malawi. Of course the Japanese have their MITI [something to do with International Trade and Information]. The MITI guys go around the world selling Japan, Toyotas and what have you. They are good at it too because no one—including the WTO—has raised a cry about it. So why doesn’t Malawi do such a thing? Between the Japanese and ourselves Malawi—more than them—needs MITI—Malawi International Trade and Marketing Intelligence to at least inform some of these global people where Malawi is located on the map. We are an independent state—not a province of South Africa!
But, we seem quite happy operating on chance. I have just seen an article on the creation of a MITI like Malawi Trade and Investment Center [MTIC]—that will help to “promote Malawi exports to international markets”. That is a good start but it is not a Ministry. We have to go one better and move away from the marketing saying: because we produce some quality and aromaful tobacco, tea, coffee and chilies then customers must smell where we are. In this new brave, ugly world we need more than a center. We need Export Development Corporations with Marketing Process Teams out there ‘brown papering’ current situations with our various products and commodities.
We have to determine: who knows about our products, who wants them, at what levels of quality, quantity and seasonality, in what packaging and price, what substitutes exists against our products and how do we counteract attempts to out-market us? And the list is endless because just knowing what we don’t know is not enough.
The next step is to design a response strategy—asking those farmers’ groups to organize around what we know—instead of encouraging poor farmers to rear bees before we even know who wants our honey. Imagine the mess that is localized exportation—‘kondowole’ everywhere but not even a packet of the stuff in my own PTC!
Downstream production should only occur after defining a new marketing channel. That is what is called ‘pull’ marketing and it’s efficient because you don’t cause our village mothers to grow tomato, sit on the road side for days to get to markets. Meantime who—during this enforced absence—tends for the crop of tomato she leaves in the field? It is our poor knowledge of marketing and the duplicity of our marketing messages to blame for the resultant low and illusive national productivity.
If we want development then we should be developing new distribution channels for our commodities—not glorified export information centers. Vietnam came out of a war with the Americans and yet it is Vietnam—not Brazil, not Uganda, not Malawi—who is now the exclusive coffee supplier to the Americans! And it is Vietnam—not America—who fashioned the most efficient just-in-time [JIT] coffee distribution system—shipping, warehouses, trucking and you name it—in the USA and sold it to their customer as a conquer-all solution across the USA. Now, Maxwell House Coffee only has to cough and the Viets are already on his doorstep. Meantime, who but disinterested white middlemen—are responsible for Malawi commodities at docksides in Southampton? Indeed, why go to Southampton when the JIT logistics nerve-center for England is somewhere around Felixstowe and the Dutch ports across the English Channel?
Meantime, back at home we wonder about lack of lucrative commodity deals and disappearing forex.
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