THE HARVEST MONEY EXPO AS AN EYE OPENER

Last weekend the Vision Group and its sponsors hosted the third Harvest Money Expo at Namboole, an event that brings together exhibitors and farmers – current and potential, in an increasingly popular event that is fast becoming the premier event on the agricultural calendar.

This year’s theme was “Farming as a business” and given the stated ambition to shift the sector away from subsistence to commercial production, there is no reason why that is not a constant theme going forward.

At the expo where exhibitors were set up all around the exterior of the stadium, the thousands of visitors who walked through the gates were exposed to everything from tractors to seed varieties to agricultural processing plants and machinery to agricultural financing products.

It was a revelation to see what is available to farmers on the market on one hand and on the other the magnitude of interest in the subject by people from all walks of life, gender and age.

As seven in ten Ugandans derive their livelihood from the soil, what happens or not to agriculture has an effect on Uganda’s fortunes.

"The anaemic growth in output of agriculture when seen against the progress in construction, industry and services, means that the economic fortunes for the majority of Ugandans have been barely touched by the country’s 33 years of unbroken growth....

This should concern everybody because the growing income and wealth inequalities cannot go on for ever before they trigger insecurity and instability.

There is a lot to be done with the land tenure system, improving farming practices, promoting farmer cooperation and facilitating access to markets.

One of the major challenges of dealing with farmers in sustainable and scalable ways is that they remain largely informal. Being such an agricultural country it should be that agricultural enterprises are comprise the largest number. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.

So farms are often unregistered sole proprietorships or partnerships that are operated to meet this or that families’ subsistence needs, which even they don’t do well.

In Mityana around Africa’s largest coffee plantation Kaweri Coffee, coffee farmers have been organised into groups to improve their farming practices, bulk their crop giving them better bargaining power when the middlemen show up.

The Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) estimates that the average yield on our farms is 0.5 tons. The Kaweri farm does 2.5 tons per hectare and the local farmers do about half that. The trick has been in improved planting, husbanding and processing and organising of the farmers into groups not only for marketing of their produce and improved bargaining power with suppliers  but also as a forum for shared learning.

The last I heard the groups were planning to incorporate. A change in their status may very well signal an improvement in their fortunes as suppliers, traders and even financial institutions would find it easier and more convenient to deal with them.

"Like with business people the sector complain that there is no access to tailored agriculture finance.  While that is true, being incorporated with proper books would give financiers a better appreciation of the business and improved sense of the risk they would be underwriting....

Finance is scarce everywhere often because financiers cannot appraise the enterprise with any degree of certainty.

The issue of the agriculture in this country is one of failure to unlock the full potential of the bounty around us. We can’t do that because the sector --- starting from the ministry, is not geared for the job.

The proof is the foreign concerns who have entered the agricultural space and showing world class productivity and quality  – the aforementioned Kaweri coffee farm for one; Exclusive Cuts a company operating out of Kiwenda, Wakiso export up to five million flower seedlings a month to the flower auctions of Europe.

As the Harvest Money Expo showed – to me at least, the sector has to get organised to get access to inputs and capital that will help the country live to its full potential as the food basket of the continent. Further afield the demand for what we can produce is boundless, it’s a scandal that we continue to be a poor country.

KENYA OIL COMES A CROPPER

Seven years ago ( has it been that long ago?) then Kenyan energy minister Kiraitu Murungi gleefully reported that oil exploration firm Tullow had found sizeable oil deposits in northern Kenya and gleefully hazarded that these were  larger reserves than neighbouring Uganda (I wonder who gave the minister that impression?) which had established commercial viability six years prior.

Seven years down the road Kenya has ditched plans for a refinery to process their crude for lack of adequate resource.

Who is fooling who?

TECHNOLOGY AND THE CHANGING WORLD OF THINGS

What was it like the day after fire was discovered or the wheel was invented or the first gun was fired or the first printing press started rolling. Probably not any different than the day before, for the majority of the human race.

It took thousands of years between the first wheel’s creation in Mesopotamia and the widespread use of the wheels for carriages; It took more than 1500 years for gun powder to make its way from China to gain widespread use in Europe; It took 500 years between the invention of the printing press and its adoption in all world regions.

These and other inventions have change the course of human history, speeded up the process of human development and for better or worse have caused irreparable change when they have been widely adopted.

It is the greatest of understatements that the internet will pale in comparison, not only the scale of change it will engender but the speed with which this change will be adopted, so much so that in the next 10-, 20- or 50- years – not few centuries, when we look back we will not recognise the times we are living in now.

The first I heard of the internet is in the early 1980s that there was this computer network students off the east coast of Canada, on Prince Edward Island, would use to access libraries on mainland North America. That many people could read the same book at the same time. And they would read this in near real time – computing speed was much slower than, but still to my little mind at the time this was the stuff of science fiction.

While I grappled with this notion of clairvoyance then, my sons now, aged 10 and eight, would struggle to wrap their minds around the concept of a library as we knew it then, where one would go to a big room of books and borrow a maximum of three books for a week, to read at home. And that if someone had borrowed the book you wanted you would have to wait for them to return it before you could read it .

This difference in reality for these little boys – me three decades ago and my sons today,  is separated by more than time.

"It means for one, that with knowledge now so readily available, these kids can, will and do, know much, much more than we knew at their age; It means that their teachers are no longer the authority figures they used to be in our day, because today teachers standing in front of classroom may very well be spouting old news to a kid who has gone well past the bantu migrations or the rift valley formation or newton’s laws of physics in his random browsing of the internet at home....

It raises the age old dilemma that many have suffered with their richer parents, uncles or spouses, which is “What do you give a person for his birthday who has everything?”

Edgar Kasenene who started out as an IT engineer but now grapples with these questions in helping companies adopt for the new era argues that, “It’s not any more about facts but about creativity, what you can do with those facts, because facts have now been commoditized.”

In our day you would hear of a textbook that was the best for Geography, History or Mathematics and that there was only one copy of it and you didn’t have it. Facts were scarce. That is not an option now.

Everything we own or use is based on knowledge. If knowledge is now so prevalent it means the scarcity of things will soon be or is already in some instances non-existent.

So if there is no scarcity of information or knowledge leading to no scarcity of goods or services where does that leave economics, defined as the management of scarce resources?

Kasenene argues that the structures to manage our lives – at home, at work and in the world generally are designed to cope, manage or exploit scarcity. The status quo is redundant in a world where scarcity is not an issue.

Seen in this light, scarcity is a function of a lack of knowledge or ignorance.

So in my day (see how I refer to my day as if it is long gone? Because it is gone) having an education, speaking English or knowing how to do my tables was a competitive advantage. In this brave new world I have no competitive advantage of anyone with access to the internet, the winners are and will be those who can access this knowledge and creatively work with it to innovate and produce more.

"In workplaces all the manual jobs are or will be automated. Which makes one wonder whether factories will really bring jobs to economies like they did in the industrial age. That time is dead...

When we did field trips to the beer, soda and other factories in our younger days there were always people manning the lines, supervising processes and generally being around. Thankfully those same factories are still around. If you went there now there are not only fewer people on the factory floor but the output of these enterprises are multiples of what they were when their workforce was thrice or quadruple the size they are now. It is only going to get worse.

So what to do for us in working life staring into the abyss?

Kasenene says that career planning is out, things are changing so fast whole careers have been wiped out; Learning plans are in. That because of the speed of change we have to keep learning to remain relevant and not only a continued upgrade of our current skills but the acquisition  of other areas of knowledge and skills is imperative.

As is fast becoming evident these days, that no sooner have you learnt something – got your degree or master or PhD, than it becomes obsolete.

And finally this speaks to how we work in or run our companies.

The only way to continue to be relevant is to have an obsessive focus on the customers’ needs.  While management gurus like Tom Peters have been counselling this since the 1980s, it is now even more relevant. Because of the aforementioned explosion in information and options, the client does not need to stick with you – remember there is no scarcity and your competition can come from anywhere in the world from unrelated industries.

An innovation driven by evolving customer needs is the only way to remain relevant.

“Innovation is no longer a department it must become a way of life,” Kasenene said.

WE NEED, NO, MUST CHANGE THE RULES OF THE GAME

Last week tourism state minister Geoffrey Kiwanda kicked up a storm, while in trying to promote the Miss Curvy beauty pageant, put his foot in his mouth and then some, by saying the Ugandan woman’s fame curves  can become a tourist attraction.

The way women took offence to this reminded me of how many years ago the headmistress of Maryhill High School, Mbarara took issue with the government school truck.

Sr Felice could not imagine transporting her girls around in the truck, which had “Produce for export” emblazoned on its side. She promptly had it changed to “Support girls’ education”.

Earlier this week President Yoweri Museveni while speaking at the 32^nd Summit of the heads of State at the AU called on his counterparts to generate a sense of urgency in pursuing a common market for Africa and an eventual political union.

He argued that it’s only by coming together economically and politically can we banish the stereotype of the continent as being bedevilled by hunger, disease and poverty and also prevent a repeat of the colonisation of Africa.

Two seemingly unrelated events but which highlight the major challenge of our continent.

"While some sections took offence at using our women as marketing tools and objectifying them, if you looked at it another way it’s a clever, if not original way, of shifting the measure of beauty...

Western media through its sheer dominance has created a standard of beauty characterised by tall, slim and light skinned women, which we have come to accept, even if only at a subconscious level.

It is this thinking that, I was reminded years ago, saw no Ugandan lady nominated to contest for the “Face of Africa” model search competition almost a decade ago, because our women were not tall enough and had too much around the waist and hips.

It is the kind of thinking that subconsciously has men hankering for lighter skinned partners, with straightened hair.

But as mentioned above, because of this standard of beauty, our women have next to no chance at foreign beauty pageants, which is why Quin Abanakyo’s run at the Miss World beauty pageant was such a surprise.

"When you get into a game in which you do not make the rules, chances are you will be competing at a disadvantage. You either muster the rules and hope you can excel despite your lack of input in their formulation; you can contravene the rules and guarantee that you will lose anyway or walk away and go and start your own game with your own rules...

The organisers of the Miss Curvy competition have in essence gone away and created their own game, where their contestants can compete from a position of strength rather than from other people’s measure of what constitutes beauty.

Whereas they may not, or never, get world wide acclaim, because they don’t fit in the “conventional” definition of beauty, you can rest assured they will do just fine controlling a niche that makes sense in our context.

The call for a unified Africa falls somewhere between learning to play by established rules and breaking the rules anyway, which is the only way one can hope to compete better in a game not of ones making.

The colonial era saw Africa split up by arbitrary boundaries based on a logic that was not our own. That is how you find our border communities everywhere on the continent just don’t take this political boundaries seriously.

"But the boundaries never the less have served to separate our populations, disaggregate our resources with the net effect being the basket case that the continent is today...

We have to contravene those rules on one hand, so that on the other hand we can compete more effectively in the global arena, where size is might.

Africa’s resources are so vast that it’s a scandal of prodigious proportions that we are the poorest continent on the planet.

By one example it is estimated that the mineral resources of the Democratic Republic of Congo have an estimated value of $12trillion. That’s just a number, but when you realise that this is the total economic output of the US, you have to wonder.

When you drill down to its essence, the reason this is so is because we are divided, playing by someone else’s rules, which invariably work in their favour not ours.

So yes taking a leaf from the Miss Curvy organisers, if we are to have half a chance of not only surviving, but thriving as a continent we need to take a hard look at the rules and tweak them, scuttle or ignore them altogether. The sooner the better.

NEWS --- THE MOSQUITO KILLER PAINT MAYBE JUST WHAT THE DOCTOR ORDERED

Last week paint producer Plascon launched their Mosquito Killer Paint as part of their contribution to the quest to eliminate malaria from Uganda.

Mosquitos that land on the painted surface will die and the efficacy of the paint has been tested and proven to last up to two years.

The health ministry estimates that at least 5,000 people die of malaria annually. This is the equivalent of about 360 14-seater mini-vans or the death of a whole 14-seater minivan weekly. It is the leading cause of death not only in Uganda but globally.

It is even more tragic that 70 percent of deaths due to malaria are of children younger than five. And hence as part of the “Hold my hand to 5” initiative, Plascon will donate Anti-Mosquito paint to under privileged schools across the country.

Uganda is the second country after Zambia to adopt this new initiative and this will complement government’s other efforts – case management of malaria, distribution of free insecticide treated mosquito nets and larviciding among others.

The Kansai Plascon Anti-Mosquito paint has been tested in Uganda and approved for use by the health ministry, National Drug Authority (NDA) and the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA).

--ends--

THE ECONOMY NOT THAT BAD, IT’S OUR CUSTOMER SERVICE THAT SUCKS

The other day a friend went to get some studio photos taken. She wanted the hard copies for framing and the soft copies sent to her email address. The proprietors assured her that her photos would be sent by end of business and she should check for her framed copies in a few days.

Three days later – the day she was supposed to check on the framed pictures, nothing in her email.

Oh! Can we get back to you, the lady said in response to her call inquiring about progress. They never got back.

She called again, Uhm! Our computer crashed we are now working on them, should have them by end of day. That was two days ago.

When government, multilateral donor agencies, analysts report that Uganda’s growth remains strong, our knee jerk reaction is to dismiss them with a jeer.

Where is the growth, we ask. Nga we don’t see it!

But how much economic activity are we letting sprint out the doors of our businesses with our indifferent, negligent and more often than should be, hostile treatment of our clients – potential or current?...

Anyone who has been in sales knows it is much cheaper to hold on to present clients than to try and woo new ones your way – in effort, time and even money. And yet we continue to treat people seeking to patronise our establishments as if we are doing them a favour.

We are caught in a time warp we need to free ourselves from.

Thirty, twenty even ten years ago traders and businessmen were getting away with outlandish markups on their goods and services. They could do this because there was a general scarcity of everything from blue band to hair pieces to seat belts and virtually no competition.

Not only could they get away with extortionist pricing, traders didn’t have to be nice to their customers and they didn’t. Customer service was the exception rather than the rule.

Which reminds me.

Many years ago some friends and I went for lunch at Alligators, which used to be situated at the corner of Kampala and Kyagwe roads. The lady who took our order was young and easy on the eye. 

But that was not the point, she had no pen or notebook. After taking three or four totally disparate orders, one of our number stopped to ask whether she wouldn’t forget our orders. She said no she would remember.

He warned her that if she bungled the orders, she would not hear the last of it. She politely agreed and continued taking the orders. We might have been seven or eight of us.

After a few minutes wait she returned, a trolley in tow, on it our orders.

She proceeded to distribute the orders with precision, never once faltering or stopping to ask, who’s was the mushroom pepper steak with ice cream?

You could have heard a pin drop when she set the last order down.

Needless to say she was not there the next time we went. She must have been snapped up by a businessman who knew a customer service asset, when he saw one.

Client psychology is not difficult to decipher.

We return again and again to a shop, restaurant or car wash, even if they are charging above market because we were treated well and with consideration. And even when we cut our budgets to fit our cloth in economic hard times, we will gravitate towards the place where customer service was best no matter the cost.

While this is a text book cliché, it is amazing how it is not wired into our business practices.

So when customers come only once to your business and never come back or turn at the door because they can immediately feel the bad vibes and we miss business, we then start wondering about this mythical economic growth....

It has been a hard five or so years, everybody has been suffering a cash squeeze, as activity In the oil & gas sector petered out, government embarked on its ambitious infrastructure drive and plugged many holes through which they were leaking money (read, corruption).

But look around you, there are companies that have not only survived during this down turn but have continued to thrive.

While it might be that they saved for the lean times during the proverbial seven years of feasting, more often than not you will find that they treat those who walk through their doors like people not ledger entries or mere statistics, and we the customers repay them with continued patronage of their businesses.

The saddest thing about giving good customer service is that it’s rare that people will sing your praises from the rooftops, but what is also true is that if you treat a customer badly they will tell everybody who gives them half an ear, about your lousy touch.

So whenever someone tells me their business is struggling, that the economy is in the toilet, I can’t help it, I wonder how their customer service measures up.

IS THE NEXT BIG BUSINESS UNDER YOUR NOSE?

Last Sunday SafeBoda, the boda hailing company, had their end of year party at the Lugogo Cricket Oval.

A notice ran online by SafeBoda, that their service may be slower that day as their riders would be attending a company function.

It was a big party with hundreds of boda riders and their families that went on well into the night. You kind of take it for granted but just by the size of their impact employing riders and easing movement around the city, they are a huge company.

If you have not been around, SafeBoda has organised hundreds of boda riders – 8500 by some accounts, to provide safe transport – they provide helmets for their passengers and obey traffic rules. 

Their riders’ orange vests and helmets have become a regular feature of Kampala traffic.

"It has been reported that they do at least 15,000 trips a day. Assuming an average trip of sh3000 gross revenues would be about sh45m daily and a whooping sh16b annually. And growing...

This example alone goes to show that resources are not lacking in this country, it’s just that they are not aggregated into meaningful wholes. By extension it also shows that if one is organised the financial resources will follow.

While SafeBoda have remained tight lipped about their details of the business it was reported that last year they got funding from international investors – at least $1.1m (sh4.1b), which monies have helped them expand into the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The face of the business is former boda rider Rick Papa Thompson, who has two other Co-founders Alastair Sussock and Maxime Dieudonne. The three met up in 2014 and one can imagine that over a beer and many scribblings on serviettes later they went out to conquer the world, well, at least  Kampala.

The innovation has been good for Kampala, good for its promoters and likely to be good for its investors into the future.

It’s a nice lived-happily-ever-after-story which begs the question that how does one need to structure their business to attract investment?

Investors – local or foreign are looking basically for four things, a business that resonates with their value system, a durable competitive advantage, good management and that it can make money for them.

Their value system is personal to them.

They told me a story about a group of investors that were set to commit to a huge agro-industry. One that would involve thousands of acres, employ thousands as outgrowers, in its plants and all down the value chain. They however pulled out because they were uncomfortable with our insistence on heterosexual orientation in our law and socialisation.

The last three criteria can be determined by the company’s longevity and good record keeping. Good record keeping gives the investor a sense of whether you are making money, how much it would cost him to commit to the venture and whether you are a one-man show or systems based organisation.

Falling short on any of these would mean you the seller, would not get full value or worse, the prospectors will move on.

It goes without saying too that they are looking for a scalable business.

Clearly in Uganda we are not doing very well. Last year the East Africa Venture Capital Association (EAVCA) reported that while the number of Private Equity deals in the region had gone up to $930.3m in 47 deals, Uganda won only six of those deals and Kenya swallowing half of them.

This is easily explained given Kenya’s more mature private sector and unlike Uganda, has not had its development trajectory interrupted by instability.

This is important because most Many PE funds were looking for deals with companies with an upper limit of $30m in revenues and not more than 150 workers. The upper limit of their interests suggests they would not go very much further down. How many companies in Uganda have a turnover of $30m, the equivalent of sh111b?

You cannot fluke it.

"To scale a business to this size requires higher business skills than your regular shopkeeper, to win market share, hang on to it and exploit it profitably...

We are the most entrepreneurial country in the world and the next big thing is obviously under our noses, if the SafeBoda story is held up as an example.

That does not mean there are a lot of no brainer businesses lying around waiting to be picked up.

Speaking to one such investor I suggested that a foray into processing matooke may be worth his time. He had looked into it he said, and it did not make business sense, yet. The banana is 80 percent water, so if you were to dehydrate and make powder that could be cooked into matooke, he didn’t think Ugandans were ready to pay sh30,000 for 2kg bag of matooke flour. That wouldn’t be a problem if it could exported but he didn’t know a bigger market than in Uganda for matooke, meaning it couldn’t be scaled. At least for now. He thought that in 10 to 20 years when they were enough Ugandans to afford it, it may be a possibility but not now.