HEALTH WILL BE THE “NEW” ASSET IN THE POST CORONA ERA

On an intellectual level we knew it all the time, the state of a nation’s health determines the productivity of the population.

The less incidents of illness, the less down time or absenteeism in the workforce. It follows therefore, looking at humans as units of production, more work will be done across a given time.

In a pre-corona era it was ok to tallk about dealing with illness after the fact. Treatment instead of prevention. In fact the global health system is geared towards treating rather than preventing illness.

That will have to change. The major line of defence against the corona virus, like almost any other virus, is a robust immune system. An emphasis on good nutrition, proper hygiene, sanitation and regular exercise are good preventative measures. And that even if the virus gets past ones best preventative measures the body will be able to fight back and, God willing, prevail.

On a global level how will this change the way government’s budget and companies view their balance sheets?

The Corona virus has exposed global health systems. The response time to the pandemic has been found wanting.

Health surveillance systems were caught flat footed and even when they woke up to the danger, they were slow to respond in  a coordinated and coherent manner.
And when the disease started tearing through the population our infrastructure – hard and soft, was found lacking.

There are video clips of Bill Gates that have gone viral, of him warning years ago that the next big challenege will be from microbes and we are not ready.

Around the world health systems response have swung from incompetence of poorly resourced public facilities to the mercenary indifference of private health care. Neither coud rise to the occassion when they were called upon and in future this will have to change.

On an individual level we have become addicted to processed, convenient foods that have pushed instances of obsessity to historically high levels, caused a pandemic of non-communicable diseases and generally made us all vulnerable to opportunistic infection.

It is clear that health has to become a bigger priority in national budgets, and not only about building health facilities but also investments in educating health workers, research and development and health cover for all have to be prioritised to fend off the next pandemic.

In companies, health will have to find a place on the balance sheets and health cover will assume greater importance. Exercise facilities will not be an expense item the bean counters scratch off the budget.

About 15 years ago I visted a bank’s headquarters and was shocked to find they had a world class health & fitness center, complete with gym, pool, indoor running track and squash cort. I asked how they justified the expense to the accountants and the human resource manager said they had enough evidence that members turned up to their desk earlier or stayed longer and could link that to higher productivity. They beat the traffic by coming in earlier or leaving later to use the gym, in the process pulling their own weight in the organisation. And that was before they showed that gym members were the least off on sick leave.
The losses to the world economy from the corona virus are going to run into trillions of dollars. That is the accounting description. In real terms it will mean lost jobs, diminished livelihoods and death.

You can place a nominal value on a person life if you count him as a unit or production of consumption. But that is not even half the picture of his economic output, not to mention his contribution to the economic out put  of the other people around him, if he keeps healthy.

How do you value the loss of a spouse who through holding up their part of running  the home allows the spouse to perform optimally at work? How do you value the contribution of  a well child to mummy’s output in the ofice? If a worker can still get work done despite illness how much more would they produce when in perfect health?
I think even on the most cosmetic of levels that accounting is, a case can be made that companies that pay attention to their staff’s health are more productive to those that don’t – even if you use the measure of profitability per staff member.

The bean counters may come around, but I think it is too soon to say.
Corona is not about to run its course, what with stories of reinfection emerging from China, it will be around for a while to come, at least until the end of next year if a vaccine is out in the next 12 months.
By that time i can guarantee you health, more than not being sick,  will occupy central position in  our consciosness.
It is not the first time in human history. The global improvements in hygeine and sanitation were a response to the  pandemics that  swept through Europe in the middle ages.

The rich thought they were insulated from the filth and squalor of the lower classes, before these  became epicenters of genocidal plagues and the rich realised they had to uplift everyone’s standards if they were to survive. And that is how public health budgets took on greater importance in western Europe.

Will corona do the same for us? Let us wait and see.

Wash your hands!

CORONA WILL REVEAL THE NAKED LEADERS

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that, “You will know who was swimming naked when the tide goes out.”

Buffett is usually referring to companies, which look solid in good times and when a crisis hits they are exposed as shells, riven with debt, no reserves and bloated with unnecessary costs.

But at the heart of it is a caution to “leaders’ of any sort at every level.

"As long as there is no crisis you can look good, but when all hell breaks loose the boys will be seperated from the men....

The corona epidemic is helping to sieve the grain from the chaff.

At the time of writing this, the US was fast reaching the 200,000 corona infections and had crossed the 5,000 death mark.

The US shouldn’t have been here but for lack of leadership.

Initially US President Donald Trump dismissed the impeding crisis as fear mongering by his political rivals, then he announced that chloroquin, the anti-malarial drug,  would sort it out and just last week promised that the pandemic will be handled in time for Easter.

The only reason he, unlike UK Premier Boris Johnson doesn’t have the Covid-19, the disease caused by the corona virus,  is that he has a particular aversion to shaking hands.

All the while his political base and the myriads who like to stick their heads in the sand, took him at face value and continued with life as usual, including throwing coming out spring parties on crowded beaches, just as the full extent of the pandemic was hitting western Europe.
Now the US’ infection rate is rising as if on steroids.

The challenge with the Corona virus is that full blow symptoms show after two weeks but a victim can have been spreading the virus for at least a week.

So the numbers we are seeing today are a the result of the past sins.

But back to the issue of leadership.
The district chairman of Bunyangabo this week showed us what our typical understanding of power is.

"Power, the ability to influence people and events, is a useful ingredient of leadership. But its most manifest sign in Uganda is in the people who have power’s ability to break the rules, to be above the law...

Forget the mealy mouthed self-help gurus who counsel “servant leadership”, our leaders measure their place on the ladder by how much they can get away with.

This includes powerful people breaking their loved ones out of quarantine, ignoring isolation procedures and the winner – seating in a hall with hundred others as parliament did last week, to complain that the governmnet is not taking their safety very seriously!

The Bunyagabu chairman would very well have got away with his crime, were it  not that he was recorded on video slapping the Resident District Commissioner (RDC) who was trying to enforce a presidential directive.

By the way the RDCis the president’s direct representative in the district, so to slap the RDC means …?

Country’s around the world are having to respond to the  pandemic, their ability to do so depends on how they have managed their affairs, how leadership has been exercised.

Western Europe’s economies are committing billions of dollars to keep people in work, offer some relief to those who are out of work and the most vulnerable members of their society.

They can afford to do this because they have built up credible reserves, kept their debt levels under co ntrol and built local resource mobilisation mechanisms to finance their ambitions.

"For a poor country like Uganda hopefully this pandemic will finally drive home the wisdom of a more determined drive to build tax revenues and mobilise savings....

Believe it or not we are not the worst. Some of our neighbours apart from being poor are burdened with huge open market debt, that apart frrom the grandstanding they will be hard pressed to live up to the pledges to their people.

The danger with the corona pandemic is that its not clear when it will come under control. As long as there is a corner of the globe that still has infected people, we will always be in danger of a re-emergence.
A vaccine may provide hope but realistic estimates are that this will not happen before the middle of next year.

"Stories of reinfection in China offers no solace. It was hoped that once contracted the virus some immunity may built up against a re-occurence but that does not seem to be true...

What this means is that the leaders who fall short will continue to be exposed, because to battle the corona pandemic will require consistent, unflinching and resolute leadership not flashes of brilliant grandstanding.

LET'S BE SERIOUS ABOUT COVID-19

Professor Hugh Montgomery, speaking on the BBC this week made a very eye opening revelation.

In illustrating how infectious the Corona virus is he compared it to the common cold. A person with a cold infects about 1.5 others. Ten layers of infection down the road this one person will be responsible for 30 infections.

"A person infected with Covid-19 on the other hand, on avergage infects 2.5 other people. By the tenth layer of infection this person will be responsible for 59,000 infections!..

Going by this equation it would take only 40 people behaving irresponsibly to infect Kampala's daytime population of 2.4 million.

It is true that of the infected people less than ten percent get critically ill, that is need to be admitted to the intensive care unit. That is assuming a generally healthy population with a responsive health system. And even fewer die from complications due to the cororna virus.

It is also true that going by the Asian and European experience the older people are more vulnerable and more likely to die. Our increasingly sedentary lifestyle, a function of higher income or just trying to keep up with the Jones, means more of us fall in this latter bracket.

A few facts are lost in those statistics. While its initial symptoms are not unlike the common cold and can prove a minor inconvenience as we go about our everyday lives, if unchecked can progress quickly into a pneumonia-like affliction and require urgent medical attention.

That is where all hell breaks loose.

In comparing Germany and Italy the record shows that the ability to prevent the disease going terminal depends on the number of Intensive Care Unit(ICU) beds a country has.

"Germany has one and a half times more ICU beds than Italy, and beyond being more vigilant, has meant they have been able to keep the fatalities to a fraction of the Italian ones for a comparable number of infections...

If for nothing else this is why we need to be extra diligent in observing preventative measures -- washing hands, social distancing and early managment of the disease if infected, and extra vigilantin spotting the rule breakers and setting them straight or reporting them to the authorities.

When they talk about ICU beds in any country, chances are they are not empty. There are people occupying those beds and everybody else will have to wait in line to get a chancec at the bed.

That is why we saw horrific footage of victims in Spain, lying in the hospital corridors, as if in a  third world hospital. They were waiting their turn to occupy a hospital bed. It goes without saying that the bigger the delay the likelier it is that you will die.

Beyond the elderly, people with undedrlying conditions  -- hypertension, diabetes, HIV/AIDS are suscecptible to contracting the disease. So more people than we think are in danger of falling sick from covid-19.

I know that if one is reckless with his own life it is useless to invoke the danger they pose to people around them.

But yes that is a real danger. Just  because you beat the system and managed to catch one with friends at the bar or a round of golf at the club you could be bringing it home too.

In the latest release of the new infections, there was an eight month old baby in Iganga who it is suspected contracted it from her father who had recently returned from Kenya.

Thankfully people who are not adhereing to this advice are more doing it out of ignorance, believe it or not, than out of some stupid defiance of the government.

Thankfully, because if they get to know about the virus and its potential harm to the and their loved ones lives they can adjust their behaviour. Thankfully too that its ignorancec and not stupidity, because if it was stupidity there would be no hope of them learning and changing their behaviour.

And if one is not convinced yet there is one last card up my sleeve. The current restrictions of movement will go away sooner if we adhere to the protocol better. We need to keep that decision with ourselves rather than with the government.

If the infections get out of hand government will have no choice than to impose further restrictions on us.

In Wuhan and now in Italy, they have imposed total lock down. No one is supposed to move around. In parts of Italy last week to move around you needed to have written permission or be fined 200 euros.

Going by the experience of South Korea, which has been able to bring down infections dramatically after an initial fumble, lock downs are not mandatory.

Have no doubt this is a war, or at least the beginnings of one. If it escalates the rule book will be thrown out the window, the army will step in and all your heckling and  smart aleking will count for nothing. That is if you are allolwed to do so at all.
















  

COVID19 IS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING

When we come out the other side of the corona virus outbreak, as surely we will, it will have changed the way the global economy operates forever.

As a result of the corona pandemic 245,916 people have been infected, 88,465 have recovered and 10,048 have died.

The outbreak, which was first recorded in Wuhan in China has swept across the global, with Europe surpassing China in deaths due to the virus, last week.

Countries are taking increasingly harsher measure to check the virus in its tracks – restricting movement of people and goods, shutting down whole cities.  As result people are being encouraged to work from home, students too. Telecommunications and online service providers are experiencing an upsurge in the uptake of their services. This pandemic maybe the trigger to tip Africa into using less cash and electronic money, reconfiguring our economies for good.

"After the second world war with Europe burnt to the ground, the US assumed dominance of the world economy because their industrial capacity was largely untouched and only needed to be rejigged to producing for civilian use...

China last week announcing that they had not got no new infections in Wuhan, the early epicenter of the outbreak, suggests they may get back to work just as the western economies are shutting down their economies.

Already the factory of the world, we can expect China will scale up its capacity to produce to meet the world’s post Corona needs. Not China alone because South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are making significant progress in containing or rolling back the pandemic and they too will be ready to roll in a few.

The move towards the fourth industrial revolution in western economies will be sealed with this event. While the trend towards flexible hours was gathering momentum, it will be difficult to reverse the current practice especially as it is cost effective for both employers and employees.

This is interesting because it’s just like after the second world war, when people moved off the farm and into industry. As a result agriculture became mechanized, capital intensive and more productive. It needed to be, to feed the huge urban concentrations that emerged...

This time around as day time populations move away from the commercial business districts to the suburbs, one can expect a reconfiguring of commercial properties away from office to residential space.

Interestingly, Domino’s the giant pizza delivery chain the US is looking to hire an additional 10,000 delivery workers as people are going out less. Will we see in the future, staying in more as all goods and services can be delivered to hem – even interpersonal relationships?

Countries like Uganda, already struggling to get into the industrial revolution will buffeted massively by these new changes and may find themselves falling back rather than making progress in a post-corona world.

The reinstatement of borders is hampering trade, it is likely that the interest groups that will benefit from a return to economic nationalism will resist any attempts to throw borders open again. While this will benefit a powerful minority, while reversing the hopes of the majority of small economic actors for who the free trade across borders has thrown up numerous opportunities.

Keeping borders closed will also make industry nonviable, cementing a reliance on goods importation.

We will also be the poorer from the restrictions on labour movement. We get a lot of experts coming in from all over the world to fill gaps in our systems. Their inability to come here, because they can’t leave home or because we will impose restrictions on their entering the country, which is our right under the circumstances, means necessary technology transfers will not happen or at least not as smoothly as if they were here.

Relatedly the thousands we send out as immigrant workers will very well find nowhere to go. This will be a double loss because we will miss their remittances and they may very well become a nuisance here if they fail to find work.

One too can expect that development aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows will collapse in coming weeks, making it impossible for ongoing projects to continue.

This may be the silver lining that comes out of this whole crisis. That starved of foreign funds we are going to have to exercise our minds on how to mobilise local resources. While the economy is going to be depressed for a while and attempts to widen the tax base will not be met with open arms but clenched fists, the urgency of this will be more clear now.

"With enforced travel bans to our favourite foreign hospitals, the urgency of shifting resources into the health care system will become very evident now. The fat cats who fly out on tax payers’ money to have their niggling pains checked out will have to make do with our local health system....

We don’t know the half of what will happen to the economy after the dust settles on the corona virus pandemic. We can be sure things will not be the same again.

MTN RESULTS AND THE FUTURE OF TELECOMMS

South African telecom MTN last week released their 2019 results, with the Ugandan figures rebounding strongly from 2018, the envy of any CEO in this trying economic environment.

Revenues were up 22.9% to sh1.54trillion from sh1.248 trillion in 2018. EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) jumped 59% to sh725b from sh455b the previous year. Last year revenues managed a 4.4% growth form the previous year. This was amazing growth by any measure.

But all this paled in comparison to the growth in data revenues. That subscribers spent about 70% more on data services in 2019 than in 2018. To put this number in perspective it means that in under two years, data revenues will double again.  One can expect growth to continue strongly as barely 3.4 million or a quarter of MTN subscribers consume data services.

Those kind of growth numbers are an indication that the business in Uganda is still in its growth stages. This leap was facilitated by the increase in smart phone users who now account for one in five of MTN  13 million subscribers. And this is despite the alleged protest against the social media tax. In South Africa smart phone penetration stands at above 80%. 

But even more interesting was that revenues from fintech – a lot of which is mobile money, grew 25% to sh382b from sh304b in 2018. The previous fintech revenues grew 10.3%. Digital services also nearly doubled to sh437b last year from sh230b the previous year.

"Voice revenues are fast coming to a plateau growing a relatively slow 3.4% despite a 12.2% growth in subscribers and a high average usage per person....

The telecom operator, which is only just recovering from a tumultuous two years, in which its top managers were deported and the start-stop-start again negotiations to renew their licenses seemed to have drained the giant of its usual vibrancy, obviously still enjoys the confidence of its subscribers.

Last year MTN boss Wim Vanhellputte was deported before being reinstated as the company’s CEO. This was after the deportation of three other top managers – chief marketing officer Olivier Prentout, manager sales and distribution, Annie Tabura nd, Elsa Mussolini, the head of mobile money.

No official communication has gone out from government or MTN but the finance ministry it was reported, confirmed that the South African based firm had agreed to the $100m (sh380b) license fee demanded by government and that has delayed the renewal of their license which expired in October 2018.

"People familiar with the proceedings say it is hard to justify the $100m license fee, a suggestion by an overzealous official who has since left his office...

The previous figure, $58m, which MTN seemed to have settled on with the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) had far sighted provisions to ensure the sustainability of the industry.

It will be interesting to see what happens when rival Airtel’s license negotiations come up for mention when their current license runs out.

The mobile telephony industry is still relatively new and its explosive growth in the last two decades has not allowed regulators to catch their breath.

On the one hand do you allow them unfettered growth, with the hope that the ripple effect across the industry and economy will more than compensate for the perceived money left on the table? MTN paid $5m for its Second Network Operator license when it entered the market in 1998. Expectations were low at the time.

Or do regulators try to grab as much as they can at the beginning before the operators become ungovernable behemoths, hoping too that they don’t stymie the industry’s growth and innovation in the process? This is a real concern because falling behind on Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is not something we should do knowingly.

The government seems to have gone for the latter.

That being said it’s a sector, with its crucial role in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR), is set to drive economies and the Uganda economy in particular in coming years.

MTN, serving as the industry bellwether we can see where the action is going to be.

Voice is going to totter along, the technologically challenged supporting that revenue stream. Industry experts had predicted years ago that one day it will be an add on to data services, being given away free. That day is fast approaching.

But in a country where 80% of the population is under 35, data services are going to catch up and far outpace voice revenues as this youthful population seek their information, education and entertainment online more and more. Especially as smartphones become less expensive and more widely available...

One outcome of the Corona Virus outbreak is that remote working will become more of a reality and very attractive to businessmen for whom it could mean major cost savings. The data needs for such a shift in working will be enormous.

Fintech too is going to continue growing at prodigious rates. Uganda is still far behind Kenya where mobile money is more a tool for carrying out transactions than money transfer. They have almost totally become a cashless society, their mobile phones doing all the buying and selling.

As an indicator of where the industry is going MTN’s results are a good indicator.

THE RICHEST MAN IN ZAIRE

Former Democratic Republic of Congo President Mobutu Sese Seko was said to have accumulated a massive fortune from plundering his mineral rich country’s coffers. He continued where the Belgians left off, expropriating billions of dollars while condemning his countrymen to a sub-human existence.

The way he blew his country’s fortune took on some very bizzare forms.

In Gbadolite his home town, he built an airport with a runway that could land the biggest jumbo jets. The story goes, he would drive out of home saying he was leaving for Kinshasa and head around the corner to the home of his mistress, who was the sister of his wife. She lived in the ministers’ village in Gbadolite.

After a reasonable time he would tell the pilot to take off for Kinshasa, calculating that his wife would know he had left Gbadolite. When he wanted to go back home he would call the pilot in Kinshasa and tell him to fly back to Gbadolite.

"Money was no obstacle for “the cock who left every chicken in his wake sated”....

Soon after his overthrow another urban legend grew out of the Congolese attempts to explain Mobutu. That he was not the richest man in Zaire, as it was called during his reign.

As the story goes when he wanted money from the central bank, he would give his personal assistant a chit, on it a request for say $10,000 from the central bank. The PA would add a zero to make it $100,000 and hand it over to the governor. The governor in turn would add another zero to make it a million dollars.

So when the money was withdrawn the governor pocketed $900,000, the PA $90,000 and Mobutu would get his $10,000.

This week the payout of $600,000 instead of the requested $60,000 for Ugandan students in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Corona Virus outbreak in China, reminded me of the Mobutu tale.

The government decided last month they would not evacuate our students in the blockaded Wuhan city, but would instead send them $61,800 to tide them over the period. Somewhere between the decision and wiring the money to our embassy in China $538,200 was added to the sum and we all exchanged knowing winks at this sleight of hand.

The finance ministry realizing the “error” wrote to China ordering the officials there to refund the extra money.

This episode was disturbing for many reasons but two particularly stand out for me.

The first was that knowing the processes of getting payment out of government it is not as if this money was pulled out of drawer and handed over. There is a paper or electronic trail that has to be satisfied for this money to be paid out. Several levels of authority would be needed. So even if there was a “slip of the pen” someone would have caught along the line. Or so we think...

For us mere mortals we can only conclude that many people were in on the deal, it was not a solitary figure sneaking around the corridors, working on his own. That scenario would be too scary to contemplate.

Secondly, that us the unsuspecting masses’ natural reaction was to assume someone or some people were trying to “eat”. That our confidence in our government is so low that we did not even give it the benefit of doubt. Isn’t that why government struggles to explain itself when it wants to move on an initiative, which in their wisdom they think is good for the country from vaccinations to pest control to building a hospital.

Trust makes progress easier and smoother. Mistrust causes friction, that costs time, energy and resources to overcome. Is it no wonder that beyond the slowness of government bureaucracy we can’t get anything done in a timely manner?..

But even more worrying given the Mobutu analogy is that these kind of shenanigans obviously happen all the time. The boldness to inflate a figure by a thousand percent can only come with long practice. It makes you wonder, who is the richest man in Uganda.

THE INTERESTING CASE OF ALIKO DANGOTE

Last week Nigerian conglomerate, The Dangote Group started testing their $2b fertilizer plant in Lagos.

The plant, with the capacity to churn out three million tons of fertilizer annually is the biggest in the world and will not only sate Nigeria’s demand but also leave a lot more over for export to the region and beyond.

The plant has powerful backward and forward linkages to the Nigerian oil and agriculture sectors .

The plant is part of a $15b complex that will include 650,000 barrels a day oil refinery and extensive pipeline infrastructure from the oil fields of the Niger Delta.

Nigeria, a nation with a $450b economy and a population of about 200 million can absorb such numbers.

"As if Aliko Dangote still needed to stamp his mark on history, this project will be testament to his penchant for thinking scale. Until the next project, of course....

His company has extensive interests in cement, sugar and flour in the process turning a trading company into the largest industrial concern in West Africa and on the continent.

In explaining his wealth the critics will point out that he had a head start in life. His great grandfather Alhassan Dantata was the richest man in West Africa at the time of his death in 1955. That was useful I am sure, but it takes a special kind of individual to build a multibillion-dollar empire, more so if he doesn’t start from scratch.

They say wealth is built in one generation and squandered by the third generation, Dangote has flipped that script.

To accumulate that kind of wealth requires two essential factors, a large economy, which Nigeria is and government support.

The complex mention above is situated in the Lekki Free Zone Corridor, situated on 60,000 hectares with ambitions to a modern industrial megacity. Its development is a collaboration between the Chinese and Nigerian governments.

By locating it in the free trade zone, the Dangote group projects benefit from numerous concessions, which some critics would thumb their noses at as subsidies to a man who does not need charity.

"The issues of subsidies to big business is an emotive issue wherever you look. If done properly can stimulate economic growth and development and if not, become an avenue for political patronage and crony capitalism...

Dangote employs 11,000 people across the breadth of his empire – mostly Nigerians. A drop in the ocean in relation to Nigeria’s joblessness figures but a commendable achievement in itself.

For government and business to work together there first has to be credible business entities.  We have seen it before. Attempts to seed or prop up some connected individuals have ended in tears – for the tax payer. If you are lacking in business acumen this inadequacy is magnified by money. The more money pumped in, the bigger the disaster...

Another necessary ingredient is that the government officials need to understand business beyond the theory of their high school text books. But also that the government has a well thought out strategy to intervene in businesses. A strategy robust enough to ensure positive results while flexible enough to be adjusted to whatever sector is in need of support.

In Uganda one gets the sense that concessions are dished out to individuals rather than to industries, their output, if any goes unmeasured and there is no framework for determining what is too much or when to stop supporting an enterprise.

Governments’ slap dash attempts at supporting the private sector then fall flat on their face and they do the next worst thing, government decides to go into business on its own.

The thinking being that they shouldn’t be enriching the private sector and that the government should have all the benefits accruing to them. The promoters of such schemes slide in justifications like job creation, foreign exchange saving and technology transfer to win over the gullible politicians.

The fallacy of this thinking soon show themselves in poor project design and white elephants. Needless to say disaster falls close behind but not before a few technocrats who managed to skim off the top on every procurement.

There are very valid concerns for supporting the private sector grow to create more jobs and provide more and more goods and services. A few of the supported cases can become spectacularly successful. Two things happen then, they get more and more support, you want to keep betting on the winners and very soon they become lightening rods for criticism and their success a hot political potato for the powers that be...

It’s funny how governments don’t suffer for throwing money down the black holes of state enterprise but when a supported business or industry succeeds all the detractors come crawling out of the wood work.

Dangote’s story is a fascinating one, which should be studied in greater detail by students of development and business.