How my column will change in 2017

We have come to the end of 2016. I take this opportunity, therefore, to wish all of you a Merry Christmas and a prosperous 2017. 

In the coming year, I plan to change this column slightly to focus more on ideas that matter in our times.

My change of tune is as a result of the many problems we face today, which need our attention and fresh ideas. 

In keeping with trends in crowdsourcing, I hope to take advantage of emerging concepts and technologies to gather some of your feedback and propose new solutions.

Jeff Howe and Mark Robinson, editors at Wired, coined the term “crowdsourcing” in 2005. They used the term to describe how businesses were using the Internet to "outsource work to the crowd."  In 2006, Howe defined it as:

representing the act of a company or institution taking a function once performed by employees and outsourcing it to an undefined (and generally large) network of people in the form of an open call. This can take the form of peer-production (when the job is performed collaboratively), but is also often undertaken by sole individuals. The crucial prerequisite is the use of the open call format and the large network of potential labourers.

We should leverage the concept to develop local solutions. For example, through many years of observation, I have noted that increasing abundance and cultural disorientation has created complete blindness to value creation among Africans, while African poverty breeds more fatalism than creativity and invention.

PLENTY OF POTATOES

This anomaly was indeed noted in Ali Mazrui’s acclaimed documentary, The Africans.  It is not uncommon to find hunger amid plenty of potatoes in communities that prefer maize meal as their stable food.  

In some communities, people would rather die of hunger than eat chicken, considered a bird of the wild.  Until recently few adult Kikuyu men would eat fish. Our failure to see the role of value creation as key to economic growth retards the continent’s progress. 

Even though both Mazrui and Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs and Steel blame our backwardness on tropical climate with abundant resources, foreign invasion and independent Africa’s failure to correct the distortions, it is actually culture and poor judgment that have retarded Africa’s economic development.

Of the four factors of production, land, labour, capital and technology, we have plenty of the first two but that does not mean we are productive.  Africa is a net importer of food despite having 60 per cent of global arable land and the largest population that either is unemployed or underemployed.

Productivity is a factor of technology and capital, but even with sufficient capital and technology, land in many parts of Kenya today cannot be productive due to the cultural practice of subdividing it.  We have become our own worst enemies of development.

ATHLETICS HALL OF FAME

Let me now go back to my proposal of advancing ideas. I start by posing this question:  How much value do you think athletes bring to Kenya or Ethiopia? 

My guess is, not more than the prizes they win at international events. We have not fully exploited the value these athletes can bring or the brand recognition that comes with success.  We have not built a sustainable brand in our athletics.    

To put this into perspective, consider this statement by Fortune Magazine. “If Coca Cola lost everything except for ‘the formula’ and its brand name, it could walk into any bank in the world and get a $100 billion loan to start from scratch.”

It has been proven that branding adds value to a product, helping differentiate it from competition.  Yet, despite the fact that Kenya has the product, the branding isn’t there. We cannot say the same thing about Coca Cola.

If we had a brand and made branded t-shirts and other memorabilia to sell at every marathon in the world, we’d have enough revenue for the development of future sportsmen and women, and even to develop an Athletics Hall of Fame in Eldoret. 

This could, in turn, could transform Eldoret into a Mecca of sorts for all sports enthusiasts, turning the city into an important tourist destination.

Eldoret would not be the same if we branded our athletics program properly and marketed it effectively as a unique place to practice for major athletic events. Other opportunities would arise to brand peripheral products such as mursik (traditional sour milk).

The biggest threat to this proposal is the likelihood that some people without the full concept in mind will highjack it in the hope that government will fund the project. 

Such cartels retard our development.  The government need not spend taxpayer’s money to develop an idea that can sustain itself through the development process.

MOBILISE RESOURCES LOCALLY

What we need is a few volunteers to develop the concept through crowdsourcing what the brand name should be, who among the athletes should become initiates of the Hall of Fame, and what sector will drive business angles, like tourism. For example, we may create hotel chains around the brand. 

We also need to develop a strategic relationship with both local and international customers and speak to them in one consistent voice. 

If, for example, the brand name is “Home of the World Champions,” (note that Uasin Gishu County has a similar motto) it must be consistently used in all the events Kenyans win. If Vivian Cheruiyot wins, it is broadcast that she is from Kenya, the Home of World Champions. 

The “Home of World Champions” or HWC brand could be sold as a concept to investors to put up state-of-the-art sports facilities and hotels across Kenya. The royalties that accrue would sustainably grow the sports industry in Kenya.

There is much to learn from the Wadi Degla sports investments in Kenya. It has many moneyed Kenyans asking why they were not able to come up with such a lucrative idea, whose payback period could possibly be less than three years. 

The alternative strategy is to mobilise resources locally to build initial facilities, then scale the enterprise across the country and even internationally.

WORDS OF CECIL RHODES

Opportunities in the sports industry in Kenya abound but we should first decide what the brand should be, who should drive such an initiative and how to deal with brokers and cartels that may derail the idea. 

Either way, we must exploit the opportunity and, for once, build a successive venture out of the abundant resources around us.

In 2016, I travelled to 15 African countries. In some of them, you would think that the foreign businessmen there read the words of Cecil Rhodes, a 19th century British businessman, mining magnate and politician, who said:

We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labour that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories.

Africa today is the dumping ground of used clothing from western capitals, yet we have cheap labour with an unemployment crisis and land that can easily yield raw materials with which to compete globally. 

Could we possibly open our eyes in the coming year to deal with our own poor judgement, greed and self-centeredness, which have impoverished the people of Africa?

The writer is an associate professor at University of Nairobi’s School of Business. Twitter: @bantigito