What's wrong with Kenyan Business - My Sweater Ordeal

I recently decided to buy myself an extra sweater, with the coming in of the cold season and all. I had a budget of 1,000, give or take a few hundreds. Not much, but not a pittance, I mean, knitting one of this things costs much less. I wanted a simple light sweater. Not too much to ask, I thought to myself. I had bought a sweater for 700 at Enka Rasha after all, sadly their "light" selection was all too pricey.

First stop: Junction, Mr. Price, was ok, within my budget, they started at 1400, but they never had anything I was interested in, given that most of their designs were too casual.

Second Stop: Figured, let my try our "famous" Westlands exhibition stalls. Having never bought anything at one, I figured it may just be a good experience at haggling etc... Big mistake, I got there to find that the sweaters were all starting upwards of 1800. Any attempt of negotiating with them was met with a look of "where did this cheapskate land from". Left Westlands went into town, exhibition stalls all had the same attitude.

Third Stop: Random Shop in town that sells bags etc etc): Found a sweater I was OK with. Sadly the price was 2,000. I openly laughed at him, I had had enough for a day. He quickly lowers his price to 1,000, and that was negotiable, but I paid it anyway. He did not have any PR, let alone bad PR. Frustration made me purchase it more than anything else.

Now, why am I posting this? Sunny Bindra once said in an article that Kenyans are some of the worst sales men you can find, coupled with ludicrous pricing, I begin to see why there are problems with businesses that run for a long. A fellow blogger posted an article on Silverbird Theatres, and I can only agree with her. Why would a person in a stall selling a second hand sweater, sell it for more than the price at a department store full with loads of helpful staff, proper location, fitting rooms etc etc? Why would someone have a sweater on display at twice the price they need to make a profit? I don't know about you, but I find this very dishonest and disspeakable.

This is symptomatic of a problem that is predominantly in Kenya, the urge to make a quick buck. Look at the businesses that attract the most "investors", Exhibition Stalls (I had always wondered where they sprung from, never knew they had such lucrative sales, unsustainable, as they are based on ignorance of the masses, but lucrative all the same), Forex, Pyramid Schemes (who comes up and invests in these anyway), Multi level marketing etc etc. Ever wonder why there are so many former "millionaires" in Kenya? In efficient copy cat fashion, they jump into whatever business that has crazy profits, before the profits stabilize, and they soon find themselves out of a job as they never really did look at the bigger picture, there was never a need to. How many neighborhood shops have gone bankrupt? OK, here is a task, count the number of KAS and older matatus/buses on the road (These are barely 5 years old). See where I am going? Matatus' are easy money, we all know how many paupers/millionaires it's made. Given the billions in the transport sector, why do we still not have organised transport (Citi Hoppa, KBS, Double M are branded matatus, driving behaviour, marketing etc, not at all professional)? Any surprise that Mungiki saw this as an appropriate avenue for illegal money? What of people who have been incessantly importing cars from abroad and making markups of 150% upwards?

Problem with such margins is that they do not encourage good business practice. Why? You can always pour money at the problem. Example? A good ticketing machine for buses costs 100,000 KES as of 2005 when I last checked. Why do none of our bus companies have them, save for the circa 1950 machines that they use? Simple, if you have fleet of 10 buses, 1,000,000 to be spent is equivalent to the deposit a new bus requires. So, new bus profits cover losses. Same attitude applied across the board and what happens? You sell of old buses instead of maintaining the ones you have, etc etc. Transport aside, banking, everyone went for the high earning civil servant/corporate type. Was not sustainable, banks kept reporting losses, save for the few at the top, until Equity bank changed the market, as Citi Bank did in the US.

End of day, this is symptomatic of Kenya, this is why we don't have any good business models, as we only seek high profit type businesses. We don't have a proper transport model, we don't have a proper food distribution model, we do not have a proper farming model. When the easy way of doing things stops working we look for the next easy thing to do (people who did multi-level marketing graduated to pyramid schemes, eventually forex, when they have enough money who wants to bet they won't buy a matatu?). For this country to succeed we need proper, well thought out sustainable business models, until this happens, I really don't see this country having any proper sustainable economic development.

Kenyatta University; My Take

Kenyatta University have gone one strike; For the second time in two weeks. I have heard numerous complaint's in the news media, blaming the students for the strike. It's sad that people who have very little information on what actually happens in the university, blame the students so easily. I personally think that the administration has more to do with this strike, buy continuous high handedness and very little empathy for the students needs. Now what are the issues they are striking about? I will start with the most recent, the Strike of the night of 29th March, 2009. Given that the students had gone on strike on the 18th of March, with 2 weeks of class left, they were rather shocked to be recalled back to have to do exams that were set, with the assumption that they will have completed class. Further from this, they were each forced to pay 1,000 each for minimal damage to the campus; A soda dispenser, radar sensor for cars, and the signage at the gate... total? 1000*17000 student = 17million. Hence it was obvious that the payment was not for covering damages, but punitive. Now, this is the situation the student is in: Was sent home, without many books, notes etc, having not completed the syllabus, never studied, and is called back to the university to do exams they are not ready to do. If they do not have the 1,000 they will be turned back home. Along with having their colleagues suspended for years...

Online Registration - Fee payment issues
Now to the strike of 18th March? I blame journalists in Kenya for not getting the story straight on this. A year and a half ago, the university started a policy that they kept trying to implement, that was ill thought. This was the cause of the strike. The lack of extension of the "online registration" was what everyone said... that students who had not paid full fees wanted to sit for exams. You could not be further from the truth. This is the situation: You can only register for units once you have paid full fees. This has never really been negotiable in Kenyatta University, if you do exams without paying fees, you will have to have a sit down with the Academic Registrar to approve, which was and still is very difficult. Problem was this, the university reopened in January. Anyone who had not paid full fees by February 6th was required to call off the semester and resume the next semester. This means that, if your parents paid fees on say the 7th or 8th of February, it did not matter, you had to come in the next semester to resume your studies, you are too late. That's the problem. Now most parent's in the parallel system pay in installments. Even private universities allow you to pay fees in installments. What happened is, for the first time, students who had paid full fees, were informed that they had to redo the semester, paying full fees not withstanding. Even private universities allow for this in Kenya, it was a case of not really caring what the students/parents think of policies. It gets worse, for those who did not call off their semesters, they would lose the fees for the semesters, as the deadline for calling off semesters had passed, and they had not done so. The fees would be charged as they had attended classes, and they would still be locked out of exams as they had not paid full fees in time. This happened to some friends last year, their parents were left angry at the loss of 65,000+ accommodation and other costs, though this was a lack of follow through on their part given the system was not optimal at the time. It worked this year. The students went on strike.

Now that they had gone on strike, what was the administrations solution? Be even more high handed, ensure that the schedule is maintained no matter what, don't listen to the students.

On the last strike, 29th March, they burnt KUSA. Why? Well, KUSA is basically on the Universities payroll with allowances of upto 30,000 KES per member. Now, KUSA serve as the PR arm of the University, they no longer address students issues, but basically explain policy to the students with no regard for what their opinions are. Now this is a problem as there has to be mechanisms for feedback in the university, but the administration has taken an approach of necessarily choking the mechanisms and allowing them to exist for PR purposes. Why do I say this? How does a lecturer give out and collect his appraisal from students? It is an exercise in futility as not once or twice has a lecturer simply trashed the appraisals he does not think are appropriate. So, the students do get a raw deal in that regard.

Dresscodes & Curfews...
A lot has been commented on in the dresscodes, and curfews. Many gave the example of Strathmore where this works... On curfews, it's a day university, they have to have them, to some extent. Further, Strathmore actually has more freedom and better student feedback mechanisms than most universities locally. Hence, they do get more freedoms save for the dresscode and ethics. They have friendly relations with their lecturers, and the administration. Hence the administration is constantly aware of all their needs, hence they will not strike as that is the one ill with their system... With Kenyatta, they are basically getting rid of all the freedoms (Dress Code, Fee payment options, Study time options, Campus Curfews etc) and have to reffer to different universities that have each applied it... It's not workable. They have to have some freedom, given that most are over 21 years old.

The Chaos Mechanism
The Kenyatta University Students Union as aforementioned works as a PR agency for the university administration. Example? The water goes off in the University, it takes threats of a strike (a week later) for the borehole to be turned on, to the students at large. KUSA rests on it's laurels and only takes matters forward when the students are at boiling point. Whats the result? With no feedback mechanism, the students have realised that chaos is the only mechanism that gets their problems to administration. When power is gone? Chaos gets it back to the administration. KUSA has been paid for to keep these "incessant student complaints" from the administration. Now, the administration made a mistake the last week, when it charged the students. If you heard the sentiments from the students to quote:

1. Tutangoa hizo maua zake anapenda sana (we will burn the flowers she loves)- Given that students are not getting what they request, they figure that will be the best way to get her attention would be to burn the flowers, simply because she has put so much effort in beautifying the campus.
2. Kwani soda dispenser ilikuwa ya platinum - Reaction to the fact that they were charged 17 million to replace a soda dispenser.

What the students figured is that, they will pay for damages on the school anway, so it's a carte blanche to destroy, after all, they will not register without paying... Given the reasoning is flawed, all I am trying to do is bring out the point that the feedback mechanism is none existant.

The students never had an opportunity to ask for more time before examinations, so they went on and went on strike, as that is the only mechanism they know. They were pushed to the wall. The alternatives? For some, resume next semester, and pay fees for two semesters, for others? Fail the exams through no direct fault of your own (those who could do exams had nothing to strike about the first time). So all the administration did was rally all the striking causes together.

I think it is unfortunate the turn of event, however, speaking to a student/administration/support staff, this strike was predicted 3 years ago, when the rules started being implemented with utter disregard for the students.

Of University degrees

Today, Kibaki, Raila + Annan are to receive Honorary doctorates from the University of Nairobi.

I don’t buy the argument for the whole degree + Nobel prize thing, for Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki. It’s like a doctor shooting a patient then saving his life. Why the hell did he shoot him to begin with. At the end of the day, the violence occurred on their watch. Both of them are as responsible. Given that the violence was perpetrated from both sides of the political divide, it is they who were unable to take charge of their supporters/cronies. Anyone with bloody hands should have been removed from the ODM/PNU ticket, they should not have been allowed to run. Period.

I think Kenyans have been buying this bullshit (forgive the candor) for too long. If we are to believe the Kreigler report on rigging (which we have to, as they are the only ones who have done any credible research), we see that there was no rigging at KICC, but both parties were guilty of rigging at constituency level. A sad situation where you have two liars claiming to have been wronged. Like the case was with Solomon, the two women and the baby. The difference being, none of them had legitimate claim to the child.

Kofi Anan deserves nothing but praise in bringing the two together. However, it was evident that they were both willing to let the country burn to achieve their end in an election none of them can claim to have legitimately won. Even if one of them had proof that they had won, the fact that they had cheated disqualifies them. This is the standard we hold our high school students to, but our leadership, no, we let them get away with it and form a 40+ member irresponsible cabinet.

We are busy crying for good leadership, but I remember a quote by George Bernard Shaw, that ‘Democracy is a device that ensures we are governed no better than we deserve’.

Many times, we choose to go about life without caring. I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, and it hit us: we are in Westlands; Our MP is Fred Gumo, of all the 200,000+ people in Westlands, Fred Gumo is the best we could come up with… Now, we voted him in on tribal lines etc. Why should we complain? Sorry to say this, but I just don’t see myself having a coherent discussion with the man on development issues. Patrice Lumumba stood for office, he lost.

Kenyans praise Obama, yet we have not yet got it that had Obama run for office in Kenya, he would never have become a Councilor, let alone an MP or even President. Why? Look at the cadre of MP’s we are producing; Our government says everything’s OK with the economy, while inflation is at 30%. 30%. It may not seem like such a bad thing, but it is worse than you can imagine. Further from that, the same government is responsible for the mess as they export goods reducing local supply and at the same time increase pay for all civil servants increasing money supply; That’s another story altogether. Raphael Wanjala a former MP openly has an affair with another womans wife, and marrys her as his second, and we are OK with that. Our President, who claims to be a faithful Christian, is said to have an affair with another woman, we are OK with that. Parliament decides to lynch the finance minister (my disdain for him notwithstanding, the manner in which he was ejected from office showed obvious mental handicap that MP’s suffer, and it was evident that they don’t understand basic tenets of justice), we are OK with it. They never took time to wait for him to defend himself, they were out for blood.

You have to realize, Kenya rarely gets politicians to the cadre of Mboya, Obama, Rubia et al. Whenever we do, we forget about them and royally screw them over. Weren’t Kenyans the same people who said that Matiba should not be bailed out as he ‘was not sharing his wealth with Kenyans’. But Matiba lost his millions fighting for Kenyans, yet we cannot even ensure that after loosing his sanity, he at least maintains his wealth. Look at the three presidents we have had so far… Are you willing to tell me that this is the best Kenya has to offer? If that is the case, then I am terribly disappointed. Bush is better by far than any we have had, yet he is the most unpopular in the state.

As I quoted earlier; democracy is a device that ensures we are governed no better than we deserve. The Americans uphold only the highest standards in choosing leadership, vetting even social associations (Bill Ayers + Obama). In Kenya, we just don’t vet. If he/she is of my tribe, then we are good to go.

We are better than this. Kenyans do themselves proud every day. We are known for having the cleanest homes (says a lot about self esteem), we love education and we treat ourselves well. Our professionals are some of the best globally. Our corporations are flying high under good leadership. Yet where it counts the most, we choose shoddy leadership. It’s a paradox.

In my opinion, it boils down to reading culture. We have one of the highest literacy rates in Africa, at 80%, yet we are allergic to reading. As the adage goes, want to hide something from an african, put it in a book. I believe if we get a reading culture going, our eyes as Africans will open up to some of the sheer nonesense our politicians put us through.

Tribalism hit's home for me

A few days ago, I was on my way home, I (typically use route 48 (I dare say a ride in one of these is enough to cure me of a need for a bungee jump). It was around 7.30 pm. Now, on this day, I was feeling unusually social, I decided to have a small chat with the lady next to me in the Matatu, it so happened we were going in the same direction, so we decided that we'll go together.

Conversation went from the cold weather, to typical contents of women's handbags, and not forgetting, the dreaded vehicles we had just alighted from. Now, those who know me, know that I don't really know my mother tongue, so it's a little tricky figuring which part of the country I am from (add to the fact that I don't look like my tribesmen too much...I think...). Now, this seemed to be a problem to her. Until she shut me up, insisting to find out what tribe Im from. After voicing my discontent, and declaring myself 'Kenyan', I gave in and told her. Big mistake. Shes from an 'opposing' ethnic group. I was quickly put into a tribal stereotype, given a lecture on who I support and why it's bad, not withstanding the fact that I insisited Im apolitical. Also, I was put through a lecture on why my kinsmen are such a distasteful lot.

The conversation ended there, pretty puch, save for walk that was worse than quiet. What pertubed me was that the girl is 21 years old. So deeply tribal. How does it get to be that bad? Is our society beyond help? Couldn't help but wonder. What hope do we have for our society if people who are well educated (in college), have grown up in Nairobi (our most cosmopolitan city), and still have such deep ethnic hatred?

There goes my first sinatabu post.