Zambia News Features

By A CORRESPONDENT

Diageo, the world’s leading premium drinks company, announced recently that it has signed letters of intent to foster partnerships and projects that will aid in the agricultural development of Ethiopia and Tanzania.

Diageo, in an emailed press statement recently, said it will work to develop and implement a scalable barley farming project in Sebeta, Ethiopia and a scalable sorghum value chain project in Mogoro, Tanzania.  The projects, when fully realized, will represent a total of $3.5M of investment and will begin to be implemented in 2012. They build on Diageo’s commitment to support the development of agricultural economies in Africa, a business imperative in line with the Company’s growth ambitions across the continent.

This new investment was announced at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security hosted by The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. On the eve of this weekend’s G8 Summit, this high-level symposium brings together US President Barack Obama, with G8 and African leaders, businesses, international organizations and civil society to discuss new activities to advance global agricultural development, and food and nutrition security in Africa.

“The complex global challenges we face – from climate change to resource scarcity – will require even greater cooperation and collaboration of the public sector, private sector and civil society…”

Paul Walsh, CEO Diageo and signatory of the letters of intent commented, “The complex global challenges we face – from climate change to resource scarcity – will require even greater cooperation and collaboration of the public sector, private sector and civil society. At Diageo we know that to achieve our business aims we have to engage our stakeholders across the whole value chain to create strong socio-economic development programmes.  It is my firm belief that the most genuinely strategic and forward looking businesses treat sustainability as a core component of business delivery.”

Diageo is committed to local, sustainable sourcing of agricultural raw materials. In Africa, Diageo currently sources about 50% of its raw materials locally, and aims to increase the sourcing of local raw materials to 70%, which is an increase of more than 30% from a 2007 baseline.  The new projects in Ethiopia and Tanzania will provide Diageo with a long-term, secure and sustainable source of raw materials, which reduces exposure to increasingly unpredictable changes in availability of material, and potentially volatile global commodity markets.

PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP

In Ethiopia, Diageo will build a public-private partnership through which the Company will work with the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Agency (ATA) to design and implement a barley contract farming project strategy.   In support of the G8 Member’s pledge and in line with Diageo’s own commitment to development in Africa over the next 12 months, Diageo will design and test a pilot barley contract farming project with the aim to source 1000 metric tons (MT) barley from a substantial number of local smallholders in the first year. In the years that follow, the project could increase in scale, extending its work with both local smallholders and larger farmers, with a potential capacity to source up to 20,000 MT of barley within Ethiopia for local use and/or export.

In Tanzania, Diageo will collaborate with the Government of Tanzania to develop and implement a scalable sorghum value chain project in Morogoro that will scale-up sorghum cultivation and sourcing in Tanzania up to a potential 20,000 MT/year by 2016, for local use and/or export.  They will also work to build genuine appetite and capacity (e.g. training, financial and physical infrastructure) to build a sustainable sorghum value chain which consists of local smallholder ‘satellite’ farming communities commercially connected with larger ‘nucleus’ farms, and will promote the development and sharing of sustainable sorghum cultivation and post-harvest practices.

“Diageo is proud to take part in this leadership initiative between African governments, the private sector and development organizations to accelerate the growth of agriculture in Africa…”

Nick Blazquez, President, Diageo Africa, commented: “Diageo is proud to take part in this leadership initiative between African governments, the private sector and development organizations to accelerate the growth of agriculture in Africa. As a business that has operated across the continent for many decades, we see firsthand the importance of this agenda to local economic growth and the social empowerment of farming communities, and are fully committed  to Grow Africa and supportive of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.  In the spirit of partnership, we are excited to work closely with the Governments of Ethiopia and Tanzania to create innovative solutions that are commercially and environmentally sustainable, scalable and socially inclusive.”

These new initiatives build on Diageo’s current projects that are in place to assist African communities. These include supporting local enterprise development, investing in and stimulating a competitive beverage industry, building local skills and capabilities, and researching options to increase inter-regional trade and product exports. Additionally, as part of its commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goals, Diageo launched the Water of Life programme in 2000 with an aim to provide access to clean drinking water and sanitation to a million people every year. To date, Diageo has funded over 170 different water and sanitation projects, impacting nearly 5 million people in 16 different countries across the continent.

Dear Mr. Editor,

Please allow me to dove-tail on your thoughtful editorial piece published on Sunday April 15, 2012* entitled Mining Companies and Social Responsibility.  There is nothing responsible about the so called social responsibilities of mining companies operating in Zambia today. If they were remotely socially responsible, they would not be so eager to import expatriate and consultant labor into a country that has astronomical unemployment rates.  Not only do they displace Zambians from the few employment opportunities that exist in their country, they pay their kind (expatriates) three to five times what they would pay a Zambian in that position. All those exorbitant expatriate pay is coming from Zambian copper, by the way.  They claim Zambians are not qualified (not smart enough?) to run multi-national corporations. Yet we have Zambians educated locally and especially abroad in very high positions in academia and industry.  Clearly, this is just an excuse to make sure these mining companies maximize externalization of revenues. $200,000+ a year paid to an Australian goes to building homes and purchasing consumer goods in Australia. If that were paid to a Zambian, that would have tremendous trickle down effects in Zambia’s small economy.  The Zambian government needs to wake up and mandate these multi-national companies, especially miners, to hire qualified Zambians, like the US, British, Australian and other western governments do.  The only time a western company hires a foreigner is when they can prove they have failed to attract a citizen to that position.  Zambia can not afford to build a ‘fly in fly out’ economy.  Copper revenues that need to boost the local economy keeps flying out. You need people leading these mines who have strong ties to the local communities; it’s a no brainer!

QUALIFICATIONS

The whole argument that local Zambians are not qualified is so outdated especially when ZCCM and GRZ, through various schemes, educated so many Zambian professionals locally and abroad. Expatriates and their multi-national employers have no incentive to seek out these learned Zambians because that would mean displacing fellow expatriates and consultants.  These foreign mine workers have a cash cow on Zambian copper that they are milking like they is no tomorrow; they can’t afford to pass those opportunities to Zambians at will.  They have to be mandated to do so.  You do not have to travel too far into history, nor too far geographically to find the likes of late Anderson Mazoka and Norman Mbazima running major divisions of major mining corporations.  There is definitely more where Norman and Anderson came from. I for one know dozens of very educated and very experienced Zambian professionals who can do a superior job compared to the so called expatriates. For Jesus Christ’s sake, Mohammed or Buddha, we have Rhodes Scholars among the Zambians ZCCM educated.

INCENTIVES

Mining companies operating in Zambia still think these Zambians are not smart enough? An average Zambian professional, locally or abroad is typically more educated than some of the technicians and high school graduates occupying high offices in these mining companies in Zambia.  These mining companies have no incentive to accord Zambians the tricks of the trades they offer their own. Even when they hire their own as expatriates, they still hire more and more consultants to do the same jobs expatriates are supposed to do. Even the so called consultants, the products and services they produce are substandard.  The only reason these corporations even make a profit is because copper prices are so high. Otherwise if margins were razor thin such as is the case in retail (groceries), they would be out of business. Clearly, they lack the morality to hire Zambians and give them the resources to succeed that they accord their own.  These mining multi-national corporations operating in Zambia are run by people who clearly have a superiority complex over the natives.  These people, a number of them with little education, have failed to carve out meaningful careers in their native lands. They have to resort to their skin pigmentation to rob those who have little. It is the classic Matthew effect; “Those who have little shall be deprived on the little they have”. Wake up GRZ and stop extending your begging hand. Instead, secure employment for your sons and daughters that can fill up your coffers of your economy.

‘Concerned Zambian’

*The author of this letter was respnding to an editorial in the Post and has kindly authorised us to reproduce it.

By ZAMBIA NEWS FEATURES CORRESPONDENT

The PF government will review the role of the Council of Ministers under Public Private Partnership Act and reduced to policy guidance while awarding of contracts should be retained by ZPPA in consultation with the Attorney General’s office. This is contained a letter accompanying the Zamtel Sale Report.

In another development, the Ministry of Finance is calling for an input from members of the public in addressing weaknesses in the procurement of public goods and services by government.

“Reading through media reports on the fight against corruption manifests one fundamental weakness i.e. inadequate consultation mechanisms for acquiring transparent endorsement of public goods and services before they are contracted,” Ministry Spokesperson Chileshe Kandeta said in an email to a number of Zambians.