Production appears to be an alien undertaking in Malawi, and yet we need it for our economy to tick. Yes, we must reduce imports as explained in my last article but we must at the same time embrace secondary production so that we enhance our capacity to generate forex. At the very least, production will help stop the haemorrhage of forex that results from importation for consumption, which we indulge in with reckless abandon.
The emphasis here is on secondary, not primary, production. Sometimes this is called value addition. Primary production is the acquisition of raw commodities. Activities like farming, fishing, bee keeping and mining constitute primary production since the end result of each one of these is a commodity – farm produce, fish, honey or minerals.
The problem with commodities is that the seller gets a pittance for them. For a variety of reasons, buyers of commodities wield so much bargaining power to push prices downwards. One of such reasons is that their switching costs are low or non-existent, meaning that if they cannot buy from one supplier they will easily and cheaply switch to another supplier.
What we need is secondary production so that we can add value to the commodities. If you attended a trade fair where different goods were on display and you noticed that one of the exhibitors was displaying cotton while another was displaying cotton suits, where would you spend more time? Raw cotton and cotton suits are basically the same in substance. The only difference is that the former is a commodity and the latter a secondary product, the result of value addition. 1.6 kg of cotton would fetch not more than K2,000, a far cry from what the average male suit, which will also weigh 1.6 kg, would fetch: hundreds of thousands of Kwacha. Commodities and secondary products stand poles apart.
There are many factors which make secondary production seem out of reach in Malawi, but the common thread through them is lack of appropriate culture. Put simply, culture is the manner in which members of a society do things. It is based on shared beliefs, shared assumptions and shared values.
I will give an illustration to explain my point in the preceding paragraph. Malawians share the belief that everything begins and ends with politics. I know so many people who are very passionate about politics but practically none of them is passionate about secondary production. Imagine two call-in programs on two local radios, one discussing politics, the other production. The switchboard to the former would be inundated with emotional callers wanting to glorify one set of politicians and diabolize another. And they would do so with unparalleled enthusiasm! There would hardly be any caller on the radio discussing production.
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak used to meet regularly with other computer enthusiasts at a club called Homebrew Computer Club. Here they would discuss everything digital. It was from these meetings that the Macintosh computer was developed and Apple company established. Today, Apple’s products, which include the iPhone, are revered throughout the world.
While acknowledging that cut and paste will not work, we need something similar to the Homebrew Club. We need fora (forums) that stimulate our young minds and the general population into discussing production matters. Production must become a way of living, a culture. Just as easily as people comment on politics they must likewise be able to comment on production matters.
As I grew up, almost everything I touched that was made had the inscription, “Made in England”. The first car that my father acquired was a Ford Anglia. That too had the same inscription. I began to think that some nations were ordained makers of things while others were not. It is the same thinking that pervades our culture, sadly.
Another unfortunate aspect of our culture is that we fail to value production careers. The average Malawian student harbors ambitions of one day becoming an accountant, a lawyer, a banker, a politician but not a production person. Even those that opt for engineering prefer administrative work to technical work when they qualify. Technical work is regarded as inferior to administrative work. I have a white South African friend who is an excellent machine minder of printing presses. When people see him carrying paper to be fed into a press, or washing rollers from the press, they are puzzled over a white man pursuing that type of career. Elsewhere, machine minders are highly regarded and highly paid people, but not so in Malawi.
Changing people’s culture requires a great deal of patience and hard work but it can and needs to be done.