Forgive my tardiness,
It has been a quick reintroduction to my neo-colonial/sudo-immersed hybrid lifestyle back in Africa. No time for stopping to reflect on the culture shock, just straight full-fledged attack on re-entering the Malawian business arena.
In light, I owe an explanation as to what I am doing here in Malawi and in southern Africa in general. The light peppering of questions I have been asked relating to it and its absence from this blog has well marinated me for this moment. Last fall, I came to southern Africa on a tour of countries evaluating the profit potential of marketing multi-function, individual solar panels to rural African self-subsistence farmers. The results were underwhelming. Either the product is too expensive for the farmer; the government subsidizes it and it is still too expensive or not seen as a neccesity; or the product is of good value and utility for the individual farmer and a Chinese (or Korean) company sees this and undercuts the price of the product selling a panel of lower quality at a cheaper price. The shelf life of such low-grade products is usually less than 1.5 years.
But, I got to see a lot of the region and decided I would return to Malawi to work on the reforestation and efficient harvesting of indigenous hardwood trees and pursue my dream of working on geothermal energy from the Rift Valley. Hardwoods from the region are one of the most consistent export markets in the world because of the rarity, quality and properties of the woods. Ever played the clarinet? I'd bet ten bucks the wood came from this region, and another ten that the wood was illegally harvested and exported. I worked on this project for some time with the help of Mozambican colleagues, including planting some of these rare trees in a local national park. Eventually, the project took a thorn to the side that it could not overcome: in one of the last steps to get rights from the previous Malawian regime, a "gift" was asked for that would make the business less profitable and ethical. Two weeks later, some lovely local gentlemen came up with the same idea and began doing it on their own. (Steal-and-sell as it is called by the corruption watchdogs here).
Finally, I spent the remaining months of my latest time in Malawi exporting soybeans at fair-trade quality and prices to Johannesburg. While this has been a truly profitable business, the limited growth potential, complications of moving to higher volume and the reorganization of the Malawian government (a good thing) has added new barriers to ressurecting this business. While I still plan to pursue it, I am looking into new markets to spread about the business' Herculean amounts of capital.
So for the next couple of months, I'll be updating you with a couple of our latest projects and try not to add anything too boring to the scope of this digital platform.
More later this week on lifestyle things,
Steven
It has been a quick reintroduction to my neo-colonial/sudo-immersed hybrid lifestyle back in Africa. No time for stopping to reflect on the culture shock, just straight full-fledged attack on re-entering the Malawian business arena.
In light, I owe an explanation as to what I am doing here in Malawi and in southern Africa in general. The light peppering of questions I have been asked relating to it and its absence from this blog has well marinated me for this moment. Last fall, I came to southern Africa on a tour of countries evaluating the profit potential of marketing multi-function, individual solar panels to rural African self-subsistence farmers. The results were underwhelming. Either the product is too expensive for the farmer; the government subsidizes it and it is still too expensive or not seen as a neccesity; or the product is of good value and utility for the individual farmer and a Chinese (or Korean) company sees this and undercuts the price of the product selling a panel of lower quality at a cheaper price. The shelf life of such low-grade products is usually less than 1.5 years.
But, I got to see a lot of the region and decided I would return to Malawi to work on the reforestation and efficient harvesting of indigenous hardwood trees and pursue my dream of working on geothermal energy from the Rift Valley. Hardwoods from the region are one of the most consistent export markets in the world because of the rarity, quality and properties of the woods. Ever played the clarinet? I'd bet ten bucks the wood came from this region, and another ten that the wood was illegally harvested and exported. I worked on this project for some time with the help of Mozambican colleagues, including planting some of these rare trees in a local national park. Eventually, the project took a thorn to the side that it could not overcome: in one of the last steps to get rights from the previous Malawian regime, a "gift" was asked for that would make the business less profitable and ethical. Two weeks later, some lovely local gentlemen came up with the same idea and began doing it on their own. (Steal-and-sell as it is called by the corruption watchdogs here).
Finally, I spent the remaining months of my latest time in Malawi exporting soybeans at fair-trade quality and prices to Johannesburg. While this has been a truly profitable business, the limited growth potential, complications of moving to higher volume and the reorganization of the Malawian government (a good thing) has added new barriers to ressurecting this business. While I still plan to pursue it, I am looking into new markets to spread about the business' Herculean amounts of capital.
So for the next couple of months, I'll be updating you with a couple of our latest projects and try not to add anything too boring to the scope of this digital platform.
More later this week on lifestyle things,
Steven
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