Welcome! To the Country of Africa

Full of lions and sannavahs and wise old elephants. Oh, and also actually 54 countries...

“Always use the word ‘Africa’ or ‘Darkness’ or ‘Safari’ in your title.” So begins Binyavanga Wainaina’s searingly funny How to Write About Africa. In a mere 1,300 words Wainaina skewers the pretensions and posturing of not only the foreign correspondents, biographers, and modern day Hemmingways who “write about Africa”, but also the (mainly Western) publics who read their works. He instructs writers to “treat Africa as if it were one country” because that’s, of course, par for the course. The African Queen, Out of Africa, or Heart of Darkness. It’s best to just elide over the differences of a continent of 54 countries, a multitude of languages and peoples, and 20% of the world’s land mass.  

But out of the world of literary quarterlies, what does this cliché mean? What does it matter to the good people of Namibia or The Gambia if Trump thinks Nambia exists or if Kim and Kanye tell the Ugandan President that they want to “have a discussion about what would make the country the most thriving, to be like a Wakanda”?  

As readers would know, the GPI focuses primarily on economic issues. Beyond the indignity and ignorance, does the cliché of Africa being one country have economic implications as well? When there was an Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone, tourism in Kenya suffered despite the 5,500km distance and no direct flights. Do other industries face similar challenges? To get a view from the ground, the GPI spoke to Arno Rohwedder, the director of Upendo Honey. Upendo Honey is Tanzania’s largest honey company exporting organic honey across the world from the forests of Western Tanzania. 

GPI: Hi Arno, thank you for joining us today. As you would know, the GPI is based in East Africa. Obviously as we live here, we know how great the honey is, but it's not something you see on supermarket shelves in Europe very much. Tell us a little bit about how you go about marketing your honey. 

AR: Yeah, the way we try to fit into the market, and this is because African honeys are not so well known, is that we are generic commodity honey that trades at a bit of a discount from the larger origins in the world. Especially in the organic space that we work in.  

As an example, Brazil is the primary origin for organic honey. And so we're benchmarked against them because that's sort of the expectation in the marketplace. Because our taste profile is slightly different, what we need to do is give a discount to buyers because they're not familiar with Tanzanian organic by any stretch.  

GPI: OK, that's interesting. So the discount is because the flavour of Tanzanian honey is a bit different. In what way is the flavour different? 

AR: Well the consumer, rightly or wrongly, or at least the buyers that buy on behalf of consumers, tend to expect a mild honey. And honeys from Tanzania, and much of tropical Africa, tend to have a stronger taste. So, what often happens is that our honey gets blended into other ones so that some of the stronger flavourings can be reduced in the final product. Obviously, this is something which is very perception based because the buyers that buy on behalf of the consumers have the idea that the consumer wants a certain honey, which is what would be typical of a Brazilian honey.  

GPI: Right. Now as you would know there's a bit of a cliché around with foreigners thinking of Africa as one country. The internet is full of cringey examples. There is even Joe Biden a referring to “the nation of Africa…”. In fact this whole article is more or less expressly about that cliché. Whilst it is much more normally considered from an anthropological or a social standpoint, as an “African” exporter on the global stage perhaps this is something you see as well but in a more commercial sense. 

AR: Yeah, very much so. And it's not ideal! We for sure see that, especially when we were first selling, but even now from time to time. Every buyer that I have spoken to has an experience where they've said, “oh, I once bought a container from Cameroon. And that Cameroonian honey had issues between the sample they sent and what ended up coming. So because of that I no longer buy from any African companies.”  

So very much you get tarred by the same brush. “I once got burnt by one African seller and even if they were in West Africa therefore all Africans sellers are the same.”  

GPI: The GPI's work is about is promoting broad based sustainable economic growth and a lot of our articles, they sort of come down to the fact that there is almost a death by 1000 cuts for a lot of businesses in Africa. Transport is an issue, there are regulation issues, tax burdens and on and on. Basically there's no one silver bullet to sort all these things. What I'm getting at is, do you think that what you've just described, about having to fight against perceptions, having to fight against experiences that buyers have had with a company a decade ago or 4,000 kilometres away, do you think that's had a material effect on your company? 

AR: Definitely. As I said, even just the fact that we have to trade at a discount and we have to work much harder to get small volumes, one or two FCLs [Full Container Loads], to certain buyers because there's definitely a trust perception. Where a buyer, if they're buying from a Brazilian organic producer, they might just straight up order five containers for us they would say “OK, we need to try with one container first”. 

GPI: You've spoken here a little bit about your competitors, Brazilian or Argentinian or whatever. Does anyone ever speak of South American honey or Asian honey? 

AR: They do, in a way. However, there are differences. People do talk about “South American origin”, but it will be more in the context of shipping rates from South America or things that apply to multiple countries. But they don’t think or say that all the countries and companies are the same such as they do when talking about African origin. It is much more as an overarching ‘all African origins are the same’ as opposed to all South American origins are the same.  

GPI:  Ok, so you obviously work in the in the agri-business space in Tanzania. Do you think, and this might be extrapolating a little bit beyond your experience here, but do you think that other companies in other commodities would be facing similar sort of reputational challenges or even knowledge challenges from the buyer side? Be that in tea or coffee or spices or anything other like that. 

AR: I would say, without knowing deeply, yes. There's definitely a trust imbalance. So payment terms might be a bit more harsh on African origin rather than from South American origins for instance. Because again, there's an expectation almost that if you're coming from an African origin and you're selling from an African origin that you're a bad actor. And so therefore they really need to be very tight on the terms of payment so that they can make sure that they don't get screwed because of previous experiences. 

GPI: Right, right. Well that’s depressing. So in your humble opinion what do you think changes this cliché about foreigners and other people seeing Africa as a as one country? 

AR: I think it is just a slow burn where you get more and more reliable actors working on the continent and selling to these buyers and people. Perceptions slowly change and we've seen that with some of our buyers where because we are a reliable actor, they are more open to other potential African sellers.  Because now they understand that OK, not all African sellers are bad actors. This is one of the ways that we're really hoping to move the needle. We are just one small company selling honey. But if people then go, “OK yeah, you know what African origins are reliable origins, they have a nice distinct flavour and we can start using those in our in our blends or we can start using them as a as a mono origin varietal” then that's something that's really good for the continent as a whole. But unfortunately it's not an immediate thing. Very slowly you build that reputation up and it takes many years to change perceptions. 

GPI: Yep, for sure and we weren’t really expecting you to solve discrimination and ignorance. Well not just today anyway. But we might leave it there. That's all been quite interesting and, as I mentioned at the beginning, we're trying to flesh out how these clichés actually manifest out as in real life. Hearing about your experiences to push back against a little bit of prejudice, a little bit of experience with one company in one country being applied to a whole continent has been really interesting. So thanks very much for joining the GPI this morning. 

AR: My pleasure.