"But, think of a country like Ethiopia and then Meles Zenawi, the late Prime Minister. Ethiopia keeps growing year after year at 11-12 per cent. And what did Meles do? The simple things we have been saying for decades and decades and decades. This is a country that came out of a war, remember?
It's facing insecurities; got Eritrea and other countries that do not like it around it. I'll give two examples. Coffee. It originated from Ethiopia in the world. But, Ethiopian farmers, before Meles, would get 10 per cent of the value of coffee from their crops.
They would just produce the coffee and sell to companies, and the companies will take their coffee into Latin America and have it improved and dried and and packaged. And Zenawi just asked: "Why can't we produce coffee in Ethiopia that would go straight from Ethiopia to the coffee shops in Europe?"
And all sorts of responses came. "Well, you know your weather is good for growing coffee. You coffee is very good, but your farmers have bad farming practices."
So he said: "Why don't you teach them?" So, he got in touch with the IFC (International Finance Corporation), got a loan, organised Ethiopian coffee farmers into cooperatives, taught them how to grow the coffee, how to dry, prepare and package it.
Today, if you go to coffee shops in Europe and take a cup of coffee that came straight from Ethiopian farm. And Ethiopian farmers are now getting 70 per cent of the value of the coffee, from the former 10 per cent.
So, he tells Aliko Dangote, come and build a cement manufacturing plant here. I am going to give you electricity at three cent per kilowatt hour. For a cement manufacturer, that is all the incentive that you need.
So, Dangote goes, builds the most sophisticated cement plant in Ethiopia, gets electricity almost for nothing and cost of cement drops by 60 per cent.
The construction industries gets boosted. Roads are being built with cement. Jobs are created. And new industry has taken off.
He said to the Chinese, "I don't like this your idea of coming to buy hides and skin and leather from Ethiopia and sell us shoes. Set up the factory here." Emir Sanusi
Funmi Tofowomo Okelola
-In the absence of greatness, mediocrity thrives.