The Malawian women, wrapped in turquoise sarongs decorated with pictures of President Mutharika, had been singing and dancing for six hours before Bill Clinton arrived on Friday afternoon.The former US President descended in a helicopter from the heavens in a whirlwind of dust and leaves. Dressed in a black T-shirt, he sought out Britain's biggest philanthropist - Sir Tom Hunter.
They gave each other a warm hug, like old friends. Welcome to the Tom and Bill show, African-style. We were in the small village of Neno, southern Malawi. The pair run a $100m organisation called the Clinton Hunter Development Initiative. In Neno it is paying for a new hospital.
The pair are a good mix. Clinton provides the political access (so important in Africa) and Sir Tom provides the cash and the business discipline.
Sir Tom has Clinton's common touch, making jokes and helping his hosts feel at ease. Clinton, for his part, has never been more popular.
Some reckon the former President is now a bigger hit in Africa than when he left office seven years ago. It's hard to disagree. By the end of his three-hour visit 6,000 locals had gathered, lining the route out of town.
Clinton stopped his motorcade and jumped out, diving into the crowd, grabbing several hands with one hand, high-fiving with the other. The crowd surged forward. People were getting crushed. Clinton was concerned. His press team yelled at everyone to get back.
We are used to British celebrities messing around in mud huts and asking us to help them to save Africa. What is fascinating about Sir Tom and Clinton is that they don't want our money, in fact they don't want help from any non-governmental organisations, aid agencies or foreign governments.
They are doing it all alone. The big question is why? When Clinton turned away from the sea of faces to answer our questions. I asked him why he wasn't using aid agencies and NGOs. Didn't he trust them? Clinton would have known this was a sensitive question, given the claims that some NGOs waste thousands of dollars which are meant for the poor.
But Clinton was optimistic. Of course he trusted NGOs - his team work with NGOs at some point. But the plan was to create a Third Way for aid relief: "If we can prove this works, promoting growth and reducing inequality, then we will have a model that every NGO in the world can follow," he said. Hear, hear to that.
Selling the farmers' story will take people out of poverty
What is breadline poverty? In Britain the Joseph Rowntree Foundation says you have to answer "no" to the following questions: 1. Can you afford an annual holiday, in the UK or overseas? 2. Can you save £10 a month?
(At least it is an improvement on 1967 when Joseph Rowntree's questions were: 1. Do you have a spare chair at home for guests? 2. Can you afford a roast joint on Sundays? 3. Can you heat your whole house?)
In rural Rwanda and Malawi the questions would be different: 1. Do you have more than one meal a day? 2. Do you have a dirt floor? 3. Do you have any matches?
In Rwanda there are plenty of local companies that want to make profits and perhaps pay their employees a little more. They just need help.
Take the Gisovu Tea Factory in western Rwanda. The company produces 1.6m tonnes a year of four premium teas and two basic grades. It is very profitable, making $1m profit on sales of $3.5m.
Yet Gisovu is being paid just 30p a kilo for tea which would sell for £3 a kilo on the British high street. Someone is making money here - and it isn't the tea company or the 14,000 "outgrower" farmers who provide leaves for the factory.
This is where someone such as Sir Tom can help. The key is to move up the value chain, by marketing Gisovu's tea as a premium Rwandan tea.
Sir Tom's team has now trademarked a brand for Gisovu's tea - Source Of The Nile. The plan is to sell it through supermarkets, with a brand story, letting consumers know where it came it from.
Not only will the tea company, which is 70pc owned by the Rwandan government, benefit, but Sir Tom's team would try to ensure that local farmers would share any profits too.
The sums are simple: 14,000 farmers multiplied by the average family size of five people, and suddenly Sir Tom and his team are helping 70,000 men, women and children out of poverty.
Rwandans move on together towards a better life
On the wall of the tea manager's office, there were columns and columns of numbers, each detailing the tens of thousands of tonnes of tea produced each month. Back in July 1994, 19,847 tonnes were produced. Then in August, September and October, nothing. The reason? The Rwandan Genocide, when neighbour turned on neighbour, killing one million people in 100 days. Extraordinarily, 13 years later, many of those neighbours are still living together, cheek by jowl, trying to move on. For that alone, Rwanda deserves to succeed.
Monday, 23 July 2007
Haggling over Malawi's green gold
Seeing a Malawian man actually running at full tilt is a rare thing.
They are a relaxed nation and because most of the economy is agriculture-based, there's rarely a need to rush anywhere.
But when it comes to the East African state's main cash crop, tobacco, the pace picks up quite a bit.
At auction day in Lilongwe, Malawi's capital city, "green gold" - as the farmers here like calling their raw harvest - goes on sale.
Dozens of bare-chested young men sprint with wheelbarrow-like trolleys into and out of a giant hall in the late morning heat.
Half of them have large bales of canvas sacks, but if you follow those with empty carts, you arrive at an enormous warehouse - the largest in the country.
There, your senses are accosted by the sights and sounds of hundreds of people buzzing around thousands of yellowing sacks, as the pungent mix of freshly harvested tobacco competes with human body odour.
The auction process itself is a fascinating mix of theatre and business. On one side of a long row of open tobacco sacks stands the auctioneer, barking out the price per kg.
Opposing him and swiftly moving up the line is the buyer and his team, haggling over that price in a series of gestures and grunts - more akin to a cattle mart than to anything at Christie's or Sotheby's.
The farmers, who have grown and delivered these sacks of tobacco, wait in the wings - like expectant fathers - for an agreed price.
They and their families and their workers' families depend hugely on what transpires in front of their eyes.
Today, there are universal smiles in the wings. Near-record prices are being paid for this summer's crop. At $1.80 a kg, it's more than double last year's prices.
Asian expansion
The buyers aren't smiling, though. They blame a scarcity of supply and government intervention for the high prices.
Even though they feel they are paying too much, they have to buy anyway. The demand from soon-to-be rich countries, such as China and India, is too great to abstain from purchasing.
They will be passing on this bad news to tobacco giants such as Altria (makers of Marlboro), BAT (Lucky Strike) and Gallahers (Benson & Hedges), who will have to pay more to turn these shabby-looking leaves into expensive cigars and branded cigarettes.
And they have a willing and waiting market in East Asia. One in every four smokers in the world lives in China alone - dwarfing most Western countries.
And there's room for expansion for the big multinationals. Only 1.2 billion of the 700 billion cigarettes that were sold by BAT last year went to China.
It is also a more receptive market. Unlike Europe and much of North America, there are no bans on tobacco advertising in China, let alone on smoking in public places - more or less the norm in the EU now.
Whether or not Big Tobacco succeeds in making major inroads into East Asia or South Asia matters a lot in Malawi.
For farmers such as Ponsiano Kaomba, his very livelihood depends on it. He worries that health fears surrounding tobacco may damage his earnings.
"I read about health problems in Europe and wonder what it will mean for the people here [at the auction]," he says, "but so far it has not affected us too badly."
Consumption curbs
Most of the 27,000 Malawian tobacco farms (down from 45,000 five years ago) reap meagre rewards compared with their Western counterparts.
But the government of President Bingu wa Mutharika is trying to play its part, by raising the minimum price at which tobacco can be sold at auctions.
"The president was very disappointed by the prices achieved last year," says Dr Evans Chipale, who runs Auction Holdings, the body designed to sell Malawi's main source of foreign income.
"He introduced higher prices for farmers and guaranteed that they would all be paid within 24 hours of the sale."
But the vagaries of the world market will have a far great impact than any government action. And it doesn't bode well for poor African tobacco farmers.
Even China is moving towards curbing cigarette advertising and discouraging its consumption. That will almost certainly trickle down to places such as the auction house in Lilongwe.
The farmers may have been smiling at record prices today, but for how long?
They are a relaxed nation and because most of the economy is agriculture-based, there's rarely a need to rush anywhere.
But when it comes to the East African state's main cash crop, tobacco, the pace picks up quite a bit.
At auction day in Lilongwe, Malawi's capital city, "green gold" - as the farmers here like calling their raw harvest - goes on sale.
Dozens of bare-chested young men sprint with wheelbarrow-like trolleys into and out of a giant hall in the late morning heat.
Half of them have large bales of canvas sacks, but if you follow those with empty carts, you arrive at an enormous warehouse - the largest in the country.
There, your senses are accosted by the sights and sounds of hundreds of people buzzing around thousands of yellowing sacks, as the pungent mix of freshly harvested tobacco competes with human body odour.
The auction process itself is a fascinating mix of theatre and business. On one side of a long row of open tobacco sacks stands the auctioneer, barking out the price per kg.
Opposing him and swiftly moving up the line is the buyer and his team, haggling over that price in a series of gestures and grunts - more akin to a cattle mart than to anything at Christie's or Sotheby's.
The farmers, who have grown and delivered these sacks of tobacco, wait in the wings - like expectant fathers - for an agreed price.
They and their families and their workers' families depend hugely on what transpires in front of their eyes.
Today, there are universal smiles in the wings. Near-record prices are being paid for this summer's crop. At $1.80 a kg, it's more than double last year's prices.
Asian expansion
The buyers aren't smiling, though. They blame a scarcity of supply and government intervention for the high prices.
Even though they feel they are paying too much, they have to buy anyway. The demand from soon-to-be rich countries, such as China and India, is too great to abstain from purchasing.
They will be passing on this bad news to tobacco giants such as Altria (makers of Marlboro), BAT (Lucky Strike) and Gallahers (Benson & Hedges), who will have to pay more to turn these shabby-looking leaves into expensive cigars and branded cigarettes.
And they have a willing and waiting market in East Asia. One in every four smokers in the world lives in China alone - dwarfing most Western countries.
And there's room for expansion for the big multinationals. Only 1.2 billion of the 700 billion cigarettes that were sold by BAT last year went to China.
It is also a more receptive market. Unlike Europe and much of North America, there are no bans on tobacco advertising in China, let alone on smoking in public places - more or less the norm in the EU now.
Whether or not Big Tobacco succeeds in making major inroads into East Asia or South Asia matters a lot in Malawi.
For farmers such as Ponsiano Kaomba, his very livelihood depends on it. He worries that health fears surrounding tobacco may damage his earnings.
"I read about health problems in Europe and wonder what it will mean for the people here [at the auction]," he says, "but so far it has not affected us too badly."
Consumption curbs
Most of the 27,000 Malawian tobacco farms (down from 45,000 five years ago) reap meagre rewards compared with their Western counterparts.
But the government of President Bingu wa Mutharika is trying to play its part, by raising the minimum price at which tobacco can be sold at auctions.
"The president was very disappointed by the prices achieved last year," says Dr Evans Chipale, who runs Auction Holdings, the body designed to sell Malawi's main source of foreign income.
"He introduced higher prices for farmers and guaranteed that they would all be paid within 24 hours of the sale."
But the vagaries of the world market will have a far great impact than any government action. And it doesn't bode well for poor African tobacco farmers.
Even China is moving towards curbing cigarette advertising and discouraging its consumption. That will almost certainly trickle down to places such as the auction house in Lilongwe.
The farmers may have been smiling at record prices today, but for how long?
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