It is a sunny Friday morning in the tourist district of Mangochi. The setting is an area boasting of the legendary Sunbird Nkopola Lodge. From the main tarmac road branch small tributary roads which curve along the baobab dominated area. Along these roads are men working some ‘magic’ on wood. Adjacent to them are women sieving grain. The women are singing songs in unison, perhaps to ease the work for them and their male compatriots. The men are silent, not even a murmur is heard from their side. The probable assumption might be their horse voices will ruin the perceived sweet songs, hence the silence.
Nearby, there is a procession of boys and girls. It is said the ‘Chinamwali’ tradition is coming to an end and the group is excited that their colleagues will re-join the society soon. It is a noisy place.
There is however one place that is quiet in the entire vicinity. It is the lodge’s conference hall. The hall is hosting the 8th edition of the Charted Institute of Marketers (CIM) Malawi Annual Lake Conference. Multiple personalities in the marketing profession have gathered at the place to interact and find ways of improving the profession under the theme ‘Trade and Marketing in the Global Space’.
A prominent figure is addressing the audience. His name is Thebe Ikalafeng. Who is this person that holds such podium command? How is he highly rated when it’s only a handful of Malawians that know him? What has he achieved to earn such respect? Or is this just one of these PR stunts?
Well, Mr. Ikalafeng is a writer, public speaker and consultant on Africa-focused branding, leadership and related matter. A marketer by profession, he started his career at Colgate-Palmolive in New York and concluded his career working as a chief marketing officer for NIKE for Africa. The multiple award winner, bagging close to 75 awards in branding and communication globally, has travelled to over 100 countries sharing insights on marketing and branding related issues.
With the auditorium filled to capacity, Thebe is on this day talking about how Africans can make use of their local resources as a means of coming up with massive business empires. He says the culture we overlook, people from other continents come to grasp, maximize and sell back to us at a very hefty price. He cites examples of Starbucks capitalizing on Ethiopian and Ghanaian coffee, diamonds extracted from Botswana, gold from Zimbabwe and The Congo among other notable examples. Here in Malawi we can surely get a few examples on the tobacco prices being controlled by buyers from abroad as well as Paladin, an Australian mining company taking control of production and sale of Uranium.
He takes his audience way back along memory lane to remind them of ‘The Berlin Conference’. He says the conference, held in 1884 and chaired by the then German Chancellor Otto Von Bismark, changed the shape of African affairs in the decades to follow. The aim of this conference was for a smooth partition of Africa among different states notably Britain, Germany, France and Belgium among others. The partition involved taking control of resources in the various African states. ‘Of all issues discussed there, there was no issue that favored Africa and its people,’ he says.
He however lightens the slightly sad faces by saying there is hope for Africa. He says as long as we reshape our narrative, promote our local industry by buying local, Innovate, protect our brands, own our value chain, promote intra-African trade as well as come up with sustainable developmental initiatives, we shall overcome all the hurdles that have crippled Africa economically over the years.
Indeed, we can ‘take back Africa’. Just as Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez took back the Sugar beet and Petroleum industries respectively, we can do the same. We shall however not use guerilla warfare to do so. We will use what Mr. Ikalafeng has told us.
As he retired from the podium, the room was engulfed in a loud applause of satisfaction with words of massive power shared by this remarkable personality.
To fellow Malawians, its ‘Dzuka Malawi!!’……to Thebe Ikalafeng, we say ‘Ngiyabonga Kakhulu!!’.
That was the 8th time Warthogs Inc hosted yet another rich content and value adding conference for CIM Malawi- The Marketers.
‘We make our conferences fun and value for marketers’, says Dumisani Ngulube, the Team Leader.
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