Africa - Future Vendors or Entrepreneurs?

It is Tuesday afternoon, the eighth of October 2013 and I am looking at these vendors at the side of the road with their treys and baskets, the one with the largest filled with an assortment of vegetables and fruits would not give its bearer five American dollars if all its contents were successfully sold. Their lips are dry and cracked with beads of sweat on their brows, their skin dark from the merciless African sun beating upon them, their eyes have sunk and even when they try to smile in an attempt to be friendly to potential customers their eyes cannot smile but they are constantly darting to and fro, searching and their ears attentive hoping for that one person who can mumble a word of hope to break the futile monotony of what has become an everyday experience, that one customer willing to part with four Rand (considered the equivalent of fifty American cents) and moisten those dry sunken eyes with relief.


I hear a knock on the side window close to where I am sitting and turn my attention to it to discover a

 small figure of what I deem to be a child, a little boy of about nine and he is shouting something holding up his little bucket filled with purified water in five hundred Milli liter plastic containers. I open the window and his shouts come invading the whole vehicle accompanied by other eager voices of little kids and adults that have now swamped the car. "five rand mvura kurikupisa boss, five rand chete mvura yenyu" (five rand water, it is hot boss, five rand only for your water) Suddenly there are baskets and plates and little buckets all held up to my face, "five rand nzungu" (peanuts) goes a tired teenage female voice "dollar, dollar maApple" another female voice "five rand mabiscuits, dollar macan" (dollar for soft drink cans) breaks in the adult male voice. I shake my head and wave, motioning that i am not interested in their merchandise and close the window whilst I wait for the traffic light set up by the road construction company to turn green and whilst I do that they quickly rush to a Zupco bus that has just arrived to tempt its occupants with their goods.

I continue to stare at the kids and I check the time on my phone and realize it is twelve noon, "aren't all these kids supposed to be in school right now?" I ask myself. My heart sinks with sadness as I continue to stare at their malnutritioned forms, their tattered and visibly dirty clothes, their bare feet and their unkempt hair. I open my window again and call the one closest to me who is just standing by the side of the road looking on at the traffic that is passing by. I hand him a dollar and he holds up a little plastic bucket of apples packed in fours "sarudzai boss" (choose boss). I tell the young boy that I don't want any apples and the dollar is for him, he thanks me profusely almost teary eyed "haa maitababsa boss, iii haa thanks haa maitabho blaz, God bless u blaz" he goes on and on thanking me for that one dollar until I close my window and he is still gesturing with his hands, his lips still moving clapping his hands together. I take a deep breath and exhale as tears start to blur my vision a little and i open the window just enough to let some fresh air in so that i can hold the tears back.

Harare

It then dawned upon me, a sudden realization of how we have become a nation of vendors. From the streets and main roads to the high rise buildings at the heart of Harare. Everyone is selling something or someone to get a buck at the end of the day from the youngest to the grannies that can barely walk on two. The truth is these are only symptoms of a worse disease that has taken root in our country. Many at times I have heard people say "oh Zimbabwe is a beautiful country, we have good weather, animals, the Victoria falls and so on" but of what value is it to its people? We can not as a nation brag about having tourist destinations, flora and fauna when it doesn't pay school fees for the kid that is vending freezits right now at Coppa Cabana. We can not brag about having good soils and weather when we importing maize form neighboring countries, when our agricultural sector or any other economic sector is not performing at all. Of the little business or production we have going on, of what long term benefit is it to the people of Zimbabwe?

So many times I Walk through the streets of Harare and i see more of those pensive looks, more of that desperation that is weighing many a heart down. I witness anxiety dig its trenches deeper on the faces of the masses struggling to make ends meet everyday. Almost everyone is self employed even those who assume to own businesses without any system that they run. Almost everyone is trading something, either cars from Japan, clothes from unknown destinations packed in bales, small groceries, shoes, belts e.t.c. But none of those things are manufactured here in Zimbabwe yet all those goods have the cotton, the leather, the steel e.t.c. from Zimbabwe and its African sisters. We have become a net exporter of raw materials and a net importer of finished processed goods and our economy keeps sinking deeper into the vortex of uncertainty that was created perhaps by historical injustices but certainly exacerbated by our very own hands.

This however is not a situation unique to Zimbabwe alone but can be found in most African countries.

Dar Es Salam

 Earlier this year i traveled to Tanzania and I could see the symptoms of that heinous disease that has long troubled my country. I remember being guided through the city road network in Dar Es Salaam by a young boy in his early teens who told me his name was Mutundo. I asked him why he wasn't at school and his reply was "I do dis and i also go sell things to help my moda (mother), brodas (brothers) and sistors (sisters), i stopped school because it useless because after finishing school you not getting job so it better to sell small small stuff so you get money". Maybe the little boy was uneducated in the traditional sense of education as most people understand it but his thinking was analytical, well at least for his age and circumstances. A booming entrepreneur in his own right-maybe- or a lost generation i am still yet unsure. What he said was true though, not only about Tanzania and Dar Es Salaam but also for Zimbabwe and the majority of Africa. Along the roads at every turn in DES, you would find vendors (mostly youth) selling their wares all the way to Nakonde/Tunduma boarder post. Crossing over into Zambia the struggle continued and as real as everywhere else i had been to.


Unemployment in most African countries is high which leads to a number of questions one of them being weather the growing population is receiving education at all and if they are are they receiving the right education? We train economists in economics that do not exist in our economies, we train accountants to be competent in accounting for businesses that do not exist, lawyers to stand in court against a corrupt justice system that defeats the very nature of their profession, each year 

we recruit police men and women to loiter aimlessly in the streets looking for an opportunity to stop a motorist or a taxi and ask for a bribe for some documents they do or don't posses. Yes we train all these professionals by the dozen and release then into a totally different reality than the theory they frequently fantasized on when they were yet still in college. Booming entrepreneurs-clearly not- but a lost generation who by default become vendors because at the end of the day when the sun goes down necessity demands that they put food on the table or at least a morsel that will make them survive until the next day.

I do not speak of the wealth of the rich nor the deeds of the corrupt for they are merely a product of a system or the lack of an alternative system. I speak of education and i speak of the fear of God. As Africa we need education that is relevant to our current situation. We need more entrepreneurs before we can employ more accountants. It is not so much as being taught the facts, we all know how things are and how they have affected us all but it is now imperative to employ and exercise a new way of thinking that has the future in mind. As one certain Pastor Barry C Black prayed at President Obama's inauguration he said praying for the US cabinet "Empower them with the WISDOM, courage and strength needed for our TIMES" and that is what we need.

WE need more than books with ideals and how it OUGHT to be. More importantly we need to start writing new books on how we can emerge a stronger , more prosperous African nation. We need to structure our governments and our justice systems in a way that supports economic growth and innovation, not after the ideals of the West or the East but the NEEDS of Africa's people. Our raw materials and minerals are fast depleting yet there is little or no development that they are trading in. Our roads are terrible in the few areas where they exist, there is an acute shortage of education and health facilities and families are still going to bed hungry night after night to say the least. If then this is our situation when we still have those natural resources my question is "What will be Africa's fate when we run out of those mineral resources and raw materials??"

In the end i salute those vendors, everyone of them man or woman cashing in those coins. I salute them all from Cape to Cairo who wage a battle everyday to send their little ones to school to be taught how to be good accountants and managers for businesses that don't yet exist. I salute them all as they strive to feed their families. I salute every man and woman who challenges the status quo and strives to correct a system that has gone off its rails. I salute them in their struggles for one more thing i saw in those sunken eyes was the radiance of HOPE and the human spirit for survival and to make things better, I saw their prayers upon their dry lips as they watched their little ones play and I saw the beauty of God upon those worried faces and so I pray for them too.

I pray for that nation of vendors!

By Simbarashe M c N o r r i s Hakata