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Lack of marketing skills on hindering development in Tanzania
2006-11-01 08:59:21
By Sitta Peter
The problem of poverty and slow pace of development in Tanzania despite the country’s richness in resources (especially the natural ones) is a concern to many people.
People argue that the country has plenty of fertile and virgin land, good for agriculture, presence of valuable minerals in many parts of the country, forests, wild animals and many other tourism attractions.
In addition to these, there is a tappable productive labour especially from the local youths.
But, with all these, farmers are not benefiting from agriculture. Unemployment is still a major problem, social services in the country are still poor and in general development process is still slow and not promising.
We normally tend to pinpoint the problems of poor infrastructure, lack of agricultural inputs to farmers, poor farming methods and use of traditional tools like hand holes, dependency on natural rainfall and selling goods in raw form, among many as the limitations to the progress of our farmers in general.
On the other hand, we also mention poor infrastructure, lack of capital, skills and opportunities for employment as other factors hindering production and development of the citizens.
I definitely agree that such factors have always contributed to our poverty and slow progress.
However, my concern is that we forget to emphasise on addressing lack of marketing skills and creativity as the major constrains limiting our development.
In fact these are the root causes of the problems amongst the forementioned.
For examples in agriculture, we witness fruits and vegetables from local producers rotting in farms and markets at the same time we are busy importing and consuming the same fruits like apples from outside the country plus their artificial and imported drinks.
Likewise, we import chicken and beef from other countries to feed consumers in our hotels. Is there any good reason to justify these?
These are purely caused by lack of marketing skills within our local producers’ circles.
They do not have customer orientation and promotion skills.
Many indigenous producers, especially farmers do not consider the fact that markets are available capable of absorbing all their products.
They lack information or marketing skills to access the markets.
It is this market ignorance that is making them unable to sell and convince buyers of their potentialities in the same markets.
We have heard several times of farmers crying for lack of market for their commodities and requesting leaders to be on the look out for markets on their behalf.
Wonderful enough, we have witnessed many people paying 200/=, 500/=, 1000/= and even more than that for a bottle of artificial drink with mere sugar, colour and flavour in the name of juice.
We fail to convince them that the natural fruits we produce and their juices are more nutritious and cheaper than the drinks artificially made.
You get quite a number of vitamins and some minerals from the natural fruits and you consequently avoid some health problems or complications at a very low cost.
Farmers do not understand that there is a high possibility for them to get local market and even export their produce externally.
For instance, if Tanzanians could be educated and sensitised to consume fruits to the required levels, it is estimated that the current production of fruits would have to increase four times in order to meet the demand.
That is just for the domestic market, this means that the export demand would even be higher than the local estimation.
Most of our farm produce are organically produced and our farmers do not use industrial chemicals to stimulate production, ripening or in storage.
This is a very good convincing reason to attract foreign consumers owing to the current consumption habit which people prefer organically produced foods to the chemically produced ones, for they are worried of the latter’s side effects.
What a simple advertising and promotion technique!
One time during the Nane Nane Exhibition in Morogoro, we had a press conference with the current Prime Minister, Edward Lowassa, by then he was the Minister for Water and Livestock Development.
I asked him the brain behind importing chickens and beef from outside the country while we have plenty of them at home with the advantage of being natural and organically produced.
As he concurred with my opinion, he said that he had asked the similar question during one meeting with hotel owners and he was answered that foreigners do not like Tanzanian chickens because they give out the smell of fish.
The reason for the smell is that the country poultry farmers feed their chickens with fish and its products.
Considering that to be the case, how long is it taking our farmers to rectify the situation and be sensitive to tastes and habits of consumers?
It shouldn’t take time as there are many other options to feed poultry animals and make consumers, both local and foreign be satisfied.
The problem is that our farmers can not quickly cope with change in tastes and habits of consumers and the market in general.
They are slow in response, implying they are slow in business and the consequences are shouldered by them.
Another questionable aspect is; what justifies the reason for buying apples from outside and leaving the local ones to rot?
I can’t think of a good reason than lack of marketing, especially advertisement and promotion skills among the local producers.
Agriculture is not the only sector in danger; a similar trend is seen in other economies and take the case of our traditional medicine which has been taken over by foreigners, especially the Chinese.
They are training the same Tanzanians to promote the herbs consumption and charge them expensively and we are all aware that there are many other trained citizens who have or can research, test and prove scientifically that this and that herb is capable of healing this and that disease.
The only problem is that our local medical practitioners do not advertise and promote their products.
A close look at tourism industry reveals the same thing that it is not fully promoted.
Can you imagine that our neighbouring countries are using our tourism attractions like Kilimanjaro Mountain to cheat foreigners that it is spread in their countries?
By doing so, they convince tourists to visit their countries and you might have heard of a story that many visitors especially from non-African countries take it that the mountain is in Kenya.
Recently, there was story covered by some media house that Kenyans in Arusha are convincing tourists to go to their country because of many attraction sites and their Arusha sculpture market is just a sample.
To an extent, it is justified because we Tanzanians are quiet and relaxed, waiting for others to come and open our eyes or banking on the power of nature.
We must understand that marketing, especially advertisement and promotion skills are very important and applicable in each and every sector.
Some people use the metaphor of riding a bicycle over a hill to show the importance of advertisement and promotion of products and services by saying that ”advertisement is like riding a bicycle over the hill, if you stop pedalling you reverse or slip off,” and this is quite true because our citizens have not been pedalling enough to climb the hill and if the trend continues especially during this period of globalisation, we would definitely veer off.
We should know that if everyone of us recognises the need of promoting our local products and our country in general, economic growth and development of the nation in general would be achieved.
Moreover we have to improve our customer care and relationship as it is also still poor.
You would notice the poor atmosphere of customer care and relations among us in our local restaurants, when you visit food vendors, conductors in commuter buses (Daladalas), bars and many other local business outlets.
The language used in conversation with customers and conduct in most cases is not attractive and convincing.
No wonder the situation is contributing to loss of customers, the collapse of many businesses and their stagnation.
There is a great need for everyone engaged in business to know and to let his/her employees and partners understand the importance of customer orientation and make use of it for our businesses to progress.
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