Sugar lessons from pioneer Asian farmers to their Kenyan counterparts

NAIROBI: The Asians from India and Pakistan were the first people to start, own and manage sugar production in Kenya when they established sugar production plants in Miwani (Nyanza) and Ramisi (Coast).

It was a profitable venture for everyone, from the farmer, to producer, supplier and consumer. But times have changed and new realities have complicated the sugar sector.

The relational simplicity that existed in the industry between farmer, producer and consumer has been overtaken by new social dynamics. Sugar is not just an economic subject; it has also become a trump card in political duels.

That is why in the ongoing sugar debates, economic arguments, probably due to their complicated nature, seem to be quite unpopular compared to the colourful and alluring nature of political arguments.

That said, something was lost in sugar farming after Asians were shoved aside by the state shortly after independence, and especially beginning with Sessional Paper No 10 of 1965 that sought to provide a broader framework to revolutionise agriculture.

The Asians, like typical self-made investors, saw an opportunity and applied their minds to it and transformed it into a profitable venture that responded to economic realities. They understood clearly the language of business.

PROFIT MODEL

With only a social mandate and not a business one, the state entered the sugar sector without a profit model for farmers. It instead bequeathed the thing it knew best: politics. The language of sugar became the sure way prospective candidates could win power.

The sure way to defeat this destructive dependency is to initiative crop diversification so as to enrich farmers and decrease their desire for patronage.

But what have successive governments not learned from the Asian sugar farmers of pre-independence Kenya? How to run a successful business.

The litany of failed or failing parastatals is proof enough that business, when it is not leveraged by fiscal discipline, innovativeness, social responsibility and patriotism, will collapse under the weight of corruption, mismanagement and uncompetitiveness.

Asian farmers tended to know that running a successful business required understanding the dynamics of economics, the targeted business sector, the psychology of its customers and how these factors interact to ensure profitability. They were smart businessmen (they were all men) who kept an eye out for opportunities — that is, until the unrelenting hammer of the state fell on them.

What lessons from these Asians? Let farmers break free to seek newer, wider, richer and better worlds of opportunities and information. They were not made to remain encased in protectionist shells; they were made for freedom.

The writer is a researcher.

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