“Tomatoes, they could be Ghana’s red gold. The soil is ideal and they have been cultivated in the country for decades. Yet now Ghana’s tomato factories stand empty. And farmers are opting to leave the country.” These are chilling words that opens the documentary, Tomatoes and Greed, The Exodus of Ghana Farmers by DW.

The documentary highlights the global unfair trade policies pushed by multinationals with the sole purpose of killing Africa’s farming. The goal?  To import foods to African countries sourced abroad while displacing African population to Europe to work in the very farms under slave-like conditions. 

You will be surprised at the length companies go to create opportunities for themselves. Here in Kenya, the strategy is simple. Centralize by e-commerce to monopolize and then kill with the intention of importing what was successfully produced locally. In the olden days, mine owners would buy-up their competition with the sole purpose of shutting them down to create a monopoly say in copper to drive up the prices. Nothing has changed when it comes to monopolistic strategies but the goals might be different. 

There is a monopolizing movement of multinationals and foreign venture capital driven by declining of their previous markets and the promise of the African population. These multinationals are coming from parts of the world where their customer-base is declining. If you read my previous article, You’re Just Their Common Wealth! you will be informed that there is unprecedented demographics implosion fermenting right now in the West. To give an example, there will be 30 million super elderly people in nursing homes in the U.S. in about 20 years.

The situation is worse in the U.K. and most of Western Europe. For companies in these countries that sell fast moving consumer goods including food products, this is not good news. To survive, they have to move where there are favorable demographics. The youthful Africans in excess of 1 billion people are reassuring them with a spending power of US$2.3 trillion annually. This is a lot of money in aggregate but it will only afford Kenyans and other Africans food stuff and basic FMCG. Exactly what these companies are not able to sell to their aging and dying customers. 

This is what has brought these companies to our shores. So far so good. The companies are doing what’s appropriate for their survival. I must add that it’s also perfectly legal. But don’t confuse legality with morality. An immoral thing can be perfectly legal.  Likewise, there is nothing wrong with Africans buying products from these companies regardless of the country of origin. It may not be prudent but it is legal and business as business. And to Kuria, any investment perhaps is investment and that’s all we need. But for Strategic National Security, this is a disastrous development, one that will have intended and calculated catastrophes  for Kenya and other African countries. 

The countries from where these companies are coming from, mostly in the West, are able to produce food with costs nearing zero. Due to highly mechanized, genetically-engineered and chemicalized food production there, they can achieve unbelievable economies of scale. When you don’t care about human health but are driven by money, you can lower costs of food production by any means even if it sickens and maimes. When you consider that vegetables can be canned for very cheap and milk can be powdered for preservation on long oceanic voyage, you know that vegetables produced in Europe and milk from the U.S. are heading your way soon.

The only barrier is the just issued order by a very Honorable Court prohibiting importation or distribution of GMOs until the case filed by Kenya Peasants League is heard and determined. When you also consider that the cost of transportation by sea is very cheap, you know  tomatoes from Italy and carrots from Spain are about to compete with the ones from Nyandarua or Namanga.

With the kind of investment that we are seeing in this food and FMCG space in regards to warehousing, distribution network, e-commerce technology, fintech capabilities  and the mind bending silent collaboration by foreign capital and foreign government agencies, we must be woke! Having food distributed from a single hub may sound like progress but it’s certainly not strategic for Kenya.  We may be blinded by the extra hygiene and the quality of food arriving on our plates but forget that we can achieve both without jeopardizing the Hustler’s future. We may celebrate the efficiency in which food is sourced, ordered and distributed to retailers but miss the calculated monopolizing process at work right now. We may be thankful that our kiosks and shopkeepers can access financing from a central point but be blind to the power to kill them in a single swipe by opening a supermarket next to them. The river of data beholden by the monopoly (ies) will be mined to situate supermarket to kill the very shops that supplied the data. The data in GPS coordinates, orders, sales and accounting books opened to access credit is worth more than a gold mine.  Once they become dependent on central financing financing can be unplugged with the intention to collapse them to route business to allied supermarkets.

But wait, there is more! This annihilating business strategy does not stop there. Sourcing products from say 2000 farmers scattered every in Kenya is more expensive than sourcing them from a single SHIP. Right? Remember, by having a single company sit between farmers and sellers we are essentially delinking the two. It’s a calculated strategy to create an impenetrable wall between producers and sellers. The farmer and the seller are currently undergoing the process to delinking them completely and permanently. In a few years or seasons, if the central distributor decides to import what was previously sourced from numerous farmers, the farmers would have no ability to access the market.  They would harvest their produce as usual only to be told that the monopoly is not taking any orders. Remember bringing the food (frozen, in cans or as powder) by SHIP is cheaper than sourcing from many powerless small scale farmers scattered everywhere in Kenya.

If the government creates regulatory barrier to protect the farmers by prohibiting importation of what is currently sourced as it should, the now food monopoly will lease its farms and become a local monopoly producer. They can  also source locally from their foreign partners (or fronting faces) who may be producing the same foods in say Makueni or whichever county with fertile large tract of land that just needs irrigation water. A very simple thing for a billionaire to do overnight.

Whether by importation or growing themselves or sourcing from their preferred large scale monopolistic partner, many farmers in Kenya will have been killed together with their farms. A generation later, no one in Kenya will know how to grow vegetables, foods or raise dairy cows. So, the farmer will be killed financially and farming will follow suit. Then the next generation of farmers will never be, for there will be no place left to transfer the life-giving skills. The day this is achieved, we will be completely dependent on other nations for food. Food that we used to grow ourselves. This exactly where these companies want us in a few years. This is their vision 2030 for us.

When you visit other countries especially in the West, no matter how rich their population may seem there, they are food slaves. Here in Kenya we are Food Sovereign for the most part. That Sovereignty is in our decentralized production, distribution and retailing of foods and vegetables. The ability for many people to grow their many different foods in many different places.  That Sovereignty is about to be subdued with e-commerce driven centralization with the intentions to monopolize and eventually kill. 

This is how farming will be killed in Kenya. The hustling Mama mboga and her kiosk will be first. Then the shopkeepers and his shop. Will both die under their Chief Hustler’s watch?  As conniving remedy, the now desperate farmers will start getting work visas to Europe to work in farms as slave laborers. Such adverts are already making rounds in the social media. As a country, we will tell ourselves that they will send back the dollar in remittances and celebrate this human trafficking of a people who had dignity of proper farms and businesses. 

If a single or a handful multinationals succeed in becoming a monopoly in food distribution in Kenya, this is what you can expect. We will be food slaves! If you doubt me, go to Ghana and see tomato factories lying idle with the farmer making the dangerous trip north by foot and ship to Italy to work in tomato farms owned by mafias in slave-like conditions courtesy of multinationals. Alternatively, you can watch the documentary here.

Written by Robert Mwangi, MBA author of the books President’s Advisor, Money Circles, Five Fingers and Dollar Altar. He also composed and sung ZIBA UFA