A typical example is that of the way the African countries are segregated on imaginary lines drawn in the soil to keep us from working together to develop the continent. One statement Mr. Aliko Dangote made to a Zambian government official was 'why do I have to go through so many immigration formalities when coming into Zambia, yet my British employees simply walk into the country?' (Para phrasing). The laws on immigration in Africa are especially punishing for African business men, because they are the key to unlocking Africas economic potential.
From personal experience, cross border trading is simply difficult. I have been exporting various agro produce to Malawi which is to the east of Zambia, one constant is the extreme delays at the border, mainly on the Malawi customs side. Despite Zambia and Malawi being considered 1 country, we have trivial problems such as citizens of either country requiring a passport to go beyond the border towns. I personally witnessed the deportation of Malawian citizens at the border, simply because a they were a few kilometers away from home, in Chipata, doing odd jobs that Zambians are not interested in. In fact, before 1970 post colonial Zambia did not have such a law, granted Malawi and North Rhodesia were already split up by the masters, but we had freedom on movement, we were one people. However, In the 70's our founding fathers, under instruction from their masters, decided that they were not brothers anymore and imposed the masters rules to stop free movement. This led to villages being split into 2, half Zambian and the other Malawian, siblings had to declare either been Zambian or Malawian. Now we prosecute and punish our siblings based on what the westernized world expects from black Africans 'the House Nigger'.
Today has clocked one month since I was contracted to deliver a considerably small tonnage of agro seed to a company in Malawi. They felt that in order to boost their self sustainability, the should buy seed to plant in the coming rain season. I helped source the seed, have it treated, tested and certified (according to the rules set in Zurich because Niggers with degrees are still just NIGGERS). After doing everything required, I proceeded to the border, which we cleared on the Zambian side, after inspections and assessment of paper work, 1 hour process. Then we enter no mans land and hand over to the Malawian authority. Unfortunately on this side, time slows extremely down, there's really no need for clocks in Malawi, the authorities literally can't tell time! The system is to send the paper work to a centralised system 1000 kilometers away, because they know that their border staffs are extremely corruptible or that they are not able to read the docs intelligently and make a decision, further dullness, they don't have a power back up system, hence the documents they are supposed to upload to the central system cannot be processed until public individuals organise themselves to contribute diesel to power the cutoms office gen set, then after sending the docs, we have to wait at least 4 hours for the slightly more intelligent HQ people to assess the docs, in our case 24 hrs, only to have load shedding as the approval from HQ comes through for us to cross.
Now really, what kind of spell in Africa under where we make it so difficult for our own to thrive and celebrate donor aid. We are excited to receive goods from else where and frown upon our children's works.
It is time we burned down the colonial barriers!
CEO Tapera Industries Zambia| BiofuelsExpert | MWF 2014
Skype: toba851
www.taperabio.biz
