11/19/2020
Hi,
Can you please spend the next 10 mins to read this and form your opinion.
👇
*Dangote is not a friend economically.*
*He should rather make his product cheap than giving charity.*
~Tosin Adeoti
In 1838, Carl Knorr (1)recognized a problem with cooking in Germany. People wanted their soups to have certain flavours and would spend hours drying, grinding, boiling vegetables and other spices to add to their meals. So he created the Knorr brand. You recognize the name because you have used a Knorr seasoning cube before. Today, Knorr products are sold in nearly 90 countries around the globe (2).
To get to this level of patronage, the Knorr brand had to innovate and make the gains of simply using a seasoning cube more than the gains of making the seasonings by individuals. At this period, people had more time than money, so to make the purchase of these products attractive, Carl had to invest in creative methods to make the products as cheap as possible. Obviously, the innovation methods worked. In Nigeria today, you can get a cube of Knorr seasoning for as low as N20.
Why is this story important? Because people no longer understand what is meant when we say that while an imperfect system, the market system remains our most effective weapon in fighting poverty.
This correction is important in light of Dangote Group's tacit endorsement of the government's ban on rice importation(3). Calling attention to itself, Dangote says its farmlands in the country will enable Nigeria export rice.
Yet this is not the first time Dangote is supporting the ban of imported products. In the past he had asked for the ban of Tomato. But the peak for me was in the exclusive interview with Financial Times in July 2018(4). He said,
"Nigeria still imports vegetable oil, which makes no sense. Nigeria still imports 4.9m tonnes of wheat, which does not make sense. Nigeria still imports 97 or 98 per cent of the milk that we consume. The government needs to bring out a draconian policy
