AFROLOGISTICS

Afrologistics (Africa + Logistics) is a personal neologism that espouses the positive peculiarities of logistics in Africa. Logistics in Africa is a different ball game. Having worked round Africa and consulted for startups across Africa, I can boldly say it’s a great terrain. The introduction of technology has been touted a lot and startups have raised funds for many ‘solutions’ that died naturally. Many tech startups have become asset leasing companies, supporting the acquisition of bicycles, motorcycles, rickshaws, tricycles, vans, cars and trucks. The goals of creating technology have been lampooned by the realities of the streets, which are a far departure from the expectations of investors and the startup founders, but these efforts will yield positively with patience, listening ears, learning minds and empathetic investors.

5 years ago, heading a tech product team, we created eLogistics technology applications for tracking the loading, movement and offloading of trucks and data was to improve asset optimization, route planning, cargo pricing negotiations and asset utilization, so Nokia phones were procured and shared with truck drivers whose movements would be measured via the installed apps, feedback was funny as wives of truckers would call to say thank you for the sleek phones given them by their spouses' companies. This was despite months of training and staging. The drivers, due to security concerns and trust issues, which were founded, would not want anyone to know their on-journey milestones, so as not to end up being robbed, as some loading sites had been infiltrated by civil bandits who connived with corrupt staff of loading companies to know the contents, tonnage and destination of trucks.

Tracking systems of logistics is great and works in some climes, but what happens when a truck is stationery as the tracking beacon exhibits but is being plundered from another side of the vehicle, resulting in an empty vehicle that has been dispossessed of all the contents. Then tracking of some contents randomly, which is also combated by the corrupt staff who notify gangs of how to detect tracked boxes and sacks. I bet you smiling. This is usually a result of low wages, and the belief that the goods are already insured. What do you do when workers at the loading bay demand funds from the trucker, else they will under load the vehicle, making it incomplete, yet give waybills that show complete status, due to entry requirements at some loading bays, and set the trucking team up for failure.

Asset-light business models has been brandied by many 'tech startups' as they seek to help optimize assets already acquired by many local 'investors' forgetting that these owners also have access to the same points of loading, or origin, and are already partners with staff of these companies who get commissions when these trucks are loaded, at lower rates than the startup who believes the platform is the Eldorado. A sit down with age old transporters, as they are called in local parlance shows the depth of knowledge, which is street savvy, compared with the one brandied by the nerd looking, laptop clutching eLogistics dude and lass. The onus is on the dudes and lasses to get these same 3PL-ed assets at rates that will still accommodate margins for the eLogistics startups.

When these assets are finally 'captured', they get loaded for routes that are less travelled, with infrastructural deficits, touts, lots of unreceipted expenses and possible physical assaults on the drivers and assistants, that leave permanent trauma due to occupational hazards, which result in non-achievement of SLAs, break down in vehicles, whose repairs outweigh the agreed transport rates, and frequent liabilities due to accidents as a result of bad roads and overloading in a bid to optimize the assets by the customer, as to improve more opportunities to load at these sites. These are further heightened by weather conditions of rains, washed roads and bridges resulting in more hours of the assets in a stationary mode, bearing down on the chassis and leading to breakdowns, which will warrant transloading.

Then insurance companies are also reluctant to cover incidents including bottles, which have a higher propensity to get damaged due to the roads, and issues around documentations affecting locally produced and imported products, which are frequently flagged by law enforcement agents who can't even determine whether the documents are apt or not. There is also the challenge of moving alcoholic drinks, which the larger fraction of Islam faithful will never utilize their vehicles to ferry, which creates situational scarcity and higher trucking rates which can't be matched due to the ceiling rates of the retail price, and not forgetting the challenges of diesel in Africa, as a result of foreign exchange, imported fuel and geographical differences which make diesel rates reach for the skies by the day, this dents the fixing of costs per quarter, which should be the norm.

Landlocked countries in Africa, have to, due to cost-constraints, move goods from the coastal nations via trucks, which are cheaper than airfreight, which are more expensive due to routing and volume challenges. These factors result in trucks spending weeks to travel with the corridors of sister-nations, which definitely affects the eventual retail prices. Many countries in Africa don't have direct cargo flights to other nations, due to volume constraints. This definitely impacts the AfCFTA's desire of free trade. We have work to do ne? Yebo, as we say in RSA. ECOWAS, OECD, SADC, AU and other regional bodies need to listen to street savvy logistics technocrats, who have a first taste of these challenges so that realistic pronouncements are being made with measurable metrics.

Realistic solutions must include creating technologies with input from local informal players. From startups in Egypt to Lagos, Nairobi to Cape town, Kigali to Accra, and Luanda to Lesotho, Africa has become the graveyard of startups and struggling ones, particularly in the logistics ecosystem, with the challenges still looking us in the face. This can't continue. We need more Executives-in-residence with streets savvy exposure, on the boards of investors and startups, while we need to create realistic curriculum for our supply chain and logistics courses and create technology applications that the informal and formal stakeholders understand why we have it and see the unified goals as beneficial to all. Startups must have huge insurance covers that will take care of trucks onboarded on their platforms. More startups must utilize rail transport, air freight and inland waterways to improve rates while pushing intermodal transportation.

Cologne (Koln), Germany is a logistics hub that utilizes all mediums of transport. Africa must borrow a leaf from her too. Investors must be more realistic with startup founders on ROI and waiting periods, so that more granular development and data integrity is accentuated. Africa possesses the consumer population, arable farmland, teeming youth population and an aged population with logistics insight that must be passed to the younger generation, while religion and purchasing-power stratifications can't be put aside.

Afrologistics (Africa +Logistics) if got right, will empower lots of people in the value chain, and in my lifetime, I know we will get it right.

Aluta Continua, Victoria Acerta!