Written by Melaku Sahlu - Horizon Ethiopia Staff Writer
Sunday, 21 September 2008
SoleRebel casual footwear imported from Ethiopia. Available from Amazon and other US retailers.
Over the past 5 years or so, there has been increasing talk of somehow leveraging Ethiopia’s sizable Diaspora (especially in the US) to help further strengthen the country’s export sector. For smaller scale producers, that generally means attempting to target the Diaspora population as consumers of their products as opposed to facilitators of wholesale orders by retailers that Diasporans may come into contact with – which is what larger scale producers would be more interested in.
Appreciable Impact to Date? If we were to judge by the level of exports to the United States – at once the world’s largest import market in the world and home to more of the Ethiopian Diaspora than any other country by far – then it must be concluded that any such effort has not been substantively successful thus far. Exports to the US from Ethiopia were only $88.2 million in 2007 and this only after registering significant growth since 2002 when they were only $25 million. By comparison, Ethiopia sends more of its goods to Germany (its #1 export partner), China and Japan than it does to the US where there are comparatively much lower numbers of the Diaspora especially in the latter two countries where they’re probably quite miniscule. Sure, there are other factors to consider such as the logistics of getting products to different countries but such challenges are no more than what a country like Lesotho might face and their trade with the US is about five times as much although it is a far smaller country. The Diaspora as a consumer of goods imported from Ethiopia certainly has more of an impact than many think although its size proportional to overall exports may not be as substantial. Ethiopians living abroad are voracious consumers of many types of goods and/or services that originate in Ethiopia, be it the dozens of varieties of spices, CDs, DVDs, etc. they buy at their local Ethiopian markets or indeed the thousands of kilograms worth of foodstuffs and spices they bring in themselves via luggage and other means, probably amount to millions of dollars in ‘exports’. They are not for the most part documented as such and therefore are never reflected in official figures of any kind.
While we're hard pressed to find out if anybody's done an organized study of the Diaspora's consumption of products from Ethiopia, rough guesstimates suggest that the actual figures may be quite surprising. At this Ethiopian market in DC, conservative estimates imply that sales of CDs and DVDs in the DC area alone could easily top $500,000 annually.
As facilitators of transactions which result in exports from Ethiopia, the record is a bit muddier but in looking at the some of factors driving the growth of exports from Ethiopia, it does not seem to be much of a factor at any rate. Although the potential returns on such efforts could be significant, facilitation of exports by means of linking up buyers from the developed world with exporters from Ethiopia is no easy task at all. Breaking into the offices of corporate buyers and convincing them to source from Ethiopia is certainly not the easiest thing to do given the limited (and sometimes spotty) track record producers from developing countries have shown in the past. In recent years, more corporations have actively shown an interest in sourcing products from Africa and a number of Ethiopian producers have benefited from this interest as well. But while many such producers have turned out to be stellar export partners, a major retailer in the US with prior experience in this arena states that some of them have displayed a lack of interest in fulfilling orders accurately and with the attention to detail necessary in order to maintain an ongoing relationship with them.
Helping an Emerging Force
This is very illustrative of the continuing growth that our exporters have to make before they can truly be formidable competitors to the Chinese, Indian or even tiny Lesotho exporters that currently enjoy a much greater level of success than they do. Quality control, packaging and general attention to detail are attributes that have seen improvement over the years but still leave something to be desired before the majority of them can be referred to as international standard exports. But there are definitely a growing number of producers in Ethiopia that are stepping up to the plate and delivering superlative sourcing experiences given half a chance.
Burt's Bees products are everywhere these days. Including Whole Foods, Nordstrom's and Safeway Groceries in the US. Honey and beeswax from Ethiopia are used extensively in BB's products.
So what can the Diaspora do to best help Ethiopia’s export industry? Developing or building the concept of Buying Ethiopian within our own community is probably one of the most important things we can do. Not just because of the direct impact it can have in the form of direct purchases of Ethiopian products but maybe even more so because we as individuals and as a country really need the rest of the world to begin to perceive value in the ‘Made In Ethiopia’ brand. It is a brand likely to be regarded in many quarters with some doubt but that is precisely why it needs a level of explicit focus amongst those of us who are closest to it in order to show the global marketplace that there is more to Ethiopian exports than just great coffee.
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