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The current business environment
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The current business environment is worrying worldwide.
The question on most business minded people is: how long is this going to last and after the storm, 'who' going to be left standing and 'who' is going to sink? AIG in the USA has been bailed out by the state at a cost of $ 85 billion! Who is going to bail out the worlds' businesses as most face imminent closure?
What about Kenya? What are the ripple effects of this global crisis? Safaricom, the most profitable company in East and Central Africa is not doing well at all at the NSE. Its share price has plummeted below the IPO price of Ksh. 5.00 per share. Retail investors (and I believe some fund managers) are scampering for safety as soon and as fast as they can. The reasoning being that it is better to make a 10% loss rather than wait and make 70% or more loss.
Business people are a worried lot.
Going south, the Africa economic powerhouse, South Africa is in turmoil. The president, Mr. Thabo Mbeki has been ousted from the seat of power - he has obliged quite state manly unexpected in some countries in Africa. Worse off, he might take the highly respected Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel with him as well as the VP. This leaves Africa in a very challenging business environment.
Couple this with running inflation hovering at around 30% in Kenya. Kenyans can't afford to save nor afford to invest anything. In any case they are liquidating any assets that they had to meet short term cash requirements.
What a bleak future it looks like.
However, hold on buddies, the sun might start shining soon!
In the current Kenya setup, there are a number of companies that are aspiring to get coveted international certifications like ISO for quality management systems, environmental or security requirements compliance, etc. but how many are actually striving to improve their service offerings to their customers? Few. Many just want to flaunt them to their competitors and prospective customers but not on improvement of their service delivery. Take the example of some public universities (I think almost all of them). They have ISO 9001:2008 certification. But how many lecturers and administrators in these universities appreciate that students are their most important customers? Very few. This is precisely the reason why you will have an ISO certified university that does not have a clear policy (or is it direction?) of where admission forms should be ‘deposited’ or returned to! I had a nasty experience the other day where I had to shuttle between two university campuses trying to convinc
The other day I listened to the Police Commissioner releasing the grim statistics about road accidents during this festive season. The only question that kept popping in my mind is: what can we do? Surely, I believe that the road infrastructure is improving courtesy of Government interventions, there is no drinking in the wee hours of the morning... then the question is 'What more can be done to reduce the road carnage?' As a technology person, I wonder why we cannot ( specifically the Traffic Department ) use technology to help curb the growing list of accidents on our roads. Take the example of AccessKenya (AK) Initiative of installing cameras monitoring traffic on major highways. Why can't the government contract AK to monitor any misbehaving traffic offenders on the road? Such guys should be informed ( preferably through an SMS) to report to the nearest police station for onward 'towing' to the court and they should be fined promptly. Even the government can
This is an article which I penned in the Business Daily of 8th July 2011 concerning the battle for .africa domain name. The article can also be accessed at http://www.africareview.com/Special+Reports/Battle+on+for+dotAfrica/-/979182/1197116/-/87uo0s/-/index.htm l - on the African Review website. The same article can be found on the AllAfrica website at http://allafrica.com/stories/201107081489.html.
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