Home from home (E)
Notes from the front
Pierre Declerck, SN’s Country Manager in Uganda talks about living in Africa and why his motto is “the more we plant, the more we harvest”
- Ever since the start of my professional carrier in Africa - Sierra Leone in 1993, followed by Morocco/ Tunisia in 1997 and Uganda in 2005 - it has been clear that Africa is a continent of opportunities.
- The African continent is vast and diverse, but during my travels I have discover ed some common characteristics:
Everyone is eager to develop products and open markets to improve profits, improve their daily lives and ultimately provide their often-enlarged families with a good education and a better standard of living.
There is also an eagerness to lear n from other business experiences, which makes Africans open to good business advice.
As Country Managers abroad, my colleagues and I often find ourselves in a privi leged position to learn about initiatives being launched in our ar eas. We meet foreign business delegat ions and participate in airline representative meetings and local chamber of commerce activities. We also attend workshops organised by diplomatic houses and NGOs (Non-Governmental Organisations).
Today, African leaders are strongly committed to pr omoting targeted foreign investment s that will contribute to sustainable development and embrace fair-trade principles. They ar e seeking investments that turn their count ries’ natural resources into high-quality export pr oducts. As such, value-adding investors are welcomed and we coun try managers certainly have our role to play.
For example, I contacted the Department of Food Science & T echnology of Makerere University, where Rev Dr Florence Muranga is leading the Pr esidential Initiative for Banana Industrial Development. Her research has led to a state-of-t he-art, rural-based, banana pr ocessing industry.
We were able to extend important support by offering a first shipment of innovative p roducts to Germany free of charge.
I also met with NGOs from the East African r egion (Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania) regarding the Stockholm Challenge-WSIS International Award. This W orld Summit on the Information Society award goes to the best Information and Communication Technologyies (ICT) initiatives for developme nt in Africa.
Some 30 African NGOs were nominated. Each was invited to send two or three representatives to the 2006 award ceremony in Stockholm. Buildi ng on Africa’s eagerness to exchange experiences with other commu nities, we sent 15 delegates from Nairobi and Entebbe to Stockho lm, via Brussels.
There are many other initiatives that take the best fr om both worlds: enhancing exchange of contacts and sharing ski lls and know-how.
In my capacity as country manager, the daily feeling I have is that my team and I have so much positive energy to share with the community at large, and the business community in particular. I believe that th e more we plant, the more we harvest.
Pierre Declerck
Country Manager, Uganda