Competition key for promoting brand quality, recognition

Working with your competitor might not be a bad idea after all. Banks are in competition for customers. However, behind the scenes, they confidentially share information on bad borrowers so that they do not fall into the same potholes twice. Customers who defraud are not supposed to be kept top secret.

Banks collaborate information so the noose tightens on habitual bad borrowers fronting the same collateral security. They protect each other's interests and everybody is happy. Agro produce from Uganda should be viewed as one brand and products from other countries are as different brands.

Sun Tzu, a Chinese military strategist said: "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer". This means follow not only what your business partners are doing but what your competitors are involved in as well.

Economist Adam Brandenburger refers to this as co-optition. The export market out there is so big, no single coffee producer in Uganda is able to satisfy it. The same applies to maize and other cereals. So, rather that biting each other like grasshoppers imprisoned in a bottle, we are better off comparing notes and working together to meet the global market quality and quantity demands.

Our true export-competition in the traditional sense of the word is outside Uganda, but not within our borders. We learn from our competitors on how to make better products.

Let us go back to maize. Often you will hear farmers complain about lack of market.

However, if you asked, what is the moisture content of the maize you have produced? You are likely to get no answer.




Competitive export maize prices are dependent on the percentage level of moisture content.




Next question, have you tested your product for aflatoxins? The answer is most certainly no. "But this maize looks good physically, this is how I have been trading maize for the past 20 years". Yes, experience can either be an asset or a liability. You get bogged down in old traditions without being open to unlearning and re-learning.

Healthy competition should push the business community to produce better quality products and services. Competition ensures that the quality of maize produced for the local market is similar to the quality exported. We should repent of the mentality that we produce the best for export and the lowest grade for home consumption. Why can't we simply produce the best? How did we get here

The quality of coffee exports starts with the farmer. A competitive analysis of farming practices in Brazil and Ethiopia in comparison to Uganda will yield good results.

The coffee produced is dependent on the quality and quantity of fertilisers, nitrogen fixing shade trees, drying coffee beans above the ground or on a tarpaulin, and post-harvest handling techniques to reduce wastage. Competition pushes a farmer and processor to higher standards.

The competition enables a producer jump out of their comfort zone and weigh themselves against other producers of the same product. Uganda's farmers and agro-processors benefit more from working together than undermining and undercutting each other. The development of co-operatives is a good starting point.

The quality of vanilla is dependent on harvesting the crop at the right time of maturity. Harvesting immature vanilla depreciates brand Uganda on the international market.

This is why the local vanilla community has moved closer to agree on specific harvesting months and dates. This will develop a Uganda brand quality and recognition guaranteeing good prices to all producers.

The aim of the competition is to grow the industry and build strategic alliances, a win-win for everybody.

The writer is an export trade specialist