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In December of 2003, I was out of high school and working in a textile company based in Kenya, Nairobi. Maize flour would cost me Ksh.52 shillings. I stopped buying whenever my favourite supermarket increased the cost of it by two shillings or three shillings because it was wasting my money.
Today the price of maize flour has sky rocketed and I usually cry to buy 2 kilograms of it at Ksh.85, despite an improvement on my salary.
Last week I bought cooking fat at a local supermarket, but stopped buying flour because it was high by Ksh.4. Well, I did not go hungry on this day as I bought it at a local shop for the usual Ksh.85.
This is a concern that reminded me of the past. My uncle, who is a high school teacher, bought two Nokia phones for Ksh 12,000 in the year 2000. They were on sale. However, of late, cell phone prices have reduced significantly, so that even my grandmother uses a Nokia 1110.
Last week, when Kenya’s finance minister, Honourable Uhuru Kenyatta rose to deliver his maiden budget speech for 2009/2010, he removed value-added tax on mobile phones. What this means is that the cost of handsets will come down. However, implementation has been a problem, and nobody knows when changes will take place. Usually, such changes would take many weeks and months, and then things would gradually come back to normal.
So far, it is only Safaricom, a listed telecommunications provider, that has reduced the cost of mobile phones. The firm is aiming at increasing mobile phone penetration at a time when price of commodities like sugar and floor are exorbitant despite the fact that a week earlier authorities had reduced taxes on them. This raises more questions than answers. Between gadgets and food, what is important? And why are food companies taking long to change anyway?
In the current Kenya, food and phones are equally basic. We can send and receive money through mobile phones. Safaricom for instance uses Mpesa, a mobile phone money transfer system to reach those who are not banked. Zain, also a large telecommunication firm, introduced Zap to help in sending and receiving money.
There is no real alternative for the “have nots” as the two, phones and food, are important every day of the year. So we still have to be realistic here. Some people are poor. So poor that they don’t need to make phone calls. They can ferry onions, bananas, fish, mangoes, and more from market to market just to put food on the table.
Some are seated, or walking along our roads begging. I think they need flour, better housing, and clean water, and not cheap phones. Are phones merely things which are supposed to strengthen us? Or they are supposed to make us sad?
Companies are trying to make a stand in this time of sharp recession that you have to be so creative and bright.
But this is not final just yet. There are so many scary things that can either encourage or discourage us apart from phones and flour. Despite all of these, you can still settle for the best.
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Jakomwodo
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