Sam Setter's 'Pills': Reality check II

So in February, COMESA announced they will launch a regional leather value chain strategy 2025-2029. That is as far as I know at least the third value chain strategy for the COMESA region. I think that it is legitimate to ask what happened to the preceding strategies apart from consuming tens of millions of dollars without tangible results as the leather industry in the COMESA countries has hardly improved or not improved at all. Each strategy contains tens of congresses, workshops, but no actual affordable financing of the sector, something that it desperately needs to reach an acceptable level of modernisation with a tangible approach to ESG requirements. Tanners and manufacturers can’t afford expensive imported machines – often also subject to import tax – instead of long term financing at zero interest rates. If the tens of millions, part of which end up in political pockets at the destination countries, for blah-blah projects that generate nothing and just repeat what has been said over the years, were used to set up a financing system, allowing stakeholders to upgrade their factories, we may see results. In some Asian countries – India, Vietnam, Indonesia – where governments and banks financially and bureaucratically assist, you see industries which attract foreign investment. In Africa, where the NGOs ‘party’ from morning till evening, there is little or no foreign investment and no industrial growth. It’s not the stakeholders who are to blame. They’re helpless and need to follow the way the wind blows.