I was recently on a graduation pilgrimage to Manchester mid July 2017. I was keen to meet with many of my country folk in order to get an idea of the impact that Financial Insight Zambia had on them. However, little did I know that I was destined to learn much from our fellow natives that had emigrated for greener pastures abroad. The old adage of emigration was to seek out fortunes in destinations that have comparative advantage over Zambia. In addition, from the circle of friends that I have, many sought to also have fulfilling careers in fields currently not in existence in Zambia.
During our many sessions of wine drinking and Yorkshire pudding eating, it dawned on me that working in advanced economies had actually altered the mindset of our fellow countrymen. Doing a personality due diligence on each and every one of my professional colleagues, I discovered the traits that were enhanced in many of them: Time Management, Location appreciation and Honesty.
It is no secret that many natives back home often think that a diaspora existence is very challenging. Sadly, this is a ‘bounded rational’ way of looking at things as I soon discovered. What many back home would have themselves believe, is that being in a value driven society is hard work, and gives you little or no time to relax. This is where the fundamental problem lies. What we would consider as hard work is actually societal structure. Time value of existence.
Take for example time management. Our colleagues are able to harness the power of the internet and manage their daily movements and appointments. The public transport infrastructure is built to support this. In addition, with the evolution to internet of things, time management is enhanced to such a level that when smart homes beacon, even management of homes is digital. So you may ask why is this so important? Well consider this. If you want to have a business that competes favorably, you have to understand your macro environment. Through technology, data collection (cloud based services) have led to the rise of big data that our friends are now taking advantage of. Once connected, they are able to manage many aspects of their lives such as the ease of banking or even making a booking at a fancy hotel like the one I was taken to for dinner at the O2 Arena. The point here is time management actually allows for the predictability of prospects of value creation.
Location was another aspect that our colleagues in the diaspora have embraced that we at home can learn from. If we look around the various construction projects in a town such as Lusaka, we find that up until recently has location planning become a hot topic. The inevitable has now become structures of old being brought down in what we would call reverse engineering town planning. The cycle for planning is often 5 years (an academic tenure for an engineering student or a ruling party). However, value creation is a continuous process that cannot have a time limit set to it. Therefore, location planning has to be timeless. An example of this was me discovering the coming of a new underground station in Canary Wharf, (the epicenter of World Commerce), which one would have argued was impossible to build considering all the huge buildings which are home to some of the house hold named banks such as Deustche Bank. The point is, diasporans have seen this, so do not be surprised when they have capital in hand and bring home developments that will make us all proud.
Lastly, the aspect of honesty can never be understated. Many a time we have heard horror stories of relatives abroad who have sent cash to pursue construction projects back home only to have their hard earned sterling misappropriated. We have all heard the stories of people getting duped which has made many apprehensive and lose trust for people back home. However, technology is beginning to address this. Take for example Zuckerburg’s Whatsapp. Not only has this allowed for communication to be cheaper but our fellow country men and women are beginning to use it to supervise projects back home. Furthermore, technology through online banking allows for execution of contracts in a digital space, with the prospects of expulsion from the ecosystem if contracts are not honoured! We believe that through technology trust is beginning to be re-established. We continue to watch this space keenly.