Delivering ‘Look Africa’

That Pakistan faces an uphill task to deliver on its recently announced Look Africa initiative was discussed earlier in this space. But what specific measures does the government need to take to really deliver on that policy? (See BR Research’s ‘Africa, she’s waiting for you!’ Feb, 13, 2020)

Channel checks with businesses suggest that the list of measures is rather long. From improving banking relations, and visa issues to mitigating bankruptcy risks of African buyers and the need to invite African trade delegations to Pakistan – each of these warrant separate attention. But for now, let’s stick to the performance of Pakistan’s trade missions abroad, or rather lack thereof.

For anyone following Pakistan’s economy, the poor performance of Pakistan’s trade missions isn’t news. But in comes a new case study by Faiz Ahmed and Sarah Saeed, employees of Pakistan Customs and Pakistan Administrative Service respectively that sheds light on some key measures the government needs to take to make Look Africa work.

Published by National School of Public Policy, the paper titled ‘Effectiveness of commercial diplomacy for export promotion’ informs that despite institutional arrangements to facilitate commercial diplomats in terms of financial and human resources, a commercial diplomat’s knowledge of the host country and its business dynamics remains rudimentary prior to his arrival in the host country.

This finding is rather disappointing considering that commercial diplomats are in fact given pre-departure briefings with key chambers and associations at home. Perhaps the quality of these briefings is not up to mark! To this effect, universities should be encouraged to produce Africa specific studies across various disciplines to help towards a broad-based understanding of its key economies.

A broad-based understanding is critical to ensure visibility; trade after all does not happen in silos. The NSPP paper flags that although a host of institutional frameworks existed between Pakistan and Spain in 2011 - frameworks on cultural cooperation, investment promotion, financial cooperation, tourism, and so forth – these were not followed up for years. Which is why the commercial counsellor decided to reactivate these frameworks even as they did not directly relate to trade generation. The idea was to put Pakistan under a positive spotlight. Ergo, a similar exercise needs to be done in the case of African countries.

The paper also finds that commercial section’s communication with rest of Pakistan's mission in Madrid was “minimal and limited only to exigent issues”, whereas its communication with trade bodies and stakeholders both within Spain and in Pakistan “was weak and irregular”. This silo-based operation needs to be changed if Look Africa is to ever work.

Another learning from NSPP’s Spain-based case study is that an effective complain management system needs to be put in place in Pakistan’s African missions – both for the benefit of Pakistani exporters and also African buyers.

Lastly, while trade missions should not be expected to do market research and business intelligence to provide actionable intelligence to Pakistani exporters, commercial counsellors in Africa must facilitate Pakistani exporters by maintaining an up-to-date list of inter alia key markets, quality standards, safety protocols, non-tariff barriers, contacts in African countries’ government institutions, product-specific trade bodies and their key staff, buying agents and other local agents. (See also ‘Envoys conference: trade mission reforms’, Jan 1, 2019).

As far as market research and business intelligence aspect is concerned, Pakistani chambers and associations would do well to commission research in African countries as do their counterparts do for Pakistan. On that note, the HEC would do well to explore or encourage research collaboration frameworks between key African and Pakistani universities, albeit in all such promotional measures the focus ought to be on quality rather than meaningless growth in quality that has historically had little impact if any.