Capitalism may be accused of misleading many African countries into limiting the valuation of their resources to tangible assets such as buildings, minerals, land and wildlife. However, failure to account for intangible assets like local experiential knowledge, wisdom, trust, relationships and emotional richness cannot be blamed on capitalism or modernization. While they are ambitious to become knowledge economies, African countries have not yet developed formulae for valuating their intangible resources in ways that can get these assets recognized as collateral in the modernizing global economy. It doesn’t help to measure knowledge and human capital in academic qualifications excluding abundant unspoken and undocumented knowledge among ordinary people. Continuous over-rating of academic and documented knowledge is preventing African countries from realizing their authentic socio-economic value.
Accounting for intangible agricultural assets
A majority of African smallholder farmers have depleted their livestock, soil nutrients, water, wood, fish and other resources in sending their children to school. However, the promise of formal education has disappointed them and their children who, after graduating, cannot find employment that would enable them replenish resources that have been depleted over decades. There should be appropriate formulae for valuating resources that have been sucked from farming communities by formal education. Due to the absence of reliable markets, graduates from agricultural colleges who have ventured into agriculture cannot earn enough from agricultural activities to repay investments into their knowledge.
Agriculture is a combination of tangible assets (seed, equipment, livestock, cash, etc.,.) and intangible assets such as experience, knowledge, relationships, passion, ambitions, emotional depth, mental strengths, negotiation skills, relationships, trust and many others. On the other hand, agricultural markets are more about intangible collateral such as knowledge, experience, relationships, trust and less about tangible assets. While market experience is not a tangible asset, it has more value than tangible assets because the value of agricultural commodities is added in the market. It is through intangible assets that farmers and traders are able to earn returns on their investment. Without these factors, sustainability of the whole agricultural sector is compromised. Intangible assets held by farmers and traders at individual level can be worth more than a tractor or a house in the city. However, because there is no way of valuing and recognizing such assets, knowledgeable farmers and traders remain in the economic fringes.
How the financial sector continues to looks at these issues
Since they have not invested in understanding intangible assets, financial institutions in Africa still consider tangible assets the only worthwhile forms of collateral. In a knowledge economy where intangible assets like innovation can build something out of nothing, one assumes financial institutions should rapidly be revisiting their notions of collateral to start with intangible collateral towards tangible collateral. Agribusiness models should be built from intangible assets to inform tangible assets required for effective production such as tractors, ploughs, water, technology, crop varieties, livestock breeds and others. Where agricultural financing is informed entirely by tangible assets, it constrains possibilities for innovation and emergence of new sources of value. Innovative youths armed with intangible assets are denied opportunities because they do not have tangible collateral.
The same people with tangible assets continue to benefit from financial institutions while innovative young people languish in poverty and unemployment. As if that is not enough, Africa has an over-supply of the same value chain models due to the financial sector’s preference for similar models that have reached their ceiling. This practice promotes a copycat syndrome where several youths end up getting into tomato and eggs value chains because they are the ones financed by banks at the expense of potentially viable models considered green field. A dire need for new valuation models is also visible in how African companies which close down are assessed. Main considerations when valuating such companies takes into account equipment and infrastructure without considering investment in knowledge and experience built during the time the company was functioning.
Why not convert the size of a market into collateral?
There is no longer any doubt that informal markets are a critical component of Africa’s invisible economy that has to be accurately measured and included in GDP metrics. With the right formulae, policy makers should be able to convert the size of informal agricultural markets into collateral. The collective experience in many informal African markets of large African cities like Harare, Lusaka, Accra, Nairobi, Cairo and Lagos can be more than 100 years. Very few corporate companies, who are considered bankable by financial institutions, have such knowledge and experience. In informal markets, knowledge and trends are continuously adapted and perfected in ways that increase credibility and legitimacy.
If properly captured and understood, knowledge and experience in African farming communities and agricultural markets can inform investment opportunities along several value chains. Investing in particular farming districts should start from market experiences of commodities and farmers from those districts. At the moment, most surveys focus on whether respondents have gone through formal education as opposed to deep inquiry about other forms of local knowledge that keep communities resilient. Each farming community and market has its own capacity to absorb knowledge and that capacity is determined by participants’ income levels, geographical location, demography and other factors. If you take fruits like grapes to a remote rural market, they may not find buyers because of low income levels. Some markets can determine the levels of imports into the country based on consumer tastes, demand and other factors.
The role of evidence
Limited attention to evidence is the main reason why African countries are failing to utilize their resources optimally. For instance, market evidence should inform capability building. At the moment, most production practices follow dead data in the form of previous year’s prices and production figures. There are no formulae for supporting predictive capacity. As a result, intangible knowledge from farmers and informal markets is not being used to inform curricular development. Relevant valuation methodologies will also prevent the current under-utilization of local knowledge and create strong conduits for harnessing such knowledge for socio-economic development. Meanwhile the whole of Africa is importing more than $40 billion of food annually in cash. That shows Africans have money but lack the right knowledge models for putting that money into more productive uses. This situation may only change through revisiting priorities, informed by evidence generated by appropriate valuation mechanisms.
Charles@knowledgetransafrica.com / charles@emkambo.co.zw / info@knowledgetransafrica.com
Website: www.emkambo.co.zw / www.knowledgetransafrica.com
eMkambo Call Centre: 0771 859000-5/ 0716 331140-5 / 0739 866 343-6