The South African supermarket chain Shoprite has been expanding into various countries across the continent, including Nigeria, for the past 10 years. The Lagos branch is part of the “Palms” mall complex at Lekki Beach opened in late 2005 and one of two malls on Victoria Island, Lagos’s most expensive real estate. I remember responding critically to a blog post on how the opening of the Silverbird Mall represented progress: Catering to the consumer needs of Nigeria’s small minority of rich is not progress in any context let alone in a country that still cannot provide electricity, running water, sanitation, housing and health care to the vast majority of it’s citizens. The Palms itself along with a few gated communities are juxtaposed with Nigeria’s unrelenting poverty - shack dwellings, kiosks, piles of open sewage - pollution, traffic jams and noise. You stare out, people stare in with glazed bitter eyes. How long will it take before the masses rise up with machetes?
But the economic and social tensions in respect of elite shopping malls and supermarket chains like Shoprite extend beyond the urban setting. Not only are they beyond the reach of the masses, they also dislocate local small businesses and rural farmers. In a recent case study in Zambia which investigated poverty amongst rural villagers, farmers expressed bitterness against Shopprite and threatened to “obliterate” the supermarket.
These farmers warned that they would burn down the company that had robbed them of their livelihoods. Shoprite had stolen their market, they alleged. Vegetables that they had regularly sold at the local town market were now being supplied from South Africa at the local Shoprite supermarket, opened in 1998. Because the Shoprite supermarket had a better distribution system and a nicer store, the farmers could not compete with this multinational. Previous sources of cash income through the sale of vegetables at the market were now disrupted and, as a result, villagers couldn’t pay for the things they needed. Their only solution was to threaten to obliterate this new supermarket that was redirecting resources away from the local farming community.
The threat from the farmers pressured Shoprite into conceding to their demands to use local farmers as suppliers. Although Shoprite had to make a commitment to providing seeds and fertilizers as well as for “the cleaning, processing and packaging of produce” the concessions were limited and without the support of local and national government, the farmers still live with insecurity and uncertainty. It is also not clear whether Shoprite’s response was simply a local one based on threats from a small group of Zambian farmers. But it does show the empowerment potential of the rural and urban poor amidst economic injustice and exploitation and the need for multinationals to have social responsibility to the communities in which they operate.
Spending time in Nigeria, I get the feeling that poverty is taken for granted, almost as given. Definitely poverty is not taken seriously by the elite or even the aspiring middle classes and certainly not by any tier of government. I come away disgusted at witnessing the arrogance of the rich in their bullet proof cars and private motor escorts blasting their way through Lagos traffic and literally knocking cars out of the way; at witnessing the clearance of slums and markets along the Ibadan expressway in a “beautification” project - what are they supposed to do and where are they supposed to go? The idea that you can simply bulldoze the poor, take away livelihoods and burn them out of their dwellings is obscene and morally indefensible.
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