SERVERS REPLICADOS

There are shops that specialise in selling certain foods at more competitive prices, and in the case of grains with a greater variety, when compared to the local dukas. These tend to be located around market areas where they are accessible for deliveries and for people coming to and from the market. I will just touch on two examples of these, one selling eggs and one selling grains. There are similar shops, to the ones described here, around all the market areas in Dar es Salaam.

5.4.1. Egg shop

Mama Hamisi has an egg shop right next to the Mikoroshoni Market; in fact it is part of the market area. She rents it from the person who built the shop and she pays the market dues and tax as well. An advantage of being within the market area is that she does not need a shop licence as she is considered a trader in the market.

The shop is a single room in a simple concrete structure with the whole front made up of folding metal doors that open onto the road. She always has trays of eggs stacked on the floor and sells them by the tray often to people with their own businesses, such as nearby dukas or chip sellers. She also supplies a restaurant nearby and a bakery that is in the Shoppers Plaza alongside the Shoppers Supermarket. Some people buy the trays for their own use due to the low prices and some buy per egg at a more expensive, but still reasonable, per egg price. More details of her business are given in Chapter Seven.

Mama Hamisi started the shop with money from her husband who is a teacher. Before that she did some small businesses selling clothes. She was told about the egg business by a sister in law who has a shop in another part of town, she said “I could see a profit in it and it is a business that does not give trouble”. She runs the shop from about 8 am until 7 pm daily apart from Sundays when she closes around 2 pm. Most of the time she was running the shop alone and later when she was busy with other activities she had an assistant. At times, she also left her shop being looked after by the shopkeeper from the neighbouring shop. Whenever I have been to Mama Hamisi’s shop she is with a number of people, normally sitting in the shade just outside the shop, talking with the shopkeepers of the neighbouring shops and with passers-by and customers. She is always beautifully dressed in colourful

dresses and scarves. There are few vehicles on the narrow track between the shops and stalls, but many people walk by and interact with Mama Hamisi and other shop owners. 5.4.2. Grain shop

About 200 metres from the Mikoroshoni Market is a grain shop run by Nassor. Nassor and his brother rent the shop space made up of a room about four metres wide that faces onto the road with a further small store room behind it (Photograph 5). They are in a row of other shops, including other grain shops, that stretches on either side of the road from the market to where Nassor’s shop is and beyond. Every morning from about 7 am Nassor opens the shops doors and moves the sacks of grains he sells to the space in front of his shop, he packs up and closes at around 9 pm. He sells other basic items common to a typical duka, but his stock is not as comprehensive as for example the stock in Mangi’s Duka and his focus is on the variety of grains and pulses he sells.

Nassor has at least eight different qualities and varieties of eating rice on sale at any one time with a range of prices. For example, in July 2014 the prices were from TSh 1,150 ($ 0.70) to TSh 1,700 ($ 1.03) per kilo. In addition, he had three types of rice of more broken up grains and lower quality that people use for baking rice bread and vitumbua. These included one type of rice from Thailand for TSh 1,200 per kilo and two Tanzanian varieties for TSh 850 and TSh 900 per Kilo. He sells different whole maize varieties including a yellow variety and also sells sembe. One can find millet, wheat, sorghum and a range of beans, pigeon peas and pulses in other sacks. Nassor sells by weight in any quantity the customer wants. The grains or pulses are taken from large sacks – normally he has between 27 and 30 sacks of different items - and weighed on scales he has at the shop counter. He also sells some pre-packaged items like sembe and dona.

People buy the whole maize kerneles to grind for themselves, often when they want dona. There are dishes that are cooked with the whole maize kernels and there is also a practice of grinding the maize along with other grains or pulses such as grinding in some sorghum and beans to add more nutrition and variety of flavour. Nassor also sells the pre-ground dona, but this does not stop people buying the whole maize kernels if they like to have the dona made in their own particular way.

The shop was started early in 2013 by Nassor’s brother with capital saved from his job as a security guard at the USA Embassy. Nassor runs the shop and says his brother does not know the business. They share the profits with Nassor saying he gets a bigger share than his brother. The brothers are from Kigoma region where Nassor finished primary school and used to farm.

Nassor buys most of the maize, pulses and other grains from Tandale Market going there about once a month and hiring transport to bring the stock back. He says “there are lots of traders in Tandale and the prices are low”. The rice is bought from a shop in Kawe that has better prices. Asked how and where he learnt to run the business Nassor says “I learnt here

here [pointing at the floor of his shop]”. He also explains that a shop owner from just across the road gave him advice and showed him where to get stock, “he took me there [the rice shop in Kawa]” Nassor says gesturing to the shop across the road. The shop across the road looks very much like Nassor’s and sells essentially the same items. The owner is also from the Kigoma region, although they only met in Dar es Salaam where Nassor says “we became friends”. Indeed, on a number of occasions, when with Nassor, I met the other shop owner and his children. The two shopkeepers stop at each other’s shops to chat and always greet each other when they pass by.

Photograph 5 – Nassor’s shop with sacks of grains and pulses.

I tried to inquire about the notion of competition between these two shops selling very similar goods. Nassor said “we get from the same place and sell at the same price, we cannot be competing”. He also explained another advantage for customers of the shops being close by, which is that “if he [shop across the road] does not have something, they [customers] come here and if I do not have they go to his shop”. As for other reasons why a customer chooses Nassor’s shop over the other grain shops in the same street, Nassor says of his customers “we know each other”.

5.5. Supermarkets

Early in the research process, after interviewing the first 18 Tanzanian eaters in Dar es Salaam, I found that none of them ever got food from any supermarket. The reasons for this have been elaborated in the previous chapter. What it was quickly possible to verify was that the foods these eaters depended on were more expensive in the supermarkets. It was clearly only a small proportion of Tanzanians, an elite group, who regularly used a supermarket. For this reason, I did not pursue the supermarket model of food supply in-

depth, preferring to focus on the main source of food for the majority of people and for most of the food in the city. I did, however, take some time looking at the egg supplies through the supermarket as well as from other sources, as this was one of the first foods I followed. I also continued, throughout the close to four years of research, to compare prices of key foods at the people’s markets, dukas and supermarkets. The supermarkets remained more expensive for all the foods looked at in this thesis, except for the Tanga Fresh milk discussed in Chapter Eight.

5.5.1. Shoppers

Shoppers Supermarket is one of the largest in Dar es Salaam. When I started my research, they had one branch at Mikocheni. It is in a small shopping complex called Shoppers Plaza surrounded by car parks (Photograph 6). By the end of my field research they had opened two new stores; one in Masaki and one in Mbezi Beach. The air-conditioned interiors of their stores have shelves packed with different products similar to small (it would be considered small compared to almost any supermarket one would find in South Africa or the Netherlands) supermarkets in other parts of the world. As well as food, they sell household goods such as pots and pans, towels and blankets. If the main electricity supply is cut, a large diesel generator kicks in to continue running the lights and equipment.

The owners of Shoppers Supermarkets are a Tanzanian family of Indian decent and they are directly involved in the operations, coming to the stores and going to markets to source products. The general manager (GM) is from India, although he has been in Tanzania for over twenty years, and most of the senior management are also from India or of Indian decent.

The GM said they cater to all income groups and that customer satisfaction is their priority. The GM also stated that the Masaki branch was more targeting the international community in that suburb where many expatriates live. Given that they do not meet the food buying needs of the vast majority of Tanzanians in Dar es Salaam, while they do import lots of processed and luxury food items that few Tanzanians eat, they are clearly in practice targeting the richer customers.

According to the GM they are happy to source food locally as long as the quality is right, “we don’t compromise quality. It is better if supplies are local, but the needs of the customer, customer satisfaction, matter” he said. At the same time, he said they have about reached the maximum they can import due to the limitation on the importation of food by the Tanzania Food and Drug Authority (TFDA) that has to approve all imported products. The GM said they lodge about 15 product applications per month, but only about one or two are approved. They import foods and other items from the United Kingdom, South Africa, Dubai and the United State of America. He explained they get a lot from Dubai as they are more orientated to the Asian market. Important to the approach of Shoppers is that “our customers know they will get the product here”.

Shoppers’ payment terms for suppliers vary, from a few weeks to 30 days or 45 days for some. For some suppliers, as discovered in the egg research (Chapter Seven), Shoppers’ payment terms, while not ideal, where manageable while Shoprite’s were not. The Purchasing Manager makes decisions based on price and reliability of delivery, when asked he knew little about where the foods delivered to the back of the shop come from. As for the eater, they never see the driver making the delivery, let alone someone close to the production. This is a classic example of producers and consumers “disconnecting” although, in this case, the benefit of improved cost effectiveness is not there (Wiskerke, 2010; Wiskerke, 2007).

Photograph 6 - Shoppers Plaza where Shoppers Supermarket is found.

While supermarkets are more expensive and involve people leaving the areas where they live to shop, it can be argued that supermarkets in cities such as Dar es Salaam create a new social space of “Western style shopping” (Lonely Planet, 2012). It is a place where the eaters who can afford to are more likely to meet other car owners, senior managers and professionals. The air-conditioned “amiable space with the highest standards of safety, cleanliness and comfort” (Shoppers Plaza, 2013) is a welcome change for some people from the heat and humidity of Dar es Salaam. If you are already at the supermarket for other reasons it is easy to pick up some items there even if they are cheaper at the local duka. This is a different form of accessibility of most things being available under one roof for those in this social and economic sphere. Shoppers have coffee shops close to their supermarkets that form a place to meet others who can afford the coffee that costs 30 times more per cup than the excellent coffee that Mzee Steven used to drink outside Mangi’s Duka.

Shoprite Holdings Ltd., which proclaims itself to be “Africa’s largest food retailer” (Shoprite Holdings Ltd., 2014), had a store in Mikocheni, close to the street where I lived, but this closed in 2008, leaving two other Shoprite stores in Dar es Salaam (Crush and Frayne, 2011; Abrahams, 2009). Due to Shoprite’s prominence in debates on supermarkets in Africa they could not be ignored in this study. Efforts to get a full interview with the company or answers to questions were unsuccessful. One manager spoke to me briefly and then referred me to their head office in South Africa saying he could not talk to me. Phoning and emailing Shoprite did not get me much further, only eliciting a threatening response that included inquiring about “which government organ is supporting your research as we only deal with organizations linked to government” and the statement “it is illegal for you to dig information from a company”.

There are documented examples of small-farmers who have tried to supply Shoprite, such as that of farmers from Luangeni in Zambia who felt they could not compete with the Shoprite branch in Chipata and, therefore, went into a supply partnership with them (Miller, 2008). This partnership in Zambia, like others, later collapsed (Miller, 2008). Many producers and suppliers in Tanzania also seem to prefer supplying other outlets. Late in 2013 the news emerged that Shoprite was selling its three branches in Tanzania to Nakumat, a Kenyan retail group, thus ending Shoprite’s efforts to penetrate the Tanzanian market (Ciuri, 2013; Miriri, 2014).

5.5.3. Supermarket differences

Shoppers Supermarket and Shoprite may in many ways look similar, but they are also very different, importantly in the ownership structure and style of management. Shoprite are very corporate serving distant managers and shareholders, while Shoppers is much more approachable with hands on owners. Interestingly, Nakumat that took over the Shoprite stores is also a family owned business and their manager for Tanzania could be found on the shop floor and was very approachable and willing to discuss their operations. As noted, there was a difference for suppliers for whom the supplying on credit to supermarkets is a problematic issue, but worse with some supermarkets than others. Shoppers never seemed to have difficulties with staff, but Shoprite did (Abrahams, 2009). While Shoppers opened a new store in 2014 and Nakumat was also coming into Tanzania at the same time, another Kenyan supermarket group, Uchumi, was running into trouble. Uchumi finally closed their Tanzania operations in October 2015 owing large amounts of money to suppliers and workers and saying that they had been losing money for the last five years (Lazaro, 2015; Ngugi, 2015).