The lyrics to Pop Champagne – one of many Nigerian pop songs to pay homage to the ubiquitous French drink – are self explanatory. “We dey pop champagne, pop pop pop pop, pop champagne!” the song goes, as a nightclub jumps with men holding bottles and women glasses full of bubbly.
But Nigerians’ love of champagne is fast becoming fact as well as legend – with new figures forecasting that champagne consumption in the west African country will reach 1.1 million litres by 2017, with 2011 consumption at almost eight billion naira (£31m).
The figures, from research company Euromonitor, found that Nigeria had the fastest growing rate of new champagne consumption in the world, second only to France, and ahead of rapid growth nations Brazil and China, and established markets such as the US and Australia.
“Champagne has its own demographic on the higher end of things – it’s not even about the middle class, it’s about the elite,” said Spiros Malandrakis, a senior analyst at Euromonitor.
“People may find it surprising that Nigeria came second in the rankings, but it has an extremely extravagant elite, with Nollywood and the oil industry.”
Champagne bottles displayed at a roadside shop in Lagos. (AFP)
Nigerians’ love of big spending has attracted growing attention in recent months. Last year figures revealed that Nigerian tourists in the UK are the fourth biggest foreign spenders, ringing up an average £500 in each shop where they make purchases – four times what the average UK shopper spends.
“At all the celebrity parties in Lagos, they always have champagne. And it has to be the finest – Cristal, Dom Pérignon or Moet et Chandon rosé – these are the things that are important symbols here,” said Vanessa Walters, the Lagos-based editor of Nigerian women’s magazine Genevieve.
“People say that at every elite event the champagne has to be flowing, and that how much champagne there is is a one-upmanship thing, like showing people that your house is bigger than theirs.”
But not everyone in Nigeria – 63% of whose 160 million population still live on less than $1 a day – is impressed with the extent of Nigerian champagne consumption.
“Nigerians’ unhealthy enthusiasm for anything foreign or imported is a plague that continues to pull the country back into this sort of wasteful expenditure,” said an editorial in Nigerian newspaper the Daily Trust in response to the figures.
“[These figures] reveal the profligacy that is offensive, if not obscene.”
The colourful handmade giraffes, elephants and warthogs made in a Nairobi workshop were once only dirty pieces of rubber cruising the Indian Ocean’s currents.
About 45 workers in Nairobi make 100 different products from the discarded flip-flops. In 2008, the company shipped an 18-foot giraffe to Rome for display during a fashion week.
(Pic courtesy of Marula Studios & UniquEco)
Founder Julie Church says the goal of her company is to create products that people want to buy, then make them interested in the back-story.
Workers wash the flip-flops, many of which show signs of multiple repairs. Artisans then glue together the various colours, carve the products, sand and rewash them.
(Pic courtesy of Marula Studios & UniquEco)(Pic courtesy of Marula Studios & UniquEco)
Church first noticed Kenyan children turning flip-flops into toy boats around 1999, when she worked as a marine scientist for WWF and the Kenya Wildlife Service on the country’s coast near the border with Somalia.
Turtles hatching on the beach had to fight their way through the debris on beaches to get to the ocean, Church said, and a plan to clean up the debris and create artistic and useful items gained momentum. WWF ordered 15 000 key rings, and her eco-friendly project took off.
It has not made Church rich, however. The company turns over about $150 000 a year, she said. Last year it booked a small loss.
But new investment money is flowing in, and the company is in the midst of rebranding itself from its former name – the FlipFlop Recycling Company – to Ocean Sole.
The company aims to sell 70% of its products outside Kenya. It has distributors in the United States, Europe and new inquiries from Japan. Its biggest purchasers are zoos and aquariums.
(Pic courtesy of Marula Studios & UniquEco)
One of Church’s employees is Dan Wambui, who said he enjoys interacting with visitors who come to the Nairobi workshop.
“They come from far … when they see what we are doing we see them really happy and they are appreciating. We feel internationally recognized and we feel happy about it,” Wambui said. – Joe Mwihia for Sapa-AP
Speed kills, but when it doesn’t, it thrills. I experienced this truth firsthand on a trip from Nyambene hills in Eastern Kenya to the capital Nairobi on board a khat-filled van. This was a ride like no other.
Khat, commonly known as miraa in Kenya, is a leafy shrub known for its stimulating effect. It delivers a mild amphetamine-like high for as long as you chew it – and the fresher the twigs, the more potent the high. Forty eight hours after being harvested, the twigs are of little use.
The shrub mainly grows in the Kenyan highlands, so it has to travel across the world to reach consumers in the Arab world, Europe, Australia and other parts of Africa. This is not an easy fete. Speed is a must; efficiency non-negotiable. Six hours after being picked, it has to be on its way to the United Kingdom or Dubai.
This is where the Toyota Hilux vans and skilled drivers come in. They travel at life-threatening speeds along the highway that leads to Nairobi from Nyambene, Maua and Meru – the main miraa-growing areas. The drivers seem to know all the potholes on the entire 400km stretch of road. They evade them with precision, negotiate dangerous bends in the hilly countryside at 160km/h, all while chatting, chewing miraa, puffing on cigarettes and drinking Coca Cola. It is man and machine against one of the most dangerous roads in Kenya.
Khat leaves from the Mount Kenya region. (Pic: Flickr/International Centre for Tropical Agriculture)
My friend Mutuota, a miraa trader in Maua, agreed to let me go along for a ride in one of his vans last month. I was introduced to the driver Mbaabu and his assistant Mutuma. A team of young men packed the khat into the van and made sure the load was stable. Then we were off.
We stopped at a petrol station first. Mbaabu asked the attendant to fill up the tank, check the tyre pressure and all the wheels, including the spare. The drivers make sure their vehicles are in tip-top shape – they have modified shock absorbers and good suspension to make the vans less prone to overturning at high speeds, and the brakes are serviced at least twice a week.
Then we hit the road to Nairobi. Meru roads are notorious for traffic accidents and road blocks. Luckily for Mbaabu who was doing about 180 km/hr the entire trip, the traffic cops just waved us along and let us pass freely through road blocks – they are familiar with the Hiluxes.
I asked Mutuma about the importance of speed throughout the operation. “Today we’re only doing local orders, but usually we have clients waiting for this product in London and Dubai. It has to get to Nairobi first, then be cleared through customs and reach them before the stim (potency) goes down. So we have just a few hours.”
Besides overseas destinations, the product is heavily traded in Ethiopia and Somalia. In Kenya, cities like Mombasa, Kisumu, Eldoret and Busia have a huge demand for miraa. It is a multi-million-dollar industry in Kenya, with hundreds of thousands of farmers and dealers relying on it for income.
A khat stall in Somalia. (Flickr/G.A. Hussein)
The miraa farmers are a happy lot, despite losing some profits to a chain of middlemen and brokers. A kilo in Nairobi fetches around R22, sometimes higher. Every miraa farmer’s livelihood depends on the timely delivery of his crop to Nairobi. Educating his children, building a new house or even tending new crops all depend on how quickly miraa is delivered to the market, Mbaabu tells me.
Two and a half hours later, the sight of the Nairobi skyline was a huge relief to me. I was a little dizzy and nauseous from the ride, but Mbaabu and Matuma were all business. We stopped in Eastleigh, a neighbourhood that’s mainly habited by Somalis, who are considered to be the highest consumers of miraa in the world. They offloaded the order and then it was time to say our goodbyes. I was heading home, they were going back to Maua. Tomorrow they will make the same trip to the capital to deliver miraa for a client in London with their usual speed, efficiency – and fearlessness.
Kimani Chege is a freelance journalist and communications consultant based in Nairobi. He has a special interest in agriculture, health and technology and how they contribute to development or the lack of it. Connect with him on Twitter.
I have always wanted to claim some kind of artistic savvy, the more so now that I write for public consumption. Alas, that is not the case. I live on a steady diet of DVDs and genre fiction, driven entirely by an insatiable appetite for entertainment that feels good. There is perfectly enjoyable high-brow stuff out there, but somewhere between having Salman Rushdie and Catcher in the Rye thrust upon me I learned discernment. I mostly read historical romance novels now, with a very light sprinkling of titles that are more admissible in public.
Up until three or so years ago, I cheerfully consumed Hollywood products. Something has happened to Hollywood, though, hasn’t it? These days only Robert Downey Jr., Star Trek and 007 will get me anywhere near a Cineplex. There is always a silver lining and in my case it has been the expansion of horizons. Now that I don’t care what Tinseltown does to itself, I am present enough to notice some of what is happening closer to home. Turns out that there are diamonds in my backyard after all.
I grew up in Brazzaville, Bujumbura, Mbabane and Dar es Salaam in the eighties and nineties on state broadcasters and the very occasional video that was deemed age-appropriate by the adult mafia. My parents especially made substantial contributions to the Disney empire. There wasn’t any opportunity to even imagine that the culture I consumed might reflect me in any way. The African female audience member? Laughable notion. The closest I ever came to relating to any character was the youngest Huxtable kid, and that was a stretch.
The thing is, no matter how open a person is to the range of human creativity, deep inside she craves the familiar. Everyone wants to see themselves on the page, on the screen. We want our stories told.
About ten years ago, a particularly involved conversation with an African American about depictions of black people in popular culture prompted me to dedicate my senior thesis to exploring depictions of Africans by Hollywood between 1930 and 2001. The only good thing I can say about this exercise is that I met a man from New York with an excellent collection of African cinema. The rest was tears and horror.
Things have changed – there was nowhere else for Hollywood to go but upwards. Nonetheless, the experience left me with a rather unfortunate prejudice: the idea that only Africans can make competent movies about Africans.
Well, I was wrong. There is no explanation for Nollywood products and their unfortunate imitations throughout Anglophone Africa. I tried to find something palatable in those eye-rolling, garish, tasteless and superstitious cretins that pass for “characters” and failed miserably. The depths of loathing that I reserve for Nollywood can only be matched by how I feel about stepping barefoot into a pile of thorn-laden, fermenting excrement.
Development cinema saved the day for me, since it is always too long between good pieces of African cinema. Listen, I am horribly surprised about this, and embarrassed. We’re all Africans here, we know the deal. The NGOs and the Breton Woods and the savior-complex poverty tourists equipped with cameras and an internet connection have been framing us, selling us and commercially spreading the gospel of their cause for years. Sweet ancestors: are these people for real?
But then one day there I found myself alone with YouTube and a link to some locally produced, externally funded efforts.Twenty four hours later I was sold on the television series Siri ya Mtungi. It had so much that my soul needed to see: gorgeous Tanzanian women who look like the plumptious, dark-skinned, beautiful, complex and intelligent people I know. Men as venal and stupid and morally bankrupt, as delightful and gentle and wise and generous, as I have ever encountered. Conflicts that I can understand. All to the tune of an excellently curated local soundtrack.
There is also lots of sex. We’re all Africans here so let’s tell it like it is. Our sex is always depicted as exotic, deviant, or fraught with danger and disease. Like I said: tears and horror.
Siri ya Mtungi is not exactly innocent. It aims to change the sexual behaviors of Tanzanians in order to curb the spread of HIV/Aids infections. Refreshingly though, there is no fire or brimstone here. Just good old fashioned storytelling spiked with provocation. They’re trying to throw condoms at the viewer, in the hopes that she might catch one like an unplanned pregnancy.
I literally watched my favorite uncle die of the slim disease in the nineties, slowly and painfully. Don’t need any additional behavior-change messaging, thank you kindly. Condoms come as naturally to me as eating my vegetables. Consequently I am not watching the series to learn anything new – I have a natural immunity to messaging – but I am very interested in the depictions of our sexuality.
Sex is a great lens through which to examine life. When someone gets your sex right, they get you right, donor-funded or otherwise. I hooked onto this series simply because it showed me … well, us. The smiles were familiar. The cadences were familiar. The settings are enchanting, the women feisty, the men handsome kinds of bad news. Finally. I can tell Hollywood and Nollywood to kiss my bountiful African posterior, for I have found some satisfying measure of truth on the screen.
Elsie Eyakuze is a freelance consultant in print and online media from Tanzania, working mainly in the development sector. She blogs at mikochenireport.blogspot.com. Connect with her on Twitter.
When designer Tory Noll visited Morocco, she found inspiration in a tiny, unassuming shoe shop in Marrakech. She got a few pairs of Oxfords made for herself, and then for her friends when they raved about hers. That’s how the brand TEN & Co was born.
Noll has cleverly mixed two different cultures by combining the classic British Oxford with the beautiful and original patterns and colours of Morocco. She and her team scour souks and auctions to find the best Moroccan rugs and blankets which are used to create the shoes. Each pair is then painstakingly handmade by a cobbler in Marrakech. No two pairs are the same, which adds to the charm and appeal of these soles.
Pink, black and sea foam stripes. Made of vintage kilim with rose pink suede detailing. Leather soles. $200 (Pic: ten-and-co.com)
TEN & Co’s 2013 Spring/Summer collection has just been revealed. If the shoes themselves won’t blow you away, the photography by René Cervantes and styling by Noll and Alex Brannian will.
