Idea For Africa: Strengthening Supply Chain Weak Links

 

According to my understanding, in a retail store, the best way to manage the prices of items is:  Just take each product individually, track its sales history, and use price elasticity of demand to adjust the price to achieve maximum profitability.


That can help with store items that are available to be sold in African stores.  The question is, however, what do we do if the problem is not just to set a price for items in stores, but a weakness in the supply chain for manufacturing a particular item?  Suppose you are trying to boost the market for pencils in an African country, but you don't have a good source of graphite.  What can be done to improve the market availability of abundant and affordable graphite?  More generally, we are going to be interested in improving the market for all kinds of non-perishable items.


The best answer I can think of off the top of my head is, in one word:  donations.  Currently, I believe that people donate food and money to Africa.  I claim, the next step in the process to help the African economy is, to have wealthy philanthropists identify resources that could be purchased at relatively high prices from external sources, and then literally just donate (or perhaps charge low prices for) the graphite or whatever other non-perishable items we are interested in improving the supply chain link strength for.


Ultimately, I'm claiming that this is the ideal next step and next level in philanthropic giving.  Gifts of food, money, malaria nets, and more are great for short-term improvement of African health and survival...but at the same time, it is essential to do some money-based work on long-term African economic health, too.


I urge non-profits who read this article to get a professional expert to evaluate my idea and then, if my ideas check out, consider doing "supply chain ingredient/equipment donations" to help make the African economy a better place, with fewer supply chain weaknesses.





Update, 4-5-26:


Also, companies that donate supplies at reduced or zero prices could receive credit, publicity, and free brand-boosting advertisements celebrating their generosity in exchange as a beneficial incentive for this service.

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