In 2007, China executed a former director of its food and drug agency for approving fake medicine in exchange for cash. This move was at the time when the far Eastern economic giant was preparing to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.
A local newspaper last weekend carried a cartoon of the execution incidence which was an irony of what exactly happens in this country.The name China is synonymous with both good and bad existence in Kenya. Back in the eighties (my folks told me) and early nineties, the best household and farm equipment either came from West Germany or China. In 2012 however, the story is not the same.
If you went to the shops today and bought a phone or any other electronic with a label Made in China, your heart sinks, and hope it is not fake. This has mainly resulted from infiltration of counterfeit products especially electronics from the far east country. The Communications Commission of Kenya will soon be shutting down all counterfeit phones from operation networks. This move will affect close to three million Kenyans, who were not aware that the products were counterfeit when the bought them.
The phones are known as China phones, buy both sellers on Nairobi’s Luthuli Avenue and people who can differentiate fake from real. China is the same country that executed a high ranking government official for letting fake items get into its markets. But someone in Kenya let the products into the country and now it is going to cost Kenyans close to Kshs. 9 billion to replace the phones when theirs die, because they will not survive without phones.
Who is going to come to the rescue of Kenyan consumers? Poverty levels and social and economic needs drove Kenyans to buy the cheaper phones. Now that seems like a bad investment, with a total of over 9 billion going down the drain.