Rome...Quid nos scire possumus

October 2017

In Rome. It is a much cleaner place than Napoli, though cigarettes butts are strewn everywhere. But at least one sees some people cleaning the streets, or maybe it's just their small informal contribution in their little area, their doorstep as it were. So it's clearner, but still, like every European city I have been to, it is squeezed. I see two people in running gear attempting to run through those narrow streets competing with cars, buses and tourists and wonder how far they will be able to go.

Here the ancient co-exists with the not so ancient and the new. They have a way of preserving and marking their history - the Roman ruins here - the Colosseum being the most impressive of that era ; then there is something from the Renaissance (though historian record that it left a better dent in Florence), the Holy Roman Empire (when Rome and a large chunk of Europe were benighted by the tyranny of popes using God's name for their own ends, dishing out titles to friends, cousins and illegitimate sons - church corrruption did not start with modern day pastorpreneurs), then to pre-war Italy. Like the minister plenipotentiary at the South African consulate told me, life in Rome is like walking in a living a museum everyday. 

And the oft-cited example of how this country is founded on small and family-owned businesses is as apparent in Rome and it is with the pizzerias and little shoe shops of Naples neighbourhoods. There are few corporates here - there are the banks, of course, then the innovator companies like Parmalat, but no-one seems to have attempted to successfully integrate or amalgate (I surmise) the pizzerias, or it seems, even the pharmacies whose neon green crosses you see frequently (no sense of overtrading and cannibalization as I have warned of in Zimbabwe or Kenya). In the quieter streets, less touristic, I walk past several motor cycle workshops - small and owner-operated, it seems. There is a place selling designer shoes - and in the back there is a workshop with an old man bent over, breathing life into the next pair of heels! 

This explains why the Italian economy is resilient - in the likely event of a global economic shock or downturn slowing demand is what might affect these business and the country; but not mass unemployment as a result of retrenchments or downsizing because quarterly performance is not to the liking of some faceless shareholders. Somehow it seems a smarter model (certainly in the face of ChIndia's bargain basement pricing). But, of course, it comes with the millstone of family traditions...which can be ended by a fickle prodigal. But if taken up by the next generation,  entrepreneurial instincts and experiences are naturally inherited...no need for MBA-type coaching here.

The lesson? 

Invest in policies which support small business, family owned is even better. But for most African governments this is more talk than action. Of course, most of them are beholden to and captured by big business.