{"id":1527,"date":"2016-05-19T15:52:53","date_gmt":"2016-05-19T20:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1527"},"modified":"2025-03-01T09:01:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T15:01:31","slug":"last-day-in-windhoek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2016\/05\/19\/last-day-in-windhoek\/","title":{"rendered":"Last day in Windhoek"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"There's<\/a>
There’s a place for me at CAT Windhoek … they even have me figured out<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Our two site visits today capped our business experiences in Namibia, and summed up a number of themes we\u2019d heard elsewhere.<\/p>\n

The first was to the local Caterpillar dealer, and though I had visited a number of Cat facilities in Asia, I had never visited a dealer before. The dealer was part of a chain that a number of south African countries are managed from headquarters in Johannesburg.\u00a0 There is kind of a love-hate relationship, I realized, between Namibians and South Africans.\u00a0 In addition to the over 25 year civil war to create an independent Namibia from an administered province of South Africa, there is much economic dependence today, partly because Namibia is a country of only 2.5 million people, or about the size of Naperville (actually it is larger than Naperville, but you know what I mean).\u00a0 Because of the mining and the road construction here, this could be a good market for Caterpillar.\u00a0 And in some areas it is.\u00a0 Some of the big mines (including the Chinese-owned one) are big purchasers of Caterpillar equipment.\u00a0 One major drawback, however, is that there is a tariff of 14% on imported goods, and there is an African company with a joint venture with John Deere that is considered African\u2014hence, its products are tariff free. Small wonder Cat champions free trade.<\/p>\n

Despite the price disadvantage, Cat sells well because of reliability and maintenance.\u00a0 Over half the company\u2019s employees are assigned to work at various mines to service equipment.\u00a0 We toured the warehouse and maintenance facilities, where the tractor used to move equipment was a 1963 model, which ought to say something about durability.\u00a0 The business suffers from several other drawbacks as well: currency risk (i.e., when you bill in dollars and collect in Namibian dollars the exchange rate is critical on big ticket items\u2014and Caterpillar products are big and big ticket\u2014especially when those items cost $15-$25 million dollars); the dealer writes local contracts in Namibian dollars with the proviso that the price is subject to the exchange rate.\u00a0 The products are all manufactured overseas and assembled in Namibia (or elsewhere).\u00a0 20% of the equipment is leased.\u00a0 Finally, sales depend on industry expectations, which in turn, depend on commodity prices, which right now are down.<\/p>\n

\"At<\/a>
At the CAT dealer in Windhoek<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

What I gathered is that being a franchised dealer means (among other things) that Cat supplies promotional materials, performance metric standards, and training\u2014as well as the products. The metrics include customer satisfaction and plant safety\u2014the latter was one of the sources of the manager\u2019s pride\u20140.25 accidents over the last 4 months. As I pointed out when we left, people come to the Namibian game preserves to see the Big 5 animals (lions, etc.)\u2014we had seen the \u201cBig Cat,\u201d and if they wanted to use that as part of their advertising, I\u2019d be glad to talk with them about signing away my rights!<\/p>\n

She also revealed something I had not realized.\u00a0 When Namibia voted on UN Resolution 435 in 1990 (the US brokered a deal in which South Africa withdrew from Namibia and Cuba withdrew from Angola\/Namibia–which accounts for the Cold War battles fought here in the 70s and 80s, and the suspicion of the United States by that generation), the country consciously chose English as the national language rather than the other competitors (German, Afrikaan, the 13 tribal languages).\u00a0 She said that at the primary and secondary levels, though, it\u2019s still not taught universally.<\/p>\n

A visit to the Ambassador\u2019s house for a reception capped our day and our business visits in Namibia. It was fitting, because also attending were many of the speakers we\u2019d met, and movers and shakers from government \"\"<\/a>(several ministers and the president pro-tem) and business.\u00a0 We spent a very pleasant evening meeting and spending some time talking with individuals from various background who were essentially curious about what we saw, thought, and expected from our visit to Namibia.<\/p>\n

I think I\u2019ve shared my thoughts on the topic with you.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think I want to be the ambassador, but I certainly loved his house, which, as a taxpayer, I do own.<\/p>\n

On to Scout camp\u2014er, Etosha National Park.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our two site visits today capped our business experiences in Namibia, and summed up a number of themes we\u2019d heard elsewhere. The first was to the local Caterpillar dealer, and though I had visited a number of Cat facilities in Asia, I had never visited a dealer before. The dealer was part of a chain … Continue reading “Last day in Windhoek”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8421,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/8421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}