It was only last week that I found the time to visit the newly opened grand mall around Megenagna – dubbed Zefmesh Grand Mall. The word ‘grand’ seems to rightly capture the sense that I felt when entering the Mall. I doubt whether there is another shopping centre as grand as this one in our fair nation.
An overwhelming structure, thoughtful zoning of shopping outlets and tight security seem to be the hallmark of the Mall. Of course, I felt helpless faced with no navigation aids and unhelpful staff.
I have even witnessed staff staring angrily at customers roaming between shops, as they set foot on the very floor they have just been cleaning. I wonder why such a grand investment fails to commit time and money to training staff on how to best treat customers.
Besides such trivial flaws, however, I really enjoyed my time at the grand mall. Unfortunately, however, my shopping experience made me think about the fundamental problem of markets in our fair nation.
Zefmesh has brought a new structure into the shopping trend of our fair city. By implementing zoning – an agglomeration of shops selling similar or related items together – the Mall seems to have infused a new sort of energy into the upper stratum of the markets in our fair city. Things could change if the same kind of shift could be introduced into the other stratum of markets.
Various efforts by our ruling elite to regulate the markets have failed because of their inability to rightly trace the market chain. This is especially true in cereal markets across the nation.
Systems, such as the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX), were meant to bring some transparency in the trading system. But their impact seems to have been restricted by burdensome regulation, improper fragmentation of regulatory responsibilities and changing market dynamics.
Policy failures, such as the infamous ‘price fixing’ implemented in 2009, can be attributed to the intraceability of market chains. No regulation can work without an effective understanding of the structure and dynamics of markets.
Structurally speaking, Ethiopian markets are overly fragmented. They involve numerous players, both visible and invisible. The spatial outreach of the markets stretches thousands of kilometres and entails inconsistent localised borders.
Differences in regulatory regimes between partially autonomous regions further the problem. Goods not only see a change of hands, but also a passage through different regulatory regimes. Hence, a federal regulator needs to capture the dynamics of all these things, in order to implement an effective regulatory regime.
At the consumption end, consumers are paying for the inefficiency embraced within such long market chains. Regardless of their purchasing power, they remain at the price receiving end of the market.
Establishing traceable market chains is essential in implementing policies designed to control economic problems, such as inflation. And this has a lot to do restructuring the market chains in such a way that they operate transparently.
As Zefmesh has done to the upper stratum of the market chain in our fair city, there is a need to bring decentralised markets closer to the people. But decentralisation cannot be a panacea in itself. Rather, it ought to be supported by essential integration.
Certainly, Ethiopians deserve a different shopping experience. This, by no means, is only about building new market centres. Rather, it is about introducing new market structures and integrating them in a contemporary way.
What I saw at Zefmesh leaves me with hope that it may not be too long before we see change in the structure of our markets. Modern and integrated markets might soon be the order of the day in our fair nation.
The many investors putting their hard earned money into building shopping malls need to learn from Zefmesh. They ought to see that building a mall is not an end in itself. It should also be accompanied by innovative systems that can make shopping an all the more different experience.
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