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Coca-Cola Africa supports continent's anti-poverty efforts
 
Coca-Cola Africa has come up with new style of enhancing its soft drink business while fighting poverty on the continent. The approach includes investing in the expansion and upgrading of its distribution network of Manual Distribution Centres (MDCs), which are significantly maximising job and wealth creation in Africa.

A release issued that Coca Cola targets to replicate that model in key African countries over the next three years to create between 1,300-2,000 additional independent distribution businesses, 5,300-8,400 new jobs and generate new revenue of between USD320m and USD520m. It so believes this strategy would be yielding greater momentum toward the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

This fresh commitment was made by Coca-Cola Company CEO, Neville Isdell at a `Business Call to Action` event held in London recently which was hosted by Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development and Kemal Dervis from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

During the event, Coca-Cola Africa was recognized as an important contributor to the critical drive to achieve the MDGs.

It says Coca-Cola's MDC business model, which has been operational over the past five years, is a distribution system based on independent local entrepreneurs, the foundation of the Coca-Cola distribution system.

It has created new small businesses, new jobs and increased skill levels, and, while rolled out across four East African countries, Tanzania was specifically chosen for a pilot project that will investigate ways to further enhance the socio-economic impact of this simple, yet innovative distribution system.

This process would be completed in collaboration with local bottler, Coca-Cola Kwanza.

``The Coca-Cola Company aims to support the development of sustainable communities, because without sustainable communities we do not have sustainable business,`` says Nathan Kalumbu, Coca-Cola Africa Business Unit President for East and Central Africa.

``The Manual Distribution Centre (MDC) model, which is currently being executed in a number of African countries including Tanzania, has created new small businesses, new jobs and increased skills levels and provides a powerful platform from which we offer entrepreneurial opportunities that open the door to job and wealth creation.``

The model focuses on providing career opportunities for unemployed individuals, and to date, has empowered many women, with a significant percentage of MDCs being women-owned. It is estimated that one job at Coca-Cola Africa produces up to 16 local jobs along its value chain.

To date, MDCs in Tanzania have provided opportunity for more than 420 Tanzanians to invest in their own businesses. These businesses in turn have created employment for over 1,600 people many of whom were previously unemployed.

MDCs are best described as managed third party distribution centres. Instead of trying to service thousands of small retail outlets with small drop sizes, the bottler distributes to carefully selected MDCs who sell Coca-Cola products exclusively.

The MDC owners are actively supported and managed by the bottler, who helps each owner establish their operations, including designing routes and methods of delivery and determining the frequency of delivery service required to maintain stock levels.

The key to the success of this approach is that MDCs are driven by entrepreneurs in touch with their markets while they receive ongoing support from the bottler and Coca-Cola, to ensure that optimal selling conditions are maintained at the retailer level.

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