More Mexico could improve African lives

Mexico-Africa relations would also do well to get rid of US and European intermediaries.

One of the most fashionable restaurants in the posh suburb of Karen, in south-western Nairobi, serves a variety of Latin American dishes. One of the main stars are the tacos, introduced by Ariel Moscardi, the founder of Cultiva Kenya who happens to be an Ecuadorian chef but whose culinary prowess was honed during his studies in Mexico City’s Cordon Bleu.

Mexico is present across Africa in a variety of subtle ways. Kenyan roads are populated with massive billboards selling tequila. Ghanaians indulge in a variety of Mexican houseful wares like Zote soap. And, across the continent, many Africans use Rotoplas’ iconic water tanks.

But just like an Ecuadorean bringing Mexican culinary gifts to sub-Saharan Africa, most of the continent’s relationship with Mexico is conducted indirectly.

It is the British global alcoholic beverage giant Diageo that pushes tequila on Kenyans. Africans are overcharged for coveted products like Zote, since they come via a tangled system of intermediaries from the US and Europe. And, it is the sales team in the Argentina office at Rotoplas—not its Mexican headquarters—which was charged with expanding into the African continent.

The result will often be that Africans will have less of a conscious relationship with Mexico than their margarita-drinking, telenovela-watching, Zote-scrubbing habits would have one think. That is a shame, not only because Mexico is losing out on a fast-growing market, but because a closer link between these two distant regions of the world would likely save an untold number of lives.