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硬纸板盒子没什么迷人的地方，但却很实用：想象一下，如果把一卡车没有任何包装的鸡蛋直接从农场运到商店会出现什么样的状况？纸盒子使得搬运东西变得更加简便，商店也因此能够以更低的价格储备更多品种的货物。所以在非洲开一家硬纸盒制造厂等于让非洲人享用更多、更好的食物。
The Riley Packaging plant in Uganda is quite a sight. From wall to wall and floor to ceiling, it is crammed with vast rolls of paper. A visitor feels like an ant gazing at stacks of toilet rolls. A management consultant might ask: why does Riley need to keep so much inventory—three months’ worth—heaped idly on the floor? Surely there are better uses for the firm’s capital?
乌干达的莱利包装厂让人眼前一亮。工厂里到处都塞满了巨大的纸卷，挤在墙壁、地板和天花板之间。到里面参观的人感觉就像是一只蚂蚁在盯着一堆堆厕纸卷看。管理顾问可能就会问：为什么莱利要把这么多库存（相当于三个月的销量）闲置下来堆在地板上呢？肯定有更好的方式来利用公司资本吧？
Actually, no. The paper has to be imported. Uganda is landlocked. The nearest port, at Mombasa in Kenya, is more than 1,000km (620 miles) away on iffy roads. Containers passing through customs there face long and unpredictable delays. The factory keeps masses of inventory because it cannot rely on supplies to arrive just-in-time. And “we can’t ever let customers down,” says Ashish Thakkar, a part-owner of the firm.
实际上还真没有更好的方式。工厂用纸必须依靠进口，乌干达是一个内陆国，莱利离最近的港口肯尼亚蒙巴萨港也有1000多公里（620英里），而且到那里的路还不靠谱。在该港清关的集装箱面临着漫长的不定期滞留。莱利保留大量库存就是因为不能指望供货准时到达。“我们绝不能让顾客失望”，莱利公司的共有人Ashish Thakkar说到。
Ignorant investors beware 未开窍的投资商请注意
Global investors are salivating over Africa. They know the continent is growing fast and they want a piece of the action. But how? There are not enough listed African firms to absorb even a fraction of the ignorant money itching to flow south of the Sahara. 国际投资商们都对非洲这块肥肉垂涎欲滴。他们知道这块大陆正在飞速发展，都想从中分得一杯羹。但要怎样做才行呢？现在有大量的资金渴望涌入“黑非洲”，而非洲为数不多的上市公司能吸收的量只不过是沧海一粟，剩下的钱该流向何处？
The real money in Africa is in selling stuff to the emerging middle class. Plenty of foreign firms know how to make things that Africans want to buy. But they don’t know their way around Africa. They need a guide. That is where Mr Thakkar comes in. He is the founder of the Mara Group, a conglomerate that helps outsiders do business in Africa. Mara has fingers in pies of every flavour. Its joint ventures not only make boxes in Uganda; they also make glass, build hotels and operate call centres all over Africa. 在非洲真正赚钱的是和新兴中产阶级做买卖。有很多外国公司知道如何生产非洲人想要购买的物品，但它们对非洲这个地方却不了解。这些公司需要一个领路人。这就是萨克先生该登场亮相的时候了。他一手创建了玛拉集团，致力于帮助那些在非洲做生意的外地人。玛拉集
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团的经营范围相当广泛，它在乌干达的一些合资企业不仅有盒子制造商，也有玻璃生产商和酒店建筑商，并且它们的客服中心遍布整个非洲。
Mr Thakkar is no expert in any of these businesses. Ask him what exactly Mara does for IBM to help it fulfil its IT contract for Bharti Airtel, a mobile-phone firm, and he puts the man in charge on speakerphone to explain. In a typical Mara venture, the foreign partner provides the technical expertise. Mara offers local knowledge: how to buy land, cope with red tape, promote the business, manage relations with suppliers and so on.
萨克在这些业务中都算不上行家。当被问到玛拉集团究竟是如何帮助IBM履行自己和移动电话公司巴蒂电信之间的IT合同时，他把电话交给了该项目的负责人并让他来解释。在典型的玛拉合资项目中，外国合伙人提供专业技术，而玛拉集团则负责地方知识：如何购买土地，怎样应对繁文缛节，怎样推广生意，如何管理与供应商之间的关系等等。
This is a potent business model. For all the current optimism about Africa, it is still a tough place to do business. Mr Thakkar knows this only too well. His family arrived in Uganda (from India) in 1890. They lost everything in 1972, when Idi Amin, a dunce of a despot, kicked out Uganda’s Asians and grabbed their shops. The Thakkars returned to Africa in 1993: to Rwanda, shortly before the genocide. They lost everything again. Mr Thakkar, who was a schoolboy at the time, saw bodies strewn in the streets as he was evacuated. Undeterred, he started his first business when he was 15. Every weekend he flew from Entebbe to Dubai to fill a suitcase with electronic gizmos, which he took back to Uganda and sold. The Mara Group now employs 7,000 people. Since it is privately held, it is impossible to say how profitable it is, but Mr Thakkar says margins are “decent”. 这是一个很强大的商业模式。尽管目前人们对非洲充满了希望，但要在这里做生意仍然件苦差事。萨克对此深有体会。1890年，萨克一家人从印度移民乌干达。1972年，残暴昏庸的独裁者伊迪?阿敏把亚洲人赶出了乌干达并霸占了他们的店铺，萨克也因此变得一无所有。1993年萨克一家又回到了非洲：他来到了卢旺达，不久之后便发生了种族清洗惨剧。萨克一家再次一无所有。在被疏散的时候他看到街道上尸横遍野，当时他还只是一名学生，但这并没有吓倒他，15岁的时候他便开始做起了自己的生意。每周他都会从恩德培（乌干达城市）坐飞机到迪拜买上一箱新奇的电子产品，然后带回乌干达销售。现在玛拉集团的雇员已达到了7000人。由于是私人控股，所以无法知道玛拉集团的利润到底有多高，但萨克表示利润“还不错”。
Mara is different from other African fixers in two ways. First, it is pan-African. Most fixers only have contacts in one country; Mara has operations in 19. This is crucial. Many African countries are small. Multinationals would rather sign a single pan-African contract than lots of small ones. Starting in Uganda, where his family knows everyone, Mr Thakkar has forged ties with bigwigs across the continent. It helps that his family knows the other Gujarati business families in east Africa. It helps even more that Mr Thakkar gets invited to shindigs like Davos, where African presidents are plentiful and far more approachable than at home.
玛拉集团在两方面不同于其他的非洲中间商。第一，它遍及整个非洲。大多数的中间商仅在一个国家有联系人，而玛拉集团的业务遍及19个国家。这一点至关重要。许多非洲国家都是些小国，比起签一堆小合同，跨国公司更愿意选择签一个泛非合同。萨克从自己家族人脉
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广阔的乌干达做起，和整个非洲大陆的权贵人士都建立了关系。他的家族认识东非其他的来自印度古吉拉特邦的商业家族（萨克一家也来自那里），这很有帮助。萨克还会受邀参加一些盛大聚会（比如达沃斯论坛），不少非洲总统也会聚集在此而且比平时更容易接近，这一点更有帮助。
Second, Mara has a brand: a reputation for integrity, and for getting the job done. This was hard-earned. Once, when the operator of a box-making machine was sick, Mr Thakkar grabbed the instruction manual, took charge and stayed up all night so as not to be late delivering an order to Unilever. Potential partners know Mr Thakkar will do anything to avoid tarnishing the Mara brand, so they trust him. In countries where the rule of law is weak and contracts hard to enforce, that matters.
第二，玛拉集团已名声在外：出了名的诚信并且能完成任务。这块招牌来之不易。有一次一台制盒机的操作员生了病，萨克便拿来操作指南，通宵坚守在这个岗位上，避免了延误交付联合利华订购的货物。潜在的合伙人都知道只要能保住集团的名声，萨克愿意做任何事情，因此他也深得他们的信任。在法治力量薄弱、合同难以实施的国家，信任这东西很重要。
There is money to be made in Africa by getting the basics right. For example, in Kampala, the Ugandan capital, Mara is building a hotel with shops attached. One selling point will be: enough parking spaces. At the shopping centre across the road, you need a driver to drop you off. If you have no driver, tough.
在非洲，弄清楚基本信息就可以帮你赚钱。例如，在乌干达首都坎帕拉，玛拉集团正在修建一个附带商店的旅馆，其中的一个卖点将是：充足的停车位。而要去街对面的购物中心，你最好打车过去。如果自己开车过去的话就麻烦了，因为那里没地方停车。
Mr Thakkar brims with ideas for new businesses. Microfinance via mobile phones in east Africa. Growing sugar in Nigeria. And even, via his non-profit foundation, a pan-African social-networking site. He is also adept at Richard Branson-style public relations. He is planning to be an astronaut, and to take the flags of the nations where he operates into space.
萨克满脑子都是拓展新业务的点子。比如在东非通过电话进行小额贷款，在尼日利亚种植糖类植物，甚至还通过他创立的非营利基金会建成了一个泛非洲社交网站。他还深谙理查德?布兰森（英国亿万富翁）式的公关技巧。他打算做一名太空旅行者，并把他的业务国的国旗带入太空。
Mara is a family concern—Mr Thakkar’s father is the chairman—and has wealthy backers in the Gulf (it is based in Dubai). But its growth has been powered by one restless individual. That may be a weakness: a conglomerate that relies on the charm and dealmaking skills of one man may struggle to outlive him. An obvious parallel is Lonrho, a pan-African conglomerate built up by the late “Tiny” Rowland, a swashbuckling British entrepreneur. Lonrho fell apart after Rowland retired, and is now only a fragment of its former glory. The Mara Group “is just one really driven guy”, warns another African entrepreneur. Maybe so; but Mr Thakkar is only 31, and has plenty of drive left.
玛拉集团是一个家族企业——萨克的父亲是集团主席——并且有不少来自海湾地区的富豪支持它（集团总部设在迪拜）。但玛拉的增长一直都是依靠萨克一个人的不断努力。这或许
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正是玛拉的软肋：一个大集团仅靠着一个人的魅力和商务技巧发展，两者有可能将会同生共灭。罗荷集团就是很明显的一个对照，它是由英国已故传奇企业家“小”罗兰创建的泛非大集团。罗荷集团在罗兰退隐后变得四分五裂，如今昔日的辉煌早已不在。玛拉集团“只是一个动力十足的男人”，一位非洲的企业家这样告诫道。也许他说得没错；但萨克现在只有31岁，还有很多的动力没有使用。
http://bbs.ecocn.org/thread-180925-1-1.html 译者：hongfuhe123
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