Africa: Coke's Last Frontier

Marco DiLauro

By Duane Stanford

Piles of trash are burning outside the Mamakamau Shop in Uthiru, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya. Sewage trickles by in an open trench. Across the street, a worker at a bar gets ready for the lunch rush by scraping the hair off a couple of roasted goat heads. It's about 70 degrees, the sun is beating down, it smells like decay, and it's time for Coke to move some product. Annual per capita consumption of Coca-Cola (KO) in Kenya is 39 servings. In more developed countries like Mexico, which consumes more Coca-Cola than any other country, it runs 665 servings per year. One does not need an MBA to see the possibilities.

Two, in fact, have just walked in. The pair wear short sleeves and jeans. They reach into a refrigerated cooler, grab two Cokes in glass bottles, and pull up two overturned red crates for chairs. Mamakamau Kingori, proprietor, 39, bustles up in a patchwork-quilt apron to take their money. The 500-milliliter sodas cost 30 Kenyan shillings (37 cents) each. As is often the case in Africa, the customers enjoy the drink on the premises, the deposit on the bottles being too dear.

Such a transaction happens about 72 times a day at Mamakamau's, and that has earned her the status of a "Gold" vendor, the highest level awarded by the local bottler. Kingori's sundry store—known locally as a "duka"—also sells plastic buckets and mattresses, and is no larger than a small bedroom. Her Gold status brings benefits, like an introduction to Coke's globally standardized selling techniques. She's urged by Coke to promote combo meals to boost profits, and so red menu signs supplied by the beverage company suggest a 300-milliliter Coke and a ndazi, which is a kind of greasy donut, for 25 Kenyan shillings. Coke also paid for the red refrigerated drink cooler at the entrance to the shop, which is protected by a blue cage. She's told to keep it full to draw attention, and to stock it according to a diagram inside: Coca-Cola always at the top, Fanta in the middle, large bottles on the bottom. At stores down Naivasha Road, and throughout the continent and the rest of the world, Coke fridges are stocked in similar fashion.

Chasing shillings in Nairobi is the sign of both a healthy company expanding its borders and an empire so mature that it must, for its last great push, reach into many of the most war-torn and impoverished countries on earth. Chief Executive Officer Muhtar Kent may not be weeping, like Alexander the Great, at the prospect of having no worlds left to conquer, but with Coke sales stagnant or plodding in most of its developed markets—North Americans bought $2.6 billion worth of Coke in 1989 and just $2.9 billion 20 years later—Coca-Cola will rely on some of the poorest nations to generate the 7 to 9 percent earnings growth it has promised investors. That means, from the dukas of Nairobi to the "tuck shops" of Johannesburg, Africa's mom-and-pop stores are a major front in Coke's growth plan, not only for the flagship soda but also for the company's huge stable of waters, juices, and other soft drinks.

Per-capita consumption of Coke is also low in India and China, relative to the U.S., Europe, and Latin America, but those two continents present less of an opportunity for the company than Africa. China's market, famously difficult for outsiders to navigate, is already crowded with competitors like Wahaha, whose founder Zong Qinghou is China's richest man. India drinks Coke, but loves Pepsi, too. In New Delhi, Pepsi (PEP) is so popular that the name is Hindi shorthand for soda of all kinds, even Coke. Coke will continue to compete in those countries, of course, but Africa, where Coke is the dominant brand, and where the middle class is just emerging, may offer a potentially greater payoff.