Ethiopia: Can free be too expensive?

Piller doesn’t want to see free condoms stopped, he emphasises, rather better coordination between the differing supply systems and the organisations behind them, so that private sector condoms have a chance to succeed and the business model behind them take root.

“Commodities can’t talk and so donor programme managers can blame the product, saying there’s a shortage, and so donors give more,” Piller said. “It’s a bit like taking vitamins: when you overdo it and it doesn’t help any more.”

Sex workers are a focus for free condom programmes, though Piller notes surveys conducted have illustrated how sex workers are happy to pay for affordable, quality retail condoms, which are already easily accessible at kiosks, grocery stores, pharmacies and the like.

“Everyone involved could do with being a little more data driven,” Pillar says. “Free condoms have a role for the poor and those in most need, but don’t flood the system.”

And too often, free condoms don’t actually reach those for whom they’re intended, and instead permeate the private sector, Piller notes.

DKT’s condoms used to be the ones that Ethiopian hotels habitually stocked in rooms and receptions. I remember finding packs of Hiwot Trust, DKT’s oldest brand, regularly in bedside drawers in hotels during previous travels. But nowadays it’s not DKT’s brands found in hotels but free condoms, much to Piller’s chagrin.

“We could be the distributary core, and what we do is more cost efficient,” he argues.

Tough choice inside his room on the Addis Ababa University campus, 23-year-old Bereket reached into a cupboard and showed me a pack of Sensation Honey condoms. He prefers this brand because it’s “modern”, adding that he avoids free condoms because he cannot be sure of their quality.

On the other hand, 26-year-old Negede, a graduate student at the university, said she remembers visiting the university clinic and seeing four male students turn up and start collecting handfuls of free prophylactics.“They’re my regular customers!”, a nurse told her.

Ethiopians have become much more aware of condoms during the past five to 10 years due to advertising, media messages and health concerns, Negede says. The use of condoms, whether free or paid for, seems to have worked well in helping stem the spread of HIV in Ethiopia; the infection rate is relatively low, estimated at between 1.3% and 2.4%.

So which is the better approach – to price condoms just like any other product, and encourage free market development, or to treat them as potential life-savers which should be available to anyone, anywhere, free, at any time? It’s a dilemma for all involved.

Ethiopia’s condom situation appears emblematic of the wider policy debate that has dominated aid and the question of how best to encourage economic growth in Ethiopia and Africa: the merits – or lack of them – of giveaway – aid culture versus
capacity building.

Western governments have responded to the debate by increasingly endeavouring to tie aid to business opportunities. The US-Africa Leaders Summit this August is intended to “advance the administration’s focus on trade and investment in Africa”, according to the White House.

In January of 2014, British International Development Secretary Justine Greening announced that the UK would be devoting £1.8bn to growth-boosting investments in 2015–2016. “Economic development is, without question,” Greening said, “the only way countries can leave behind enduring and chronic poverty for good.”

DKT’s goal is to be fully participant in Ethiopia’s economic development, and emerge with a business model that is mutually beneficial to its profitability and to Ethiopia, where condoms clearly still have a vital role: World Bank projections predict Ethiopia’s current population of about 91m will grow to 134m by 2030.

So far Members Only condoms make up just 1% of DKT’s sales. But it still early days, Piller points out; he’s hopeful that within the next eight to 10 years, DKT can achieve its goal of transforming itself into a profitable business operating within a more flourishing Ethiopian economy.

“I like to be optimistic even though there’s lots of variables that we can’t control,” Piller says. “But if things remain steady we should get there.”