if NGOs were buying vast quantities of condoms and then freely spraying them over Africa in an efficient, no-frills manner, we could expect condoms to become an African “cash crop” to be harvested for export. Then, given increased demand, the NGOs would replenish the bountiful harvest and report to the WHO that per capita condom use is highest in the world but HIV keeps spreading regardless.
So how does it work in real life? Do they ration the free condoms? Or do they charge a subsidized but nevertheless non-zero price calculated so as to make re-export unprofitable?
There are free condoms available a lot of places in the First World, too. And even where they’re not free, they’re cheap enough that I have a hard time seeing it as economical to re-export them from Africa.
I live in the US and have always had free condoms available to me. Pretty much anyone in the US has access to free condoms if they wish to pursue them. We still sell plenty of condoms in the US. I occasional buy them for convenience reasons.
So far people harvesting free condoms and reselling them hasn’t caused any major issues. Somehow I doubt it ever will, it’s not like they are expensive to make, almost all the cost at the stores is marketing and distribution.
The manufacturers don’t seem to have been effected as the NGO’s are providing the funding to have them made. If they thought it was damaging to their own margins they could easily refuse that business.
good point. But given that the harvesting of this cash crop may be labor intensive, the business may be more appropriate to the low wage environment of Africa
OK, labor’s cheap in Africa. But still, what’s the point? Why would such an operation start up to begin with? I go to Africa, and pay dirt-cheap wages to locals to collect the free condoms and bring them to my warehouse, and ship them back to America so I can sell them. Presumably, I expect to sell them because (under the terms of this hypothetical) I can sell them for cheaper than the condoms that are already available in America. But the condoms already available in America include free ones. How am I supposed to compete with that?
Chronos, that was a hypothetical. Stranger things have happened. Or not happened - judging by the responses, this hasn’t been happening.
In America you could sell the stuff online in small quantities, competing with large quantity sales by legit online stores. That’s assuming that some Americans do acquire this stuff online for money rather than down at the middle school for free.
Further, the world does not consist of just America. Suppose the NGOs shower Africa with bountiful free condoms whereas India is not so blessed. And maybe there is no Philadelphia municipal government in India handing out condoms to all that come at taxpayer expense. So you could sell them in India. Or something like that.
There are about a million different programmes in sub-Saharan Africa - nowadays many charge as that has been found to be more useful although at a cost recovery basis as I understand it, but re-export? That’s bloody madness unless you were talking about diversion / corruption at the wholesale delivery level. Quality control, logistics, etc. makes the idea daft. Only corrupt diversion makes sense.
