A Story About Ethiopia

I often get asked if I ever get sick of travelling. It’s a funny question, because there is so much about traveling - especially for work - that is downright unpleasant. Waking up at 3am? Yeah, that sucks. Airport security, passengers fumbling with their IDs and holding up the queue? Kill me now please. But do I ever get sick of it? No, never. I still have to pinch myself sometimes that I have gotten to see as much of the world as I have. It’s an incredible privilege to be able to travel for work and it does take me to places that I wouldn’t have dreamed of going. A few weeks ago, my global boss came down for a visit and I decided to take him to Ethiopia as part of his visit. Now, having never been to Ethiopia myself, this was either genius or incredibly stupid. After consulting with my team in Ethiopia, they helped pull together an amazing agenda which included: 

• A visit to the local market
• Spending time with the local traders
• Meeting the field sales teams who manages our products in the markets
• Three consumer immersions - which means visiting the homes of three different consumers (lower, middle and high income classes) and speaking with them to understand a typical day in their life.
• Meeting the Ethiopian Unilever Leadership Team
• Running a leadership workshop with some of the top students in Addis Ababa 

If I’m flying for personal travel, I normally always get the aisle seat (because hey, Mr Practical over here). But the nice thing about traveling for work, is that in business class, the window seat and the aisle seat are the same seats. So I do always try and make sure I enjoy that window view as much as possible.

Business Class is of course, really nice. But honestly, the only thing that I love about it is being able to board and disembark faster. The rest of it? Meh, it’s fine. I can get fancy food at home, I really don’t need it in the air 🤷🏻‍♂️

The hotel on the other hand, was very very cool. The suite had panoramic view of the city and I could’ve spent hours just sitting on the sofa and staring out.

Meeting the local field sales managers and getting a sense of how they run their operations.

This is Mechell, who is our big boss in Africa, who came with to host Tim (one of our global big bosses).

The Unilever Ethiopian operations is relative new, having only been established in 2015. They have been on an amazing growth journey over the last three years including setting up a local factory and creating new products specifically for the market.

These Lifebuoy soap bars are all manufactured locally in Ethiopia.

Because Ethiopian is such a predominantly Orthodox Christian country, the bulk of the country’s population can spend up to 250 days of the year fasting with a vegan diet. This meant that we have had to create some custom products for the local market, including a vegan-variant of Knorr - which is super cool.

When you have to pretend to be naughty students…

… because you’re actually nerds at heart 😂

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