John Kariuki
6 September 2008
Nairobi — The Kenya manufacturing sector plans to intensify its campaign to lobby for the Anti-Counterfeit Bill to be tabled in Parliament later this year.
It will focus on education and public awareness. The campaign, started in early August, is expected to gain momentum as the parliamentary debate date approaches.
At the heart of the proposals in the Bill is the introduction of a tribunal. The tribunal will be particularly beneficial to small manufacturers who may not have the financial capacity to file court cases in the Industrial Court against those who import and sale counterfeits.
"We are still discussing with the government to have the tribunal in place when the law is passed," said Dickson Poroji head of the Counterfeit Section at the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.
The government has expressed its commitment to have the law in place by October. "We have the political goodwill and expect the Bill to be passed without any delay," said Mr Poroji.
Among other things, the proposed law recommends the formation of a counterfeits board to act as a policing body with representatives from industry, government ministries and corporations.
The Kenya Association of Manufacturers has formulated a joint strategy for its members which will create advertising on all mediums and serve as a public information forum. But some individual companies have their own initiatives.
Already, Toyota Kenya has launched a campaign using billboards to warn against the use of counterfeit spare parts.
"We have a budget of Ksh4 million ($60,600) for the campaign and could increase it depending on the need," said Omar Osogo, the business development manager at Toyota Kenya.
DT Dobie has a Ksh1.5 million ($22,700) media campaign already running in the print media. "We may increase the budget later in the year," said Leo Lulu, who is in charge of sales and marketing of spare parts.
In the print industry Hewlett Packard East Africa is alo using billboards and the print media. But a majority of the manufacturers are pooling for a joint advertising campaign.
Among the big companies opting for the joint campaign is GlaxoSmithkline, the giant pharmaceutical manufacturer, which although concerned about counterfeits, is wary of the negative effects of such a campaign.
"We have to be cautious because such a campaign could discourage people from using drugs and so we thought it was prudent for us to participate in a joint industry effort," said William Mwatu, the Medical and Regulatory Affairs director at GSK. He said that his company is also calling for the participation of the Ministry of Health in the campaign.
The emphasis of the campaigns is educating the people on how to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit products, but more importantly, dispelling the myth that fake products are cheaper.
"The campaigns also aim at showing that fakes might be cheaper but the cost to the user is much more in the long run because of poor performance and the health risks involved," said Mr Poroji.
The anti-counterfeit Bill was initially scheduled for debate last year but lapsed following the end of the term of the 10th parliament and has had to redrafted and tabled afresh.
He said that most of the outstanding issues relating to implementation have been sorted out but there are still ongoing negotiations over the formation of a tribunal.
Over the past five years, China has been cited as a major source of counterfeits sold in Kenya, but many more countries are cited as huge supplies of various categories of fake goods that have flooded the Kenyan market.
The counterfeit issue has been compounded by the fact that unlike in the past when most counterfeits were imported, there has been a massive growth of locally produced counterfeit products.
"Imports can easily be dealt with by setting up check points at the designated entry points, it is much harder to monitor local counterfeits due to their diversity and geographical spread.
This is a growing challenge because many more people have the capacity to produce counterfeits," said Mr Poroji.
Last year, Microsoft East Africa launched an assault on the use of pirated software by Internet cafes and succeeded in getting a degree of compliance in the use of genuine software.
Mr Poroji said that the real challenge is consumer education. The process is much easier for mobile handset dealers where the buyers can tell a fake by simply checking the warranty offered because while all genuine sets have an automatic one year warranty, counterfeits offer guarantees for less than a month. Other products may be much harder to tell.
"It is even a bigger challenge for certain sectors such as auto spares. For example it is hard to authenticate oil filters," said Toyota Kenya's Mr Osogo. He says it take a while to have a well informed public.
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