The WAAG’s tale – West African impressions by Reith Still

July 2006 marked the end of an era in international business development in Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire with the announcement that Reith Still, a stalwart for thirteen years with BGI partner member Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, was leaving his post of International Business Director to return to the private sector with Swedish industrial giant Trelleborg.

Reith has been succeeded at the Chamber by Jon Woodwards (Jon.Woodwards@agcc.co.uk), but, before clearing his desk, he took a few minutes to ponder the importance of internationalisation and recall hair-raising tales of tracer bullets and stranded aircraft…

“I think one of the most important keys to successful international trading is to retain a sense of humility when you are dealing with unfamiliar business cultures. No matter how remote you may feel a foreign environment to be, it is imperative that you are able to respect other people’s cultures, make yourself acceptable to overseas contacts, and, when necessary, even laugh at yourself in certain situations.

These are qualities which you don’t always need in local business circles. I was born in South Africa, and my family had always been typical Scottish globe-trotters, so I grew up well used to having guests of every nationality in the house. I think this experience has stood me in good stead in tricky territories like West Africa. It gave me a healthy international perspective and a genuine interest in other cultures.

I started work with Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce back in 1993 as an export development adviser funded by the then DTI. It’s funny now to look back at how little interest North East businesses had in these days in internationalisation, even though everyone acknowledged that the working life of the North Sea was finite.

The American approach

I had previously worked for a couple of major US engineering corporations, and that experience had rubbed off. Americans, in my opinion, were – and often still are – better at internationalising than UK businesses. They take the export function really seriously, so they resource it properly – and they’re not scared to throw money at a new venture. They’re also not scared to write the whole thing off if it doesn’t work out and to learn from the experience.

Above all, they know they’re in exporting for the long-term, so they’re not looking for the “quick fix” which obsesses so many British bean-counters!

To be honest, I wasn’t particularly happy with my initial status with the Chamber as a part-time export “expert” – I felt a bit compromised as an independent consultant working under the Chamber banner so, on both sides, we soon decided the solution was for me to join the Chamber as a full-time employee.

13 years later, I’m happy to say a lot has been achieved, and North East businesses now have a well-deserved reputation for working the world, most notably in oil and gas.

Early in my career, I worked hard to convince SMEs in particular that, with a questionable long-term future in the North Sea, the only answer was to cultivate and break into new overseas markets.

A historic trip

The Chamber was good enough to give me the freedom to develop export support activities, and one of the emerging markets which had attracted my attention was West Africa, so I ended up leading what was the UK’s first-ever trade mission to Angola in 1996.

I think the DTI had been looking for someone for some time to help break into West Africa, but there was a distinct shortage of takers! Sixteen intrepid North East business representatives joined me on what turned out to be both a tremendous and a highly significant mission, with the support of both the DTI and BP.

Nothing could really have prepared us for that trip. On the way out, we had to land in Kinshasa to refuel, where the aircraft promptly ran off the runway and sank up to its axles in rough ground.

We were promptly marched off the plane under armed guard and into a disused hangar with no sanitation for eight hours. Welcome to West Africa! After that, when we finally got to Angola, we were treated to the sight of tracer bullets flying overhead – this was during the civil war there but, by then, we were beginning to acclimatise and, above all, we could see the outstanding business potential in Angola, Nigeria, and other West African countries.

To keep the momentum going, on our return we formed UK WAAG – the West Africa Action Group – with a deliberately waggish title. You need a sense of humour to tackle West Africa! Today, UK WAAG (http://www.agcc.co.uk/tradegrowth/index.cfm?pageid=79) has over 60 members and is now an acknowledged expert on the West African market – nobody else in Europe can offer such a good development mechanism.

Knowing the rules

I believe West Africa often gets a bit of an undeserved bad press. Despite all the horror stories, you can be safe there but you have to be very careful and know the rules.

You can’t just fly into Luanda and ask for a taxi to the local Hilton - I shudder to think where you would end up. You can’t even go with the friendly driver standing at the airport with your name on a card – the crime gangs have worked that one out too.

But through UK WAAG you can access unrivalled expertise and knowledge on key West African issues like business practices, security, health and corruption, and, when you are forearmed in this way, you will find the market no more dangerous than Brazil, Russia or Kazakhstan.

Huge potential

There is one very simple reason why I think North East oil service businesses should consider accessing the West African market. The North Sea goes through cycles of boom and bust, and the current boom, fuelled by new technology and the emergence of entrepreneurial independent operators won’t last for ever. It’s academic, in a way, to speculate about whether it has a life of 5, 10 or 15 years.

But, with West Africa, as with Brazil and Kazakhstan, you are looking at massive new fields with at least fifty years of life in them. And the best news of all is that much of North Sea oil technology is already market-ready – field-proven, highly respected, fully applicable for new markets and with absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel.

UK WAAG can make it relatively easy for you to access this new market, and the cake is so large, I believe there is room for many more North East businesses to have a slice of the action.

Indeed, I think we should actively consider more collective approaches with North East companies whose products and services are complementary, marketing themselves as a cohesive unit. There is already a great group dynamic within UK WAAG, but I think using a more cooperative approach would increase the potential rewards while mitigating the risks.

But it’s imperative that North East businesses don’t think you can be successful in export marketing on the cheap. All my experience tells me that exporting is hardly ever a quick fix; it’s a business discipline in its own right, it has to be mastered, it probably needs your best people, and, above all, it will call for sound core domestic business to support you through the years and months of cultivating a new market.

So, after thirteen eventful and memorable years, I think I can report that UK WAAG, and other international development initiatives, are doing a really good job.

Although many businesses have successfully internationalised their activities, it is heartening to note that so much of the R & D, the international marketing and the sharp end of the admin is being retained here in the North East.

Now, I look forward to liaising with many of my old WAAG colleagues in a new capacity – as a willing member, keen to learn and share knowledge!