Partnering with Coke for the greater good?
By Claire Ward - Friday, September 7, 2012 - 0 Comments
(Yes.)
Photo: Guy Godfree
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. She is blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at:www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Read Claire’s previous posts here.
As anyone in marketing will tell you, branding can make or break a product. And branding, in ColaLife’s case, has caused a bit of controversy — while the charity isn’t funded or coordinated by Coca-Cola, its nominal association with the Coke name, its brand colours (the website’s dominant hue is Coke-red) and its general chumminess with the soft drink company have raised eyebrows in the health sector. On the one hand, the relationship provides a practical way for ColaLife to deliver its medicines and share supply chain knowledge, not to mention raise its public profile; but on the other hand, the charity with a health mission appears to be dealing with the corporation that in large part makes its profits selling sugary, unhealthy soft drinks.
Indeed, in an online forum entitled “ColaLife or ColaDeath,” water and sanitation expert Cor Dietvorst questions whether it is appropriate for ColaLife to be nominally associated with the beverage, when one of its key ingredients, high-fructose corn syrup, has been linked with numerous health problems in the developed and developing world alike. He points out that the World Health Organization estimates 80 per cent of deaths in developing countries are now attributable to non communicable diseases (NCDs), and refers to a report noting that the poor are increasingly exposed to alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy diets, while they continue to have limited access to “preventive and curative services.”
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An African health minister’s dilemmas
By Claire Ward - Friday, August 24, 2012 at 2:58 PM - 0 Comments
The Cola Road, Week 3: Claire Ward in conversation with Dr. Joseph Kasonde
Zambia Minister of Health Joseph Kasonde. Photo: Claire Ward.
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. She is blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at: www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Last week, I sat down with Zambia’s minister of health, Dr. Joseph Kasonde. At his offices in Lusaka, we discussed aid, the benefits and perils of public-private partnerships, and specifically U.K. charity ColaLife’s idea of teaming up with Coca-Cola to distribute medicines to rural areas in this country. He had lots to say:*
Q: Can you talk about the challenges of access to medicine in Zambia?
A: What happens is the medicines are delivered to a place some 200 kilometres away, and you have to find a way to get them from there to the village to the people who live around it. When you send a lorry from the centres like Lusaka and Ndola, they can only so often. They can’t do this on a very regular basis. And if you want deliveries weekly or daily then you’ve got to do something local. And that is where the private sector comes in. They have shown, as ColaLife has taken up, that you will find Coca-Cola in any village, at any time, in the course of the year. But you’ll not find medicines. What’s the difference? There is something there to learn from. And that’s what we’ve done.
Q: What potential do you see for ColaLife? Do you think the idea of delivering anti-diarrhea kits containing oral rehydration salts through Coca-Cola’s distribution network is sustainable?
A: It’s a very interesting project which we support as a ministry, because the whole idea of distributing these important salts has been lacking for a long time. (…) I’m trying to build on their concept for the delivery of medicines in general, as it applies particularly to the rural areas.
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The Cola Road, Week 2: An aid project’s dress rehearsal
By Claire Ward - Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 9:09 AM - 0 Comments
Of flat tires, sudden darkness and rays of hope
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. She is blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at:www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Read Claire’s previous post. Watch the photo gallery.
Boys will be boys, and men will be boys. My dad’s favourite adage plays in my head as I cling to my seat in the back of the Land Rover, this time in a southern province about 20km down a craggy dirt road west of Kalomo. Simon drives with the confidence of someone who has been manning offroad vehicles for years — that is, with startling speed and an apparent taste for plunging into crevices, letting out little “woos!” when big dips catch us off guard. Rohit Ramchandani sits shotgun — he’s the Canadian public health PhD candidate leading the monitoring and evaluations team conducting research in ColaLife’s targeted communities. Four of us — Albert, Tracy (my new crewmate) and Elizabeth, a researcher conducting an evaluation of ColaLife’s targeted communities — are crammed into the backseat. We make small talk as the sun tucks itself under the horizon, leaving behind dramatic silhouetted trees and a gleaming pink and orange sky. We pass a young man on a bicycle with a goat tied to his back. Simon calls out, “Is that your dinner?!” The man grins and replies, yes, flashing a row of perfect white teeth.
We continue on and as the pink sky fades to inky black, which happens alarmingly fast in Zambia. At once the road begins to feel considerably bumpier. Within minutes — minutes, that is, and not seconds — Albert and Simon determine it feels like we have a flat tire. We pull off the road and I grab my camera, ready for action. When I step out, my leg is nearly seared by the burning, smoking back tire, which is completely shredded, the rim bent and deformed. I’m quickly ushered away from danger by the half-dozen young Zambian men who swarm our vehicle — they belong to Elizabeth’s group of researchers and have been traveling by pick-up truck behind us. Simon is managing the repair by second nature, handing a tire iron here, a carjack there, urging the young men to be safe as they play mechanic. He and Albert hoist the spare tire off the back and before we know it, we’re off again.
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The Cola Road, Week 1: How Coke crates could save lives
By Claire Ward - Thursday, August 2, 2012 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments
Documenting the launch of a radically new aid distribution model in rural Africa
Photo: Getty Images; Editing: Maclean's
Claire Ward is a former associate editor at Maclean’s and is pursuing a Master’s in news and documentary at New York University. For the next five weeks, she will be blogging from Zambia, where she is filming The Cola Road, a documentary that follows the launch of the first aid program that aims to use Coca-Cola’s distribution network to deliver medicines to the remotest corners of the developing world. Check out more updates from The Cola Road on Facebook at: www.facebook.com/TheColaRoad or Twitter at: www.twitter.com/TheColaRoad. Or follow Claire on Twitter @thementalward
Photo: Guy Godfree
“Claire, are you enjoying?” says Albert, in sing-song Zambian English. He’s passed me a handful of “African apples”—tart, cherry-sized fruit that are crunchy and addictive—as we pull away from a roadside market town along the Great East Road in Zambia. The town is filled with stalls displaying brightly coloured textiles, hand-woven baskets and fresh fish drying on grills; meandering goats and pigs wobble in front of cars slowly making their way toward the bridge across the Luangwa river. What was once a Coca Cola container houses a makeshift mobile phone shop that also sells soft drinks. As we drive off, Albert points out the approaching hills of Mozambique. “Yes Albert, I am enjoying!” I declare—it’s true: these roadside fruits put to shame the varieties I pull off the shelves at the bodegas back in New York. “So have you decided to stay with us in Zambia?” he says, smiling. It’s a passing comment, but it tugs at an inner struggle of mine—am I just another mzungu (read: white person) taking a fleeting interest in his country’s troubles? I shrug good-naturedly, my cheeks full of African apples, trying not to choke as we dive into the next crater-sized pothole.
Albert is a thirty-something social worker for Keepers Zambia, a Lusaka-based NGO that has partnered with Colalife, the subject of the documentary I’ve come here to film. A year ago, I wrote an article for Maclean’s about this up-and-coming U.K. charity, which wants to piggy-back on Coca-Cola’s far-reaching distribution network in the developing world to distribute medical supplies to far-flung rural areas. The basic premise: Coke gets everywhere, aid doesn’t; so why not pack those crates of pop with medicines? Colalife came up with a wedge-shaped container—which they christened the “Aidpod”—that fits between rows of Coke bottles. When I interviewed Colalife co-founder Simon Berry at the time, the project was still in a highly theoretical phase, but I knew I’d be revisiting this story as it evolved.
