The morning sun did not so much rise over the Bole Lemi Industrial Park as it ignited the landscape. It beat down with a tangible force on the endless corrugated tin roofs, setting the very air above them to shimmering like a mirage. Stepping from my car, the heat was a physical wall, but it was the sound that truly defined the space – a deep, industrial hum that seemed to vibrate up from the earth itself, the bass note of our nation’s economic ambition. The true cost of a nation’s ambition is not measured in cement or steel, but in the quiet, midday moments within its factory walls. I learned this lesson not in a boardroom, but on a bench in the shade of the Bole Lemi Special Economic Zone.
We often hear about the engines of industry – innovation, automation, lean processes. We rarely talk about the most fundamental engine of all – the human body and mind that show up to work every day. And what fuels it. We have built a national brand on a potent phrase: “abundant, cheap, active and trainable labour.” It headlines our investment brochures and slides effortlessly into pitches to foreign capital. Demographically, it is an unassailable truth – we are a sea of youthful potential, one of the youngest populations on the planet. For years, I, as a consultant, have used this phrase as a cornerstone.
At one interview session I had with a factory worker inside the park, I learnt a different story. A story that meant a lot. Aster, 22, has the deft hands of a born assembler. Yet, as she confessed to me during a break, her greatest daily battle isn’t meeting quotas – it is the “three o’clock fog.” Her day, fueled by coffee and a starch-heavy canteen plate, left her mind blurring numbers and her willpower depleted by mid-afternoon. “I am here,” she said, “but my strength is gone.” In her words, I heard the silent, staggering inefficiency hiding within our most touted economic phrase: “cheap, abundant labor.”
This is the foundational flaw. We have built our industrial ascent on a demographic truth – a youthful population – while willfully ignoring the biological reality that sustains it. Labor that is undernourished is not cheap. It is astronomically expensive, plagued by presenteeism, absenteeism, and crippling turnover. My assessment as a consultant was the fact that we were running our most vital economic engines on the wrong fuel.
We celebrate initiatives like school feeding programs, and rightly so. Turning hundreds of thousands of children back into classrooms is a monumental achievement. Government, investors and companies supporting such work deserve praise as they are planting seeds for a future harvest of talent and stability. They are investing in the country’s tomorrow. Yet, we must ask a harder question about today. What happens when those nourished children grow into the workforce we proudly call “cheap”? Imagine that worker now. She is a salaried employee in a factory, having moved from a neighboring town. Her wage, while competitive on a global cost spreadsheet, allows her to barely afford a single room and perhaps two modest meals a day. Even if she receives a subsidized plate at the worksite, what is the nutritional weight of the food she can afford for herself and her family after hours? The math of survival often defaults to empty calories—enough to stave off hunger, but nowhere near enough to fuel excellence.
This is where our “cheap labor” narrative collides with a costly reality. What investors are sold as a low-cost advantage often metastasizes into a silent, persistent drain. A high turnover, as depleted workers seek any marginal improvement elsewhere; rampant absenteeism due to preventable illness; and the ghost in the machine – presenteeism – where bodies are at work but minds and energies are fogged by malnutrition and fatigue. You are not paying for a unit of labor; you are renting a diminished version of human potential. The “cheap” input becomes an expensive problem, eroding productivity, quality, and innovation from within.
The business case for a fundamental shift is irrefutable. We must evolve our national pitch from
“cheap labor” to “productive, resilient, and capable workforce.” This is not a soft-hearted appeal to charity. It is a hard-nosed strategy for competitive advantage and retention. The most forwardthinking investors already see this. They understand that the foundation of a reliable supply chain is not just machinery, but the health of the people who operate it. They recognize that the return on investment in workforce nutrition – figures like $15 back for every $1 spent – is not corporate social responsibility. It is operational excellence.
And this is where the story pivots from diagnosis to blueprint. In factories that have chosen a different path, a quiet transformation is underway. It begins with a shift in perspective: seeing the canteen not as a cost center, but as a vital infrastructure project. I have seen this firsthand through collaborative efforts that bring technical expertise directly to the factory floor. The process is pragmatic. First, stakeholders are aligned around a simple, data-backed truth: a well-nourished worker is a better worker. Then, the real work begins – not with complex theory, but with practical action.
Canteen menus are quietly revamped, not by fiat, but through collaboration with cooks and managers. The goal is not exotic food, but smarter food: introducing fortified oils, balancing plates with accessible proteins and local vegetables, and ensuring the meals provide sustained energy, not just fleeting fullness. This is paired with something even more powerful: nutrition education. Workers are not told what to eat. They are engaged in understanding why – knowledge that travels home with them.
This operational excellence, this fundamental re-engineering of the workplace ecosystem, did not emerge from a vacuum. It was catalyzed by a clear-eyed partnership with technical experts who understood both the science of nutrition and the mechanics of a factory floor. The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) provided the crucial initial spark and framework, demonstrating that such transformation is not only possible but profitable. They helped bridge the gap between evidence and execution, showing how to systematically bring factories on board, translate nutritional science into revamped canteen menus, and embed education so workers become advocates for their own health. Their role was to prove the model, creating a replicable blueprint for turning the canteen from a cost center into a cornerstone of productivity and well-being.
Aster’s story doesn’t have to be the default. It can be the “before.” The “after” is a worker who finishes her shift with energy, whose health costs her family less, and whose consistent focus adds tangible value to her company. The path forward is clear, but it requires moving from successful pilot projects to standard operating procedure. To secure this future, we need more than corporate goodwill. We need structural commitment.
It is time for policymakers to enact smart bylaws and incentives that make workforce nutrition a baseline standard, not a luxury. This could mean integrating basic nutritional criteria into the licensing for industrial canteens, offering streamlined permits or tax recognitions for factories that achieve certified “Well-Nourished Workplace” status, or providing technical support for small and medium enterprises to adopt these practices. We must champion a new class of investor and a new kind of industrial policy – one that recognizes that the ultimate infrastructure is human well-being. Let us stop selling cheapness and start marketing proven, nourished productivity. Let us build an economy where the worker is not an input to be depleted, but a partner to be invested in. The returns, as the most visionary factories are proving, are the ones that truly build a nation.
Befikadu Eba is Founder and Managing Director of Erudite Africa Investments, a former Banker with strong interests in Economics, Private Sector Development, Public Finance and Financial Inclusion. He is reachable at befikadu.eba@eruditeafrica.com.
