Day 28: Today we visited one of the biggest butchers in Mombasa: Magram Butchery Ltd. Magram has been one of the biggest beef dealers for the last 25 years he supplies most of the major hotels on the coast. It was very interesting to talk to this business man because he highlighted some of the issues surrounding the livestock industry. But more interesting was to find out that the business problems affecting entrepreneur in Kenya are the same as in develop countries if not worse. For instance Mr Magram pointed out that the big hotels use supplier’s capitals to finance their operations. He was pointing out that 60 even 90 days credit is not a problem but on the coast of Kenya the big resort flex their muscles and pay when they feel like. On the other hand Magram has been keeping its payments to LIME and he always pays on the due date. Mr Magram also operates a ranch, not out of choice but out of necessity. Approximately 10 years ago the government the biggest ranch in Kenya was acquired by the government at that point operations started to deteriorate. Magram was buying all the cattle from that ranch so he was forced to start his own ranch by leasing some land. Ranching is a very important in Kenya because most of the cattle come from semi arid regions and therefore they need to be conditioned and fattened before they can be slaughtered. This can only be done where pastures are available. A cattle can be bought for 30 Ksh per kg at Garissa and sold at the terminal market for 75 Ksh. This spread has to take into account traders margins, transport, conditioning and rancher margins. This is a very cut throat industry at the end of the day cattle are commodities and even though we haven’t carried out a full PEST analysis barrier to entry seems very low. I guess this is enough cattle trading background for one day. I like this assignment because it allows me to put into practice all that I have learnt in my first year of business school. The real life though is always more complicated than the case we had to do at Ivey!While in Mombasa we visited the old town and for Jesus an old Portuguese fort built by an Italian architect I think in the 15th century! We also walked around the old town with its narrow streets and its Arabic influence.