Why We Pull Each Other Down

Unsplash. Bandwagon effect

The crabs in the barrel are real. But maybe we were never meant to be in the barrel in the first place.

I still remember the day I fixed the air conditioner in my rented shop. It sits right at the border, a frontline of trade where people, goods, and money flow in both directions daily. My business is a mobile money service, built slowly over a year from that small space. The AC was a small victory a sign that maybe, just maybe, we were beginning to stand.

Not long after, the trouble began.

First came the copycats. A nearby forex bureau I’d once had friendly ties with added momo to their counter. Then the clearing agents who handle logistics for cross-border traders started offering the same service. One by one, businesses that had nothing to do with mobile money suddenly had “we also do it here” scribbled on cardboard. People saw my tiny pond and decided they needed to drink from it too.

Then came the hissing. Whenever a customer walked toward my shop, someone nearby would hiss “Pssst” and wave them toward their own door instead. Subtle enough to deny, deliberate enough to poach. I watched it happen again, customers diverted mid-step as the whole street turned into a scramble for the same few transactions.

It got heavier still. People who didn’t even operate from this side of the border started looking for any empty space just steps from mine, setting up identical services as if proximity alone could siphon off my lifeblood. And then the cruellest blow: some began telling my highest-commission clients the ones who kept my float afloat to stop coming to my office. Framed as friendly advice. It was sabotage wrapped in concern.

The physical space closed in too. Vendors my own landlord had helped get started a food seller, a woman selling water and eggs gradually moved their tables directly in front of my entrance. Not competing with my service, just covering my visibility. Today there’s barely four feet of walking space left to reach my door. Unless you’re looking carefully, you’d never know there was a mobile money office behind the wall of crates, umbrellas, and cooking pots.

I won’t pretend the commissions are encouraging right now. We’re stalling. The shop still stands, but the storm is daily.

And time has brought a strange reversal. The AC is gone, removed long ago. The roof leaks now, damaged by construction on the bank’s building next door. The shop is more broken than ever. But here’s what I didn’t see coming: every copycat who crowded that stretch with identical services every single one has stopped operating. Their shops are quiet, signs faded, presence erased. I don’t know why. Maybe the margins were too thin. Maybe the scramble wore them out. Maybe the market simply couldn’t carry that much duplication. I hold no celebration over their exit only a quiet observation: I’m still here. Leaking roof, no AC, narrow path, but still here.

I didn’t write this to complain. What I’ve experienced is a pattern that plays out in markets, bus stations, and shop fronts across this continent. If we don’t name it honestly, we’ll never break it.

The Barrel Is Not a Metaphor

You’ve heard the “crabs in a barrel” analogy when one crab tries to climb out, the others pull it back down. Usually told as a lesson about jealousy. But I’ve come to believe the barrel is a real economic and psychological system, driven not by pure evil but by a survival response to a world that keeps whispering, there’s only so much to go around.

The people who copycatted my service, hissed at my customers, blocked my entrance I don’t think they woke up plotting my downfall. I think they woke up afraid, seeing my shop not as a fellow small business but as a threat to their own survival. If I gained a customer, they lost one. That’s the zero-sum logic of scarcity.

The cruel twist is that this logic becomes self-fulfilling. When ten people set up identical services on a tight border strip, nobody grows. The market doesn’t expand it chokes. Foot traffic gets confused, customers feel harassed, and the whole ecosystem shrinks until everyone is fighting over a smaller pie.

I had my own vulnerabilities too. I was a regular church person, and sometimes I’d close the office for activities outside town. In a cutthroat environment, any absence is an invitation. I don’t blame myself for what others chose to do, but I learned: if you leave a gap, this system will fill it sometimes aggressively. That lesson cost me, but it sharpened me.

The Envy Trap

The hissing was envy in audio form not the quiet kind that hides in the heart, but active, audible, aimed straight at my customers. “Pssst” wasn’t just a bid for attention. It was an attempt to erase mine: don’t look there, look here, he doesn’t deserve your step.

Envy in our entrepreneurial spaces often wears the clothing of “healthy competition” but tastes like resentment the inability to watch someone rise when their rise feels like evidence of your own stagnation. Pulling someone down becomes a way to quiet that pain.

But the damage radiates outward. When a community watches someone’s entrance gets physically blocked by vendors they once helped into business, they absorb a lesson: don’t grow too much, don’t become too visible, you will be punished. It teaches the next young entrepreneur to keep their head down, stay small, and never fix the AC. That guarantees the barrel stays full forever.

Criticism Disguised as Realism

The most dangerous sabotage came with a calm voice. Nobody told my clients I was a fraud. They probably said things like, “Oh, you still go there? There’s a faster place now,” or “That place is so hidden now better come here.” It sounded like advice. It felt like concern. It was a knife wrapped in a handshake.

This is “realism,” weaponized. You’ve heard it:

• “You’re dreaming too big.”
• “That idea won’t work here.”
• “Be careful, the market is tough.”

Now when I hear it, I ask: is this person warning me of a genuine risk, or watching me attempt something they were too afraid to try themselves? Much of the advice we receive is someone else’s fear dressed in mature words. We must learn the difference and stop dressing our own fear as wisdom when we speak to others.

The Quiet Surprise

For a long time, I stood alone no ally, no collaborator, just me against a street bent on copying, poaching, or hiding me. The isolation made me question everything: am I foolish to keep opening this shop when my entrance is a narrow corridor? Am I wasting time fighting for commissions that barely move?

The numbers are still not encouraging. The AC I once saw as a symbol of arrival is gone. The roof leaks onto the same floor where I used to sit with pride. It felt like everything I’d improved was being stripped back.

And yet the hissers are gone. I’m not dancing about it. I’m just still here, clinging to the belief that a better tomorrow is worth the fight.

I’ve decided that being pulled down will not turn me into a puller. If I ever climb out of this barrel, I want to reach back and lift someone else not push them into the heap.

The African entrepreneur’s greatest battle isn’t always capital, policy, or infrastructure. Sometimes it’s the hissing behind us, the stalls in front of our door, the quiet voices telling us to give up. We drown those voices out not by shouting over them, but by building a new chorus of celebration, collaboration, and stubborn hope.

In the next article, I’ll talk honestly about what happens when we try to move from isolation to partnership and why trust feels like the most dangerous thing we could offer. But for today: look around your own four-foot path. Who can you refuse to block? Who can you celebrate?

Aarron Attah Sustainable Development student, UESD | Founder, Legacy Jard Enterprise The African Entrepreneur Series Article 3 of 6