It is early morning in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, and a small independent wholesaler is doing a roaring trade. The city's street traders and small independent retailers have come to stock up on household products, one of which is toothpaste.
This wholesaler stocks two brands. The first, the so-called genuine article, is manufactured by Unilever, one of the world's biggest consumer goods businesses. The other, the wholesaler describes as "Chinese" - Unilever calls it fake.
By close of business this wholesaler is justifiably pleased. He has sold more tubes of counterfeit toothpaste than the genuine article, which is excellent news for the bottom line.
On the genuine product he has made a 13% mark-up, on the counterfeit an impressive 50%. Fair play to him, some might say - after all it is only toothpaste.
No joke
Fake toothpaste ranks low down the list of priorities for the continent's law enforcement agencies.
According to Roberto Manriquez, a criminal intelligence officer in Interpol's intellectual property crime unit, counterfeit medicines are the number one priority of the world's biggest police organisation.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 30% of medicines sold in developing countries are fakes and a major problem is that high numbers of drugs bought by the state for use in public hospitals are being illegally obtained and then sold on for profit in the private sector.
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