Teach Africa in Houston

While our work often focuses on generating sales and developing programs in Rwanda - i.e. being social entrepreneurs - Indego Africa's third mission element is raising public awareness. Take the recent Teach Africa event. On May 11 Tom Mitro, Indego Africa's co-founder and VP-Finance, participated in a day-long educational program on Africa that reached more than 3,000 students in the Houston area. Tom led the breakout session on democracy in Africa - trying to bridge the gap in our schools in terms of levels of understanding and quality of instruction on Africa. No small undertaking!

Even stranger still, two of Indego Africa's former employers were represented as sponsors of the Teach Africa event (I worked for Akin Gump and Tom worked for Chevron). Small world!

For more about Teach Africa, click here for the brochure and more information. Better yet, if you're in the Houston area, come see Tom Mitro and Matt Mitro speak at the World Affairs Council of Houston on June 11, 2009. Find out more on the Indego Africa events page.

- Matt

Aid Debate at the Financial Times

There's a debate running at the Financial Times' arena section.  Lots of important folks discussing whether aid works or not. Dambisa Moyo of Dead Aid fame, Jeffrey Sachs of The End of Poverty, Steve Radelet of the Center for Global Development and Martin Wolf, the FT'S chief economics, writer are all involved.

After reading what's there I added the following comment:

"There's truth in both of these camps: some aid does seem to work while much of it is wasted or worse. Part of the problem is that too little attention is paid to measuring outcomes/effectiveness of aid projects. Efforts by groups like the Poverty Action Lab help on this front. Another part of the problem is, as critics point out, that too little aid gets to the poor on the ground. One way around this is to give small grants of money directly to the poor. Or take an example like the African Development Foundation in the US -- its mission is to provide direct support for Africa-driven solutions to problems of poverty and marginalization. With small grants, it supports social entrepreneurs and traditional entrepreneurs who create jobs and diversify local livelihoods. ADF takes seriously the challenge just issued by the Danish government in its Commission on Africa report: African entrepreneurs are the key to African economic growth -- supporting them and helping them to become more competitive in world markets may well be a winning strategy for aid."

Of course, another direct way to help the poor help themselves is through effective private social entreprise efforts, such as Indego Africa. These efforts, hard to quantify, are nonetheless essential because they bring the creativity, talent, and drive of entrepreneurs to bear to meet local needs such as job creation, improved sanitation, education, medical care, child care, agricultural productivity. . . you get the point. The photo, btw, is of a girl I met at a private orphanage in Botswana.

- Karol

Planting Gardens of Health at Indego Africa

Indego Africa covers a lot of ground when it comes to training and empowering the women we work with – management advice, marketing savvy, African and U.S. business experience, and plenty of legal expertise. There's no doubt, however, that it would take us days and weeks to put together a best practices course on something like nutrition and agriculture. As we've done many times before, we sought out a partnership with the experts.

Gardens for Health International (“G4H”) is, by its own description, charged with “enabl[ing] people living with HIV/AIDS to improve their nutrition, health, and treatment adherence through sustainable agriculture.” In practice, this means (a) helping HIV+ individuals to form agricultural cooperatives, (b) investing in community and home gardens, (c) educating vulnerable households in nutrition and agricultural techniques, and (d) helping establish income-generating ventures. It's a worthy and innovative cause, which has led to G4H being recognized as an Echoing Green Finalist this year (Indego Africa was a semi-finalist in 2008).

G4H recently provided Cocoki with 2-3 days of free training from skilled agronomists on utilizing bio-intensive agricultural methods and planting highly nutritious staple foods, some of which were new to the women. Cocoki hopes to soon have its own community garden, tended by the women, with moringa trees and leafy greens – all grown with organic manure and pesticides. To get an idea of the nutritional impact: "For pregnant and breast-feeding women, moringa leaves and pods can do much to preserve the mother's health and pass on strength to the fetus or nursing child. One 100 g portion of leaves could provide a woman with over a third of her daily need of calcium and give her important quantities of iron, protein, copper, sulfur and B-vitamins." (read the full report).

We're hopeful that G4H-inspired community gardens will be a regular feature at all our cooperatives. More importantly, we expect to see major nutritional and health improvements.

- Matt

Living on $2 a Day

Not too long ago a friend asked me what I think is the biggest misconception about Africa. My answer: that the poor in Africa don't (or can't) save money. This is totally false: the poor are incredible savers--they have to be. The idea that the poor can't save may be relatively commonplace because it reinforces our stereotype of them as helpless, also a misbegotten notion.

I've repeatedly seen evidence of how financially disciplined the poor are. In South Africa, Rwanda, and Tanzania I've met people who struggle each day to feed their families, pay school fees, and buy stock for their business. And yet, these same people find a way to put a rand or a few Rwandan francs aside each day or each week. This small savings provides a much-needed cushion in case of emergencies. It might also be used to pay the big-ticket items that families confront on a regular basis: school fees being among the most pressing.

I've just started a new book called Portfolios of the Poor: How the World's Poor Live on $2 a Day that provides a window onto the financial world of the poor. The book draws on data collected as part of the Financial Diaries project. Here's one insight: the poor manage a complex set of financial relationships BUT the array of financial products to which they have access is less-than ideal. For example, too few of the poor have access to micro-insurance. And, in part, because bank fees in the developing world can be high the poor are often unbanked. When fees, or minimum required account balances fall, the poor will turn to banks as a reasonable option.

A challenge for policy makers and a key opportunity for social entrepreneurs is to understand what kinds of financial services the poor want and are willing to pay for. Portfolios of the Poor certainly helps with this. Better understanding should make for better policy and, hopefully, a host of improved financial services for the world's poor.

- Karol

Cleaning Up Kibera

I recently wrote about educational entrepreneurs serving the needs of the poor in Africa and, particularly, in the Kibera slums of Nairobi. It turns out that Kibera is filled with all kinds of entrepreneurs, including David Kuria.

Mr. Kuria is helping to address one of the most pressing, difficult of social problems in the developing world: he's providing good sanitation facilities to the urban poor. Here's a story I love about three African entrepreneurs who are attacking the problems of poor sanitation and making a profit in the process. Mr. Kuria is one of them. He has brought the concept of "toilet malls" to Kenya's slums. (The photo of a toilet mall comes from the OneWorld story). In this case, Mr. Kuria's toilet mall provides (for a fee) toilet stalls, showers for men and women, a diaper-changing area, a water kiosk (for people to purchase clean water to take home) and other services such as phone booths or shoe shines. The facilities are clean -- which reduces the risk of water-borne disease -- and affordable. Using the toilet costs about .06 cents (5 Ksh); a shower is about .12 cents (10 Ksh). The result of this innovation: tens of thousands of customers are using this service each day to make their lives a little more pleasant. This would seem to be the kind of project that's scalable, given a somewhat supportive institutional environment. Here's some additional information on the company.

Also VERY interesting is the work being done in Nigeria by Dr. Joseph Adelegan, a civil engineer who has figured out how to take the waste material from cattle slaughtering and turn it into biogas that can be used to generate electricity and can also be used for cooking fuel. The fuel is sold to urban poor and the waste from Dr. Adelegan's factory is turned into fertilizer. Here's a story from Case Western Reserve that provides additional information about Dr. Adelegan's project.

For me, these stories highlight the often overlooked, but ultimately essential role that entrepreneurs play in society: they problem solve and bring creative solutions to market. Customers benefit, they benefit, and in these cases, the world is a better and cleaner place as a result.

- Karol

Testing the Social Enterprise Market

Here's an interesting story from the WSJ's Live Mint.com site. It discusses the strong interest investors have in social enterprises. More and more, for-profit "social" companies are creating a buzz among venture capitalists. Why? In part, it's the recognition that marketing to the bottom of the pyramid can be a good business strategy. As the article points out: "the for-profit model, as opposed to profit maximization, seeks returns on investment measured in part by the difference the enterprise makes to the life of a consumer."

The WSJ story highlights a company that is building low-cost hospitals in rural and semi-urban areas in India. That's pretty cool. Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions Pvt. Ltd., the company mentioned in the story, was one of 50 finalists in a social enterprise competition in India.

Note what the company does: it provides a social service that is typically provided by the public sector (or by non-profits). But here, entrepreneurs recognize that there are opportunities to make a profit and serve communities when the state either cannot or will not serve the poor: in this case in the health care arena. Especially in countries that lack capacity to supply traditional public goods, the prospect of having social entrepreneurs fill this void is especially attractive. Companies like this truly can make a difference in the lives of the world's poor.

- Karol

New Book, New Look at Africa?

Here's a review of a new book entitled Africa: Altered States; Ordinary Miracles."  The review is by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who often writes about Darfur, but also about human trafficking in Asia.

The book attempts to correct the generally negative view of Africa that most Westerners have. Richard Dowden, the book's author, shares his experiences working and traveling throughout the continent as well as his concerns with official development assistance/foreign aid.

Kristof agrees with Dowden that Africans themselves need to be more central to stories about the continent. For example, Kristof writes:

"It’s true that the most successful and cost-effective interventions are typically not those started by a grand conference in a capital; rather, they are the grass-roots efforts started by local people with local knowledge addressing local needs. We could do much more to support such efforts, with us Westerners serving as aides and financiers to African social entrepreneurs."

Bravo Kristof!!

Supporting Entrepreneurs, Improving Governance

South Africa's leading business newspaper, Business Day, had an op-ed the other day that focuses on two important issues. The first is that governance in Africa seems to be improving. One of the co-authors of the piece, Mo Ibrahim, is the entrepreneur who started the Mo Ibrahim prize -- a large financial award to the African leader who best exhibits qualities of good governance. It's an interesting idea: reward leaders who voluntarily leave office and who help set their countries on a path to greater openness, effectiveness, and transparency.

The other issue the op-ed address is the need to improve Africa's competitiveness in world markets. The authors correctly point to the abundance of creative, hard-working entrepreneurs doing business in Africa. There's not a shortage of entrepreneurial talent rather, business people, and especially the small-scale entrepreneurs, face a plethora of costly challenges: bad roads, high tariff rates, complicated export/import regulations, inadequate security, and lack of credit.

The editorial then goes on to highlight work done by the Danish government, which created an Africa Commission a year ago (the Danes are substantial donors in Africa). Here's a page with the summary of the report's recommendations, you can download the full report from this site. I haven't read the report yet, but the op-ed authors say that it finds traditional foreign aid to be unsustainable. The Commission calls for new initiatives to improve African competitiveness. For example, one set of projects would train people and improve human capital in an effort to strengthen African commercial agriculture. Another set of projects would work on improving access to electricity (it's tough to run sewing machines, for example, with erratic electric supplies). The Danes will also work with the African Development Bank to provide more funding for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

This is an interesting, and hopefully, fruitful approach. And a key shift, at least in terms of the rhetoric, is that governments should improve the regulatory environment in Africa and reduce corruption so that Africa's entrepreneurs have more and better opportunities to flourish.

Schooling for the Poor

One of the most amazing experiences I've had over the past few years involved visiting private schools in the Kibera slums of Nairobi. If anyone had asked me, ten years ago, if I believed that there were private, for-profit, schools in places like Kibera I'd have thought they were joking -- religious schools maybe, but not for-profit ventures. Afterall, how could poor families pay the tuition for the schools? In fact, I'd have been wrong. (This picture, by Walter LeCroy, shows a group of school children at one of Kibera schools we visited in 2007. )

In Kibera, in the poor areas of Hyderabad, India, in the slums of Lagos, Nigeria, and throughout the developing world, educational entrepreneurs have built schools to meet the needs of poor families. These schools may not have great facilities (floors may be dirt, children may be crowded at shared desks where they share books, there may little room to run or play) but they do have other signficant benefits: good levels of parental involvement, educators who are motivated to ensure that students learn skills that parents think are important (often English), and very good educational outcomes compared to local public schools. Private schools are a good option for many poor parents in the developing world because they offer something that public-sector schools do not: an environment in which children can and do learn. The benefits of this kind of schooling exceed the costs parents incur.

If you'd like to learn more about these amazing educational entrepreneurs I recommend a new book by Dr. James Tooley called The Beautiful Tree. Here is a short review of the book. I've had the priviledge of hearing Jim speak on several occasions and have consulted with him and with his partner, Dr. Pauline Dixon, a few times over the past several years. His/their passion for improving educational opportunities for the poor is infectious. It's their work that led me to Kibera (with a group of friends who were similiarly impressed by Jim and Pauline). Here's a BBC report on Jim's work.

I have The Beautiful Tree on my bedstand and can't wait to get started.

- Karol

Photos from Rwanda

The U.S.-based Indego Africa team – Matt, Ben, and Tom – is back from a wonderful trip to Rwanda! Here are some exclusive photos of the Indego Africa women, their children, the computer and management training programs, the Orphans of Rwanda interns, the Indego team and friends – like Matt Damon (of course) – and Rwanda and its beauty!

For larger versions, CLICK HERE.

Click here for to see the Faces of Indego Africa exhibit and the Hands of Indego Africa.

- Ben

Resilience and Resourcefulness in Africa

Most of us in the Western world have become accustomed to things around us working as expected without even thinking about it - the lights come on when we flip a switch, and there is hot water when we want a shower. So when something goes even slightly wrong, we tend to get a little panicky or annoyed and end up complaining - "How can I be expected to finish this project if my internet connection is so slow?!"

But in many parts of the world (and Rwanda is no exception) finding a way to make things work is an everyday experience that you just take for granted. Complaining just won't help. Those that are successful are the people who are most resilient and resourceful. Some examples:

1. The spindle on one of the older sewing machines at Indego's sewing coop just wasn't turning like it should and the thread was getting stuck in the machine. So one of the more experienced sewers simply placed the spool of thread very lightly between her top and bottom front teeth and started sewing. It worked perfectly, the thread turning quickly and smoothly as the spindle turned in her teeth - just don't try to eat or drink or answer a question at the same time! We think that the six brand new sewing machines that Indego purchased for them last month will help avoid this in the future.

2. Eating at some of the nice but simple restaurants in Kigali can be something of a challenge. Since Rwanda is a land-locked country they cannot always rely on imported food making it to the shops or restaurants. Most menus have lots of choices, but on any one day probably at least half of the selections are not available. So when you ask for the fish kabob it is not unusual for the waiter to return to your table a bit later and in a polite attempt to avoid disappointing you might ask, "What, you don't like chicken?". This is their very courteous and roundabout way of telling you that no fish or beef was available in the market today, so be prepared to adapt your diet if you want to have a meal.

3. Not getting paid on time (or even at all) is a too common problem for many coops or small entrepreneurs throughout many parts of the world. Either the banks experience delays in transferring funds, or the person paying you may not even know how much is in their own bank account. Or maybe your customer wasn't paid on time himself. So the officers of our coops have been learning (through the Indego business courses) how to regularly contact the banks or their customers to make sure that funds are received. And the members have learned in Indego's classes on organizations that they must hold their officers accountable to do just that and report on their progress to the coop members.

It has been gratifying to see the resilience combined with new knowledge of the coop members creating results and change. If enough people throughout the world learn how to hold their institutions and leaders accountable, things can change so that resilience and resourcefulness in response to inefficiencies won't be quite so necessary.

- Tom