“To Rotary World Over!” is the toast we make every Wednesday at the end of our Rotary meetings.

I was inducted into the Rotary Club of Arusha (Tanzania) this year as a Paul Harris Sustaining Member.  Founded by Paul Harris, Rotary is a worldwide organization of business and professional leaders that provides humanitarian service, encourages high ethical standards in all vocations, and helps build goodwill and peace in the world. Approximately 1.2 million Rotarians belong to more than 32,000 clubs in more than 200 countries and geographical areas.  The Arusha, Tanzania chapter is celebrating its 50 year anniversary this year.

Rotary is about fellowship.  We meet weekly for lunch, learn from each other, and enjoy each other’s company.  It has been a great way for me to understand the perspective of the Arusha business community.  Our club also has many interesting projects, including the distribution of mosquito nets to prevent malaria, a rainwater harvesting project, a cataract surgery and more.

Internationally, Rotary played a huge role in eradicating polio.  Which, according to our recent Rotarian Magazine, is a disease that has popped up again in certain African countries.  Since establishing its PolioPlus program in 1985, Rotary members have helped to immunize more than 2 billion children in 122 countries, and have contributed more than US$500 million toward a polio-free world.  Rotary is the lead private sector contributor and volunteer arm of the global partnership dedicated to eradicating polio, which includes the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Not bad for a group of people who (for the most part) do not do social work as their day job.

Before joining the Arusha Rotary club, I was a guest once of a Rotary Club in Silicon Valley under the invitation of Sally Osberg.  I was thinking about the difference between Rotarians in East Africa vs. those in the US.  In our club, many of the business leaders are likely the wealthiest in town.  Much of their formal philanthropy (time and money) happens through the club.  However, their connection to poverty is many degrees closer than those Rotarians I met in Silicon Valley (also likely to be well-off business people and civic leaders who typically donate to good causes).  

Indigenous philanthropy in Africa is very different than what I know of philanthropy in the US.  It is part of the reason why Acumen Fund will have to think carefully as it considers a strategy for raising capital from Africans for its activities here.  In the US, emotional stories sell.  Most Americans (and Western Europeans for that matter) have never met someone who lives on $2 per day and are so far removed from the realities of the people portrayed in those emotionally charged fundraising stories, that they will trust in the avenue that is in front of them to donate (given it is legally incorporated…and of course, the tax break helps). 

The African philanthropist however, likely sees the realities daily because his/her cousin, neighbor, employee, grandma, etc. is asking him/her directly for money to treat malaria, to pay for school fees, to get access to family planning services, to treat HIV, or to pay for food because lack of rainfall didn’t yield good crops this season. All deserving cases for financial support from a charitable soul.

Therefore, formal donations to institutions like Acumen or Rotary, have to do much more than portray a good story to raise money from Africans.  They have to show results at a scale where these realities knocking on their door are actually lessening in tangible ways. This is my perspective based on very limited exposure to philanthropy here- the bar is very high for the performance of philanthropic funds.   Acumen fund’s metrics (such as the BACO and other performance metrics) are critical to the demonstration effect required to channel funds into effective social enterprises solving poverty in Africa.

I decided to video tape the children in my neighborhood in Arusha to share a glimpse of their lives through the streets they play on.  They are such happy kids, running up to give me a hug or greeting me respectfully when I walk by.  I am most impressed with their creative toys.  You will see the marble pool table set on the stool their mother sits on when she cooks corn over the fire for dinner… and the round wheel they chase around.  One of the coolest toys was a set of leaves cut in a special manner so to flutter like an airplane, but I missed the picture of that one.  The girls seemed to be hiding this day, too!  This reminds me so much of playtime for the kids in my mother's first grade classroom in California, yet most of these kids live in very different circumstances with no electricity or water in their homes.

I have often wondered who these kids will grow up to be....wondered if the children I know in America today will cross paths with these little ones as adults someday.

Click the arrow below to view:

As social and environmental ventures seek new ways to attract capital while retaining their social objectives, some have floated the idea of creating a social stock market.  This would be an exchange platform similar to the NYSE, but the companies listed would be valued based on both financial and social performance.  To date, there have been some attempts at this.  One example is Ethex, the ethical exchange or matched trading service provided by Triodos Bank in the UK.  A fully functioning social stock market would require the engagement of many entities from rating agencies to brokers who understand how companies are operating to "maximize shareholder value" from a new perspective. 

Not everyone thinks this is a good idea.  There is an interesting debate going on over in the Catalyst Fund's Blog:  http://www.catfund.com/blog/ you may wish to check out if you are interested in their opinion.

As I mentioned in earlier posts, I very much believe there is a huge gap in the supply of risk capital for social enterprises.  I am talking about longer-term, lower-interest, capital provided by investors who understand social enterprises and who are patient enough to allow an organization to use their financing to grow and take significant risks.  Tom Friedman wrote an article a few weeks ago which highlighted just this need, specifically in Africa.  I have been learning of and meeting with a few East African investors lately, but very few are considering themselves as patient capital investors.  If you are a social financer looking for the sweet spot in terms of development potential- here is is.

Friedman opened by describing his experience in a Tanzanian used clothing market and then went on to write:

Africa needs many things, but most of all it needs capitalists who can start and run legal companies. More Bill Gateses, fewer foundations. People grow out of poverty when they create small businesses that employ their neighbors. Nothing else lasts.

Whenever you read about capital flowing into Africa, though, it tends to be from big lenders like the World Bank, which have very strict criteria and work on big projects, or from microfinanciers, giving out $50 to a woman to buy a sewing machine. Microfinance has a role, but many people don’t want the pressure of being an entrepreneur. They want the stability and prosperity of a job created by capitalist risk takers and innovators. See India.

In some ways what Africa needs most today is more "patient" capital to spur its would-be capitalists. Patient capital has all the discipline of venture capital — demanding a return, and therefore rigor in how it is deployed — but expecting a return that is more in the 5 to 10 percent range, rather than the 35 percent that venture capitalists look for, and with a longer payback period.

A good example of what happens when you combine patient capital, talent and innovation in Africa is the Kenyan company Advanced Bio-Extracts (ABE), headed by Patrick Henfrey. He and his partners put together a fascinating group of both white and black African farmers and scientists to build the first company in Africa to cultivate the green leafy plant artemisia, often called sweet wormwood, and transform it into pharmaceutical grade artemisinin — a botanical extract that is the key ingredient in a new generation of low-cost, effective malaria treatments commonly known as artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). Malaria still kills nearly one million people in Africa every year, more than H.I.V.-AIDS.

From its factory outside Nairobi, ABE is not only processing the feedstock for the drug, but has also contracted with 7,000 farmers, most with small farms, to grow artemisia in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. The crop gives farmers four times the financial yield of corn.

ABE is one of Acumen's investments and a good example of the type of investments we are searching for here in East Africa.  It was great that Friedman recognized the potential for development in Africa and highlighted one promising strategy.  You can find the Friedman article quoted above by clicking here to read the New York Times (subscription required to read).

On Sunday, many of us called our moms to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day and thank them for all the love, guidance and patience they have had for us.  (especially patience- when we did crazy things, my mother in particular was good at reminding me and my sister what it took to bring us into this world and how easy it would be to take us out…but we are still here.)

Mothers make many sacrifices for their children- sometimes that of their own lives.  Each minute, a woman dies from complications experienced during pregnancy and childbirth. More than 500,000 women die each year and 99% of these deaths occur in the developing world. Almost all of these deaths are preventable.

UbuMama is addressing this.

Ubumama is a Zulu word for motherhood, and an arts-based project dedicated to bringing mothers' stories of giving birth in the developing world into public view, to honor the lives of mothers and to increase the commitment to saving the lives of women dying in childbirth. 

Ubumama’s process works like this:  A local project coordinator facilitates storytelling by women who share their birthing stories and opinions of what should be done in their community to ensure that every woman has a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery. These stories are then illustrated by the women and are embroidered, drawn, painted etc on to a woman’s traditional garment, such as a dress typically worn by a mother or a pregnant woman in that community. The women also write together a message for the world to raise awareness of the problems facing women and mothers in their community.  Create Africa South documented the process in an online step-by-step guide, that they followed to create their traditional garment for UbuMama and the birthing cloths, which is available to be downloaded.  To date, participation has come from South Africa, Ethiopia, India, Malawi and Tanzania.  

Here is a cool story of how people are making a difference:

Kristen Savard of Yale’s Ice Hockey team, learned about Ubumama and decided to design an initiative called Teaming Up for Life: Goals for Goals (i.e. sports goals for the Millennium Development Goals, especially #5).  The money they raised for Ubumama ultimately supported the women of Hamburg, South Africa to produce an Ubumama birthing gown sewn by HIV positive mothers and to provide educational workshops at a newly-opened local maternal health clinic on preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV. 

Ubumama is currently seeking funding to sponsor the establishment of several partnerships with university athletic teams which would help spread awareness and help raise money to expand Ubumama into new countries. Kristen, who just won the national Hockey Humanitarian Award for college hockey, and her roommate Gypsy Moore are graduating from Yale this month.  They have made a gutsy decision to turn down their other job offers while they look for additional funding to spread this philanthropic concept through the Division I and Division III women's teams in the NCAA in the coming year to get teams at different schools launched into Teaming Up: Goals for Goals sponsorship of an Ubumama project in another place where maternal mortality is high. 

Sustaining these country sponsorships from year to year will help create a culture of concern about women's health in developing countries and the Millennium Development Goals among college students in the US.  More information can be found at www.ubumama.org.

As women, the ability to give birth is a powerful part of our existence.  Whether we are in a skyscraper in New York or a rural village in Tanzania, we have this shared reality.  We also have an opportunity, through initiatives such as Ubumama, to support the health and safety of our sisters globally during childbirth.     

Happy Mother's Day!

My Tanzanian colleague was telling me about how when he was circumcised, a goat was slaughtered for a big party in the typical Maasai tradition.  He was also very proud to tell me that his father (who has three wives, which is common in many African communities) went against tradition and made sure that my colleague’s sisters were not circumcised and that they had the opportunity to go to school and marry when and who they wished.  When I asked him if he knew of women who get circumcised in the villages near where we live, he said of course, and even if the village leaders tell the outside world that it doesn’t happen anymore, it is quite prevalent.

Female circumcision is the cutting of a woman’s genitals and in some cultures is meant to reduce a woman’s desire for sex and immorality.  It is a cultural tradition to which there are no health benefits; in fact, the practice can endanger the health and life of the woman.  This image from wikipedia below shows the different types of female circumcision (also called female genital mutilation) and how they differ to the normal female anatomy.

estimates that over 130 million women worldwide have been affected by some form of this with over 2 million procedures being performed every year.

In Tanzania, where I live, there is an estimated 17.6% prevalence even though the law (Section 169A of the Sexual Offences Special Provisions Act of 1998) makes the practice punishable by imprisonment and a US$380 fine.  This is a punishment which often leaves the children of the imprisoned parents significantly impoverished and suffering anyways.

So what have I learned about why do people continue to practice something that is considered by so many as unhealthy and a violation of human rights?

In Kenya and Tanzania, before Maasai girls are married, they are circumcised as a rite of passage and in necessary preparation for marriage.  Similar to my male colleague’s comments above, the ceremony is a large party for the entire community to celebrate her readiness for marriage.  The fact that many Maasai parents cannot afford to send the girls to school, they marry them off at a young age to protect them from poverty. 

The Maasai are known as the African tribe that has held most closely to its traditional ways, regardless of outside influences considered “development.”  Changing this tradition will only occur if education by Maasai for Maasai provides strong alternatives to the surgical procedure during a girl’s transition to adulthood.

Batik Picture of Female Circumcision by Filex Jacobson, Sunset Art Studios, Arusha, Tanzania, Africa

No more flying toilets. 

Imagine it:  You are sick with diarrhea from the bacteria-filled water you drank because you had no other option.  Your neighbors’ homes are packed so closely next to yours with no sewage or drainage system, so you relieve yourself in a plastic bag and then throw it up over the sea of homes where your 800,000 neighbors live in the Kibera slums.  No fun for the home or person in its path.

This is a flying toilet.

I visited Kibera, the world’s largest slum, where flying toilets are just one of the realities of no access to water or sanitation facilities.  The spread of waterborne diseases is perhaps one of the most dangerous parts of living in the slums, and as we walked through, children were playing amongst the trash, flies and human waste. 

Another important reality:  it is expensive to be poor.  As a limited resource, water is sold at a high price to the people of Kibera from independent sources.

The majority of the world’s population lives like this.  I heard a TED Conference talk once about how these are the cities of the future- we had better start learning how they operate.    

I was in Kibera to see an amazing social enterprise solution to the lack of clean water and toilet/ shower facilities with David Kuria of Practical Action.  David has worked to build several units in Kibera which give people access to clean, safe, toilets, showers and water taps.  People in the community pay a small fee for use (some monthly for consistent access, some pay per use) which ultimately allows the facility to completely cover its costs and be sustainable.  A manager collects the money and cleans the units after every use, so they are well maintained.  After five years, Practical Action gives ownership of the facility over to the community committee in charge of its governance from then on.  Any profits are used as the committee decides is best for their community.

Unlike any building around it, the units were built with concrete and long lasting materials.  Right on the small site, there is a digester to process the human waste and use the byproduct of methane to burn and power the heating of hot water for some of the showers.  During our visit, several people came to use the shower and toilets. 

These facilities have not had to be upgraded in the five years of operation.  The community has maintained them so well; I was in shock.  No where in the U.S. would we see such an example of responsible care of a public resource. 

The message here is this:  Yes, these people are poor.  It doesn’t mean they don’t deserve (or want) the dignity of being a CONSUMER and the dignity of having access to toilets and showers.

Nairobi is the most dangerous city in the world at the moment, and yet people were very welcoming to us during our visit to the Kibera slums.  There was a sense of community and togetherness among the residents that deeply touched me.  Those of us who do not live there have a lot to learn from Kibera residents about community and mutualism.

 
   
Pictures:  David Kuria (Practical Action & Ikotoilet), Keely Stevenson (Acumen Fund), Wendy Mukuru (Acumen Fund) inside and outside of the toilet/shower/water tap facilities in the Kibera Slums, Nairobi. 

My colleagues from Acumen Fund, Jocelyn Wyatt, Eric Cantor and Marc Manara, came to Tanzania to visit over the weekend and we hiked down a mountain and sloshed through a river to discover a spectacular waterfall.  It was another one of those moments when I was sure that this is the most beautiful place on earth.

I went back with them to Nairobi (Kenya), where I will be spending the coming weeks in Acumen's new East Africa Office.  I am specifically working on two pipeline investments, supporting the companies to develop their business plans and then developing a financial model to determine if we can structure a deal to present to our investment committee. 

I was welcomed by our Kenyan Country Manager, Nthenya Mule, with a great dinner party where we listened to fun African music and her lovely children entertained us all.  I am excited about working closely with Acumen's team here.

Acumen Fund is actively seeking social enterprises in East Africa which need capital to grow.  If you know of entrepreneurs serving the poor in the areas of health, water, housing or energy, please do let me know so that we can reach out to them.  Our investments are typically loans and equity between US$200,000 and US$1.5Million.  More information on our investment criteria can be found at www.acumenfund.org.

There is an expression that goes: “Justice is like a hot dog.  If you love it, you shouldn’t watch how it is made.”

No one understands peace better than those who have had it wrongfully stripped from them in the name of justice. 

In 2005, my friend Ben was walking alongside a river path in his neighborhood of Sekei (Arusha, Tanzania).  Little did he know that the choice to walk this way into town would almost cost him his life.

Earlier in the week two thieves had robbed someone’s home in the nearby neighborhood of Kijenge, and at the time Ben was walking along the river, the thieves were now being chased by several men who decided to take the law into their own hands and punish them for it.  Community mobs to punish thieves are common and extremely violent here.  As one of the thieves ran away alongside the river near my friend Ben, the angry punishers assumed that Ben was the second thief.

They broke both legs of the first thief and then shoved a screw driver into his head, eventually killing him.  No one was there to speak for Ben’s innocence.  They beat Ben profusely and then dragged him into a car where he was taken to their neighborhood and doused with kerosene to be burned alive in front of everyone.  Luckily, someone recognized Ben and called his family who begged the police to intervene immediately.  The police stopped the mob just before Ben would have been murdered, but Ben’s life has never been the same. 

He was detained by the police for questioning for several days until they found the real thief, but he still had to pay the police $300 (his entire life savings) to get out.  Harsh blows to the head meant that Ben needed expensive hospital care for two months and couldn’t work for over a year.  His bag had been taken by the mob, so long gone were his salary paid the day before, identification documents for working or voting, newly gifted weather gauge he was hoping to use with his clients that he guides on safari and so many more valuable things to him.  The police told him that if he paid them enough, they would go find his stolen belongings, but Ben had no money left.  For months, Ben didn’t want to leave his house; he stopped playing the drums and singing at church even though it used to be the center of joy in his life. 

When Ben and I began to talk about this, his words burned in my head like fire:  “I hated my country.  I just wanted my liberty.  I just wanted justice.  I had to pay to be released even though I was innocent and they found the real thief.  They even wanted me to pay more to get my bag back.  I was left with nothing.”

Some of Ben’s friends urged him to get revenge on the men who did this to him, but Ben refused.  Experiencing such violence, Ben has since become especially sensitive to conflict and has found a deep understanding of the value of peace.  “When I see people corralling or someone begins to argue, I just try to calm everyone down and I don’t get upset because I know peace.”  He told me how he prayed for a thief he saw getting taken away by the police after being beaten in the street for stealing a mobile phone.  Ben is only 27 years old and was working hard to create a long happy future ahead of him.  With the challenges of AIDS, malaria and poverty so extreme here in East Africa, people like Ben should not be forced to look into the face death at the hands of their neighbors.

Strong well-functioning justice systems prevent community mobs from taking the law into their own hands and wrongfully killing or torturing people like Ben, you or me.  Ben and I spoke about how things might have been different if only the police and courts did the job they were supposed to and people believed in them.  We also talked about Karen Tse, who I learned about at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship last month.  Karen leads International Bridges to Justice, which is dedicated to every person having effective defense council.  Her work means that people are less likely to be tortured and wrongfully sentenced in Cambodia.  She went out and trained public defenders, conducted rights campaigns in prisons, helped build some of Cambodia’s first arraignment courts and made manuals to inform judges on how the law is ‘supposed’ to work. 

So I agree that justice is like a hot dog in that even when it’s not being imposed by a community mob, there are parts of it that we would be horrified to know were inside the formal systems of many countries.  Corrupt police and court systems are often rooted in the systemic failures sparked by poverty and politics.

While I knew of Karen Tse’s work, I hadn’t really valued it at a gut level like I do now having heard Ben’s story.  It was nice to be able to talk with Ben about how people around the world do care about justice and how they are taking action towards ensuring it is granted to the deserving- everyone.
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Last week we celebrated Africa Malaria Day.  Government leaders, development partners, community leaders and other citizens in Tanzania gathered in Bukoba to commemorate the seventh year of the celebration which calls for freedom from one of humanity’s worst diseases.  Tanzania alone has an estimated 15-16 million cases per year (100,000 deaths) and loses 3.4% of its GDP estimated at USD$350 Million (over 400 billion Tsh) as direct and indirect costs of malaria.  As I sorted through the many entities I have encountered in my work here, I thought I would briefly lay out the landscape of large scale partners in TZ striving for freedom from the shackles of Malaria:
:::Roll Back Malaria Partnership http://www.rbm.who.int/
The mission of this partnership, which includes malaria endemic countries, multilateral agencies, the private sector, foundations, non-profits and researchers, is to collaborate to ensure the sustainable use of the most effective prevention and treatment for those affected by malaria by promoting increased investment in health systems and incorporation of malaria control into all relevant multisectoral activities.  Much of the Partnership’s work is aimed at advocacy to influence policy and practice.

:::The Global Fund to fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria http://www.theglobalfund.org/en/
The Global Fund was formed in 2002 and works to attract, manage and disburse resources through a public-private partnership that makes a sustainable and significant contribution to mitigating the impact caused by malaria.  It is the “main financial engine behind the Roll Back Malaria strategies and actions in Africa."  It is also the largest financer of mosquito nets and granted Tanzania USD 12 Million for a national voucher scheme to distribute nets (described below) and USD 90 Million for purchase of several doses of the new drug for malaria treatment.  

:::United States of America President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) http://www.fightingmalaria.gov/
This initiative was launched by President Bush in 2005 with a pledge of USD 1.2 Billion to combat malaria in the 15 African countries suffering most.  Tanzania is one of the first to benefit from PMI as it aims to cover 85% of high risk populations (pregnant women and children under five years of age) through a range of malaria control methods (nets, pesticide spraying, effective treatment, etc).  In Zanzibar, PMI helped with the spraying of pesticides and net distribution; on mainland TZ, PMI worked to expand the national voucher scheme for nets through a new voucher program for infants.  The PMI- infant voucher scheme began in October 2006 and has to-date covered 15 regions in TZ with 655,000 vouchers distributed. 

:::Tanzanian National Voucher Scheme (TNVS)  http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1190210
This is a five-year scheme, supported by the Global Fund, began implementation by the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare’s National Malaria Control Program in October 2004.  The goal is to get every pregnant mother and child under five to sleep under a mosquito net, thus preventing their exposure to malaria carrying mosquitoes.  When a woman is pregnant, her clinic will give her a voucher that she then brings to a local retailer (see my pictures below of retailers and wholesalers in Ifakara) to buy the net at a highly subsidized price.  However, TZ is quite unique compared to other African countries because it created an enabling environment for the private sector to benefit from sustained distribution.  Manufacturing companies such as AtoZ deliver nets to wholesalers who sell them to retailers who sell to the pregnant woman/voucher holder.  Since inception 900,000 vouchers have been redeemed back up the chain. 

:::Strategic Social Marketing for Expanding Commercial Market of ITNS (SMARTNET)
The SMARTNET program is another public-private partnership which uses social marketing to stimulate demand and support the proper use and acceptance of mosquito nets.  In Tanzania, Population Services International is the contracted manager of the programme, which is funded by DFID and the Royal Netherlands Embassy.  Its efforts are mainly targeted at rural market penetration of insecticide treated nets.

 Source:  Much of the information above was derived from the April 2007 Africa Malaria Day Supplement published by the TZ Ministry of Health.