...the random musings of an unconventional MBA. » Africa

Fail early, fail often, and learn from your mistakes

glen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:01:02 +0000

I had the pleasure to speak at the Africa Gathering in London this morning. (twitter feed here).

There were a number of emerging themes through the conference, and not necessarily the ones you might think– access to finance, more capital, education.

Nope. What came up again and again was:

TIA
This is Africa. Sometimes problems can seem overwhelming. I have talked about this before, but it bears repeating. My take on it: Break the problems down, solve what you can. Innovate around what you can’t.

Open Source/Open Platforms
FrontlineSMS, Android, Ubuntu Linux– these give you the tools and abilities to build cost-effective, replicable platforms that won’t break the bank. For all the thrill of open source technology in Silicon Valley, the true innovation may come in Africa, where stuff like Microsoft’s failing ability to register its software (due, admittedly, to fighting rampant software piracy) may mean that the sotware is unusable.

Open platforms create frameworks and fertile ground for new innovations. Enough said.

Turn up and do something… and listen when you get there.
The power of doing something, getting over your own inhibitions, going, turning up, is far more important than your ability to make a big, great plan.

On the other hand, the developing world works differently than it does in the developed world. Teddy Ruge of Project Diaspora.suggests getting a member of the diaspora on your team. In whatever case, however, listening is critical. Go. Take a risk. See what works. Give yourself permission to fail, early and often, and learn from your mistakes.

Africans have the solutions to African problems.
You know a lot, but you don’t know the context. Africans can solve African problems– this is the difference between Busines Incubation projects around entrepreneurship and NGO projects– Incubators should offer mentorship rather than direction. The essential difference is that mentorship offers assistance to someone to help them do what they want to do, rather than demanding that they do what you think they should do.

The flip side to the TIA problem is that it’s important to believe that things get better, that the creative, innovative entrepreneur inside can find a solution to the problem. The flip side to mentorship is the encouragement, so that when your entrepreneur finds a wall, he figures out how to go under, around, or through it– or to turn that wall to her own advantage.

I’m speaking at Africa Gathering in London

glen — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:45:33 +0000

The Hub, York Way
King’s X, London

9th-10th Oct, 2009.

I’ll be speaking about, in general, the challenges that investors and entrepreneurs face in Africa, with a specific focus on my partner organisation Appfrica Labs. Come out if you can.

Details at Africa Gathering and on the EventBrite page.

I’m on at 11 AM on Saturday– and to be quite honest, the lineup of speakers puts me in pretty esteemed company.

A new record: 29.5 hours

glen — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:20:26 +0000

Zimbabwe, six months later…
I took another trip to Zimbabwe last week to meet with a number of people about a voucher programme for African Enterprise Partners’ first investee, Mobile Transactions.

The difference in Zimbabwe from the last time I was here six month ago is palpable. And the country is, quite simply, beautiful. It’s not the water world that Uganda is, but it’s well-appointed with water and could quite easily take its place back as the Breadbasket of Africa.

Why on earth was I tempting cholera and fuel shortages in order to go to Harare now, in the middle of winter (without even a proper jacket– it was about 8 degrees Centigrade)? Mobile Transactions has been developing a electronic voucher product that could be of huge use in agricultural subsidies, which can help support and grow markets rather than undercutting local businesses with subsidised imports. The problem with vouchers is the liquidity issue– shops need to purchase inputs and then collect vouchers to get paid for them– which may take months. With an electronic account, distributors can be credited instantly– and the voucher scheme operators get to monitor the usage of their vouchers in real-time, adapting the program as they see fit and as needs are required, including running different types of vouchers in different areas.

The trip
TIA did rear its head, a bit. Our assistant didn’t get the proper paperwork to export our vehicle in time, so we couldn’t drive across the border (we were a bit concerned as the fuel in the tank was *probably* just enough to get us to Harare and back to the border. Loads of people sell fuel– potentially cut with water, cooking oil, or whatever– near the border but we would only risk it if required.

We decided to go ahead and cross “by foot” as they say, and hire a taxi on the Zim side. The only issue– no taxis. Busses would leave from Lusaka but wouldn’t stop at the border. We were advised that hitching was our only option.

The very nice official, however, who issued us our visas told us to talk to his friend the guard at the exit gate, who hooked us up with a truck (labeled of course “no unauthorised passengers”) who took us to Harare for $10US, getting us there just in time for our meeting.

Dollarisation
Zim’s been switched to US Dollars, although South African Rands, British Pounds, Euros, and Botswanan Pula are widely accepted. Prices are quoted in dollars and change (if any) will be given in Rands or Pula.

Prices have actually stabilised a bit– The latest inflation figures I’ve seen put it at -1%.

Things aren’t all rosy, however. Huge settling has happened in the economy which is good, but the outlook is bleak, if tinged with a bit of hope. Just a bit, though. The general sense is that things are going to get better, but not after they get a bit worse.

Stores are closed. Fuel lines are common (though less so a couple of months ago)– Americans who remember the fuel crisis in the 70s may recognise this:

That’s a filling station on the left, and a huge queue for a minibus in front.

What next?
We exited the country after a single 2 hour meeting, twenty-nine and one half hours after entering. Even for me an dmy ridiculous amount of travel, this is a new record (the previous was about 50 hours in Kenya).

Mobile Transactions thinks that there’s huge potential in Zimbabwe: It’s got smart, driven people, and a desperate need for liquidity. It’ll be a while before Mobile Transactions can perform its core business, but MT are keen on and hopeful that they may be able to run their voucher programme and reduce transaction costs rather significantly.

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Mentor capitalist?

glen — Sat, 16 May 2009 10:35:19 +0000

I wonder what, exactly, is my job title sometimes. My card says “Partner — East Africa” but that doesn’t say much.

I’m working with Mike on his pitch for SBSVC. He don’t exactly need capital, but it’d make AEP move faster, further, and achieve profitability sooner.

The early-stage companies that I’m working with, has got me thinking, as I always do, about the market and landscape here in sub-Saharan Africa, most of the same problems and issues that entrepreneurs face back in Silicon Valley, London, New York, or Asia– they are just magnified here.

Venture capital
There are a lot of misconceptions around venture capital and angel investing. Most entrepreneurs go out looking for the largest possible cash flow at the lowest valuation, without considering what else the VC might bring to the table, i.e.

Experience
Contacts
Networks
Advice
Business
Modeling

These are just a few of the things. Most VCs (the only ones I’d want investing in me) have experience as entrepreneurs and at running businesses. Most of what I see as the big failures in VC from the past– I lived & worked through the heart of the dot.com and the Web 2.0 bubbles– have been, broadly, the fault of having the wrong investors. Kozmo.com being the prime example– some guy with an Excel spreadsheet thought they should take this FMCG service company and sell Palm Pilots at a huge markup.

The VC should be the person who, once they’ve picked you as an investee, will do the right things to make the pie bigger. It doens’t matter so much if you give her huge equity slices; she should work to make the pie big enough so that all parties have more actual cash.

Partner
One of the women I’m pre-screening as a p0tential investee is a fascinating woman. She’s lived and worked all over the world, but is here in Uganda and has invested heavily in a fish farm. Fish farming is controversial worldwide, but here in Uganda the fish that are typically farmed are catfish and tilapia– two of the “OK” fish to farm (low resource usage, high tolerance for variable conditions, etc).

She is excited about the opportunity to work together on an equity basis, in partnership.

Mentor
Mike had originally been using the term “Venture Search” for our model, but it has a fairly specific meaning that is tangential to, rather than describing exactly, his business model.

I like the term “Mentor Capitalist”: Provide many of the benefits of a traditional VC, but in a more hands-on fashion. Provide network breadth while the VCs provide depth.

Building markets
The market for angel investing and venture capital has to spring from the fertile ground of entrepreneurship; entrepreneurs, however often need start-up capital. In some cases– in the cases where AEP is trying to work– tilling that entrepreneurial soil to attract interested investment capital and a new network of angel investors, setting up a virtuous cycle.

Afri-brandtastic

glen — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 16:52:36 +0000

African Branding
Kampala– and much of Africa– in incredibly brand-conscious. Entire buildings and building blocks are painted (often just for the cost of the paint and labour) in UTL blue, Warid red, Zain purple-pink (a particulalry hideous shade that makes me think of a little blood mixed with Pepto-Bismol– see below), and now Orange.

Bugolobi trading centre hurts your eyes as you pass

Signs and billboards are everywhere, clogging the streets (though often representing the only street signs) flooding brand awareness of Nissan, Orange, and the MTN sponsorship of the 2010 World Cup (how many Ugandans will be able to attend? Likely not many, but MTN is the sponsor).

Intriguingly, a stove manufacturer who has approached CEIHD (the company I’m seconded to through MBAs Without Borders) for carbon financing is painting his stoves Zain purple, and is calling them Zain stoves. We have now arrived at tag-along branding.

Competing stove manufacturers– tag-along Zain stoves on the left.

African Marketing & distribution
The flip side of this is that Africa’s production capacity is actually pretty good: there is a lot of skilled and semi-skilled labour, engineering expertise, manufacturing skills. One of the biggest things that I see lacking is in marketing and distribution channels.

Entrepreneurs everywhere get marketing mixed up with advertising– but more so in Africa. People know they need to invest in marketing, but it ends up being copycat marketing– trying to flood the airwaves and print media with ads– all of which get lost.

The opportunity
If you can get marketing and distribution right (and almost no one is– certainly not the international mobile telcos) you will make a pile of money in Africa.

Some of the promising work that I’ve seen has been in microfranchising (i.e., the Avon model– in fact, Avon is doing incredibly well in South Africa).

At some level, Gordon Gekko is right: (some) greed is good. That’s why I personally think that the for-profit models of development will ultimately achieve faster, more sustainable development than NGO models. What’s it going to make to make our partner enterprises’ excellent pro-poor products stand out from the crowd? To get people to invest in technologies that save money over the long term and have associated benefits? Leave thoughts. I’m excited to hear them.

Relentless undefeatist

glen — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:03:58 +0000

As an potential entrepreneur working here and looking for projects to invest in, I talk to a lot of people, and I talk over my business model with a lot of people.

I often (as often as almost always) get advice, along the lines of

You just be careful, you put your money where no one can touch it, and you get that money back. People will steal it. Don’t trust anyone. Everyone is out to get you. They all see you, the rich Mzungu, and they just want to work for you and eat up all your money.

This can, as you might imagine, become disheartening.

The best jobs for graduates
If you’re a top student from here, you might be lucky enough to go on to MIT or Harvard, or you might go to either KIU or Makerere University. And when you graduate, what do you do? What are your preferred options?

Go work outside of the country, preferably outside of Africa: This is usually the top option, and it’s understandable– it’s exciting to move away, to a bigger, richer, more exciting place. I did it, thrice, now.
Go work for the government: Secure jobs are in the government, and the government is full of interesting positions. In some cases, this may be because goverment workers amass powerful contacts, which can benefit in the form of power or cash. In other cases, this comes from a desire to change the situation from within– to work on anticorruption, for instance.
Go work for an NGO: I have no problems with NGOs, but it seems odd to me that this would be a top job, except for the security and stability. NGOs protect their own, and understand (and often index salaries for) inflation. Plus, the benefits are great. You get to meet people from other countries, and you may get to help out people in your own company.
Go work for one of the big companies: Big companies, stable jobs, decent benefits. No real surprises here.

But that, pretty much, is it. Almost no one starts a business early on. The best and brightest leave.

What is it that drives some people to return to their communities, start a business, and create jobs? What makes a student is inspired by a teacher and becomes a teacher? What is it that drives a bright young student to forego lucrative opportunities to work as a community organiser?

And what keeps that from happening?

Problems don’t get fixed
One of my biggest challenges here is in understanding expectations.

Lots of things go wrong, all the time. One of my South African friends reminds me that “Africa works, just not as fast or as reliably”, and he’s right.

But there’s another issue– that because of this working this way for such a long time, it’s become the norm.

People turn up late for meetings regularly– as much as an hour late. And they don’t call to let you know, it’s such a common problem. (There are lots of people I work with who don’t accept this and are relentlessly punctual. I thank them profusely).

There was a leak in the office the other day. A few guys moved the photocopier, but took no pains to either shut off the water or to call anyone to fix it– nor, even, mentioning it to the boss when he came in.

I get monthly reports from entrepreneurs and there are numbers off, and, each month, I have to go sit down with my guys and work with them to identify where the problem came in.

There are lots more of these problems, and they don’t get due care or attention.

Defeatism
I believe that these are all symptoms of a defeatist attitude. Why start a business locally when it’s so hard? Why re-invest in your community? Fifty years and trillions of dollars in aid hasn’t made a huge difference (and you can see the effects of this aid all over– including in cultures of dependency). Get out while the getting is good.

Sure, you’ll miss your home, but why bother fixing it? The problem is too big for one man to change it.

Relentless Undefeatism
This defeatist attitude must change. This may be the biggest thing holding Africa back from significant development.

It will take committment, day by day, to change this. It will take huge effort by many people. Some of them will rise up and be Mandelas or Gandhis, while many will be the unnammed faces in the crowds. Whether you’re one or the other will be a matter of chance.

It will take boots on the ground, working hard, getting muddy, and facing the issues day by day.

It will take concerted effort by the Cheetahs to demand receipts for “stamp fees” from hippos, slowly but surely stamping out corruption and bribes.

It will take development and efficiencies in the tax code, so that police are paid enough that they don’t need bribes to survive and feed their families.

It will take investment, and not just capital, but labour investment by the best and brightest graduates, to come in and build pride– to develop Africa’s Richard Bransons and Henry Fords.

It will take pride, building a culture that looks for goods made in Africa rather than the USA, UK, or China.

It will take the gall to step up and say “Yeah, we can do that”, and to figure out how to do it, or to ask for aid to find out.

It will take determination to see something wrong and fix it.

It will take an end to hopelessness, and good examples.

MBA is not a dirty word

glen — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 13:09:56 +0000

What’s an MBA, anyway?
The world, it seems, is upset and unhappy with MBAs, and for good reason. We’ve just retired our first MBA President to decidedly mixed reviews. It’s easy to forget that George Bush did lots of good things– like seriously increasing aid to Africa. Bush also did lots of things that I consider bad– namely increasing and consolidating executive power, and starting a war with, at best, shaky evidence.

When I decided to get my MBA, I got a lot of push back from friends– MBA has, in some minds, gone from a management degree to a financial degree. Indeed, the “classic MBA” profile would read something like:

Undergrad in economics, business, or finance
2-3 years in an investment bank or consulting firm
A desire to work for a “better” investment bank or consulting firm.
26-27 years old.

The original MBA
When the degree was conceived, it was as a degree in general management, to develop management science and to create a cadre of managers.

As much as Dilbert’s pointy haired boss and the FedEx “Even an MBA” commercial are fun to laugh at and silly (and all too often close to reality– see GM’s infamous “Kwality Kat” initiative), many (most) MBAs do, actually, do things that provide value in companies. The thing is, they’re not Jeff Skilling, they’re not cruelly laying people off, they’re the ones on the front lines each day, working to make companies efficient and profitable, creating sustainable businesses that employ people.

MBAs study management science, which synthesises a lot of areas, from social sciences (day to day application of economic theory), to hard sciences like statistics, and apply those skills to the problems of making people work together (organisational behaviour), apply value propositions to the goods or services they sell (marketing) or to figure out what business the company is really in (strategy).

The MBA Banker
MBAs are heavily hired by banks and investment firms, and for good reason. They’ve proved that they’re willing to take a risk and have proven that they can survive academically as well as in the real world.

They’ve learned to take a situation, break it down, and offer a complete analysis of the situation and the paths and risks to conclusion.

And they know how to put values on things.

Valuation
is an art which relies heavily on science. Just as I was heading to business school, I heard that the Absolut brand sold for $2bn, and one of my colleagues (Wharton, ’09) and I had a discussion about how on earth you can come up with something like a valuation for a company.

Ultimately, you’re taking a bet. Coming up with a range of values is fairly easy, but you can’t (usually) purchase something with a range of values– you have to put a pile of hard currency in someone’s hands.

The same thing with an equity or debt investment. The same thing with a car, or boat or house.

The science gives you the language to start having a converstaion of the value of something. If you pay $2bn for the Absolut brand, you’re telling the world that you think you can make more (or at least) than $2bn of todays dollars on it in the future, somehow.

The Credit Crisis and you
Where the heck are you going with this, Glen? Pretty much, to the credit crisis and you. And there’s a later point, so bear with me.

Heres the thing. The availability of cheap credit had staggering impact across huge numbers of lives– and if you’re reading this, you with 99.99% certainty benefited from it.

You got cheaper car loans, home loans, or cheaper student loans (If you’re from the US, remember the “historically low consolidation time” around 2001? That was due to structured credit– the same thing that is close to the middle of the credit crisis). You got cheaper computers because computer companies could get debt cheaper, transports companies could get access to cheap capital to buy more cargo ships and you could fill up at Bed Bath and Beyond or Whole Foods with excellent wine or cheap towels.

Much of this cheap credit came from developing countries holding on to more foreign currency reserves after the Asian credit crisis, investing it in safe developed countries. Much of that investment helped out their economies as G8 countries went on a credit-fueled spending spree.

And now?
Yes, and now. our house of cards got too big, and everyone’s afraid. We’re remembering that diversification of economies is a good thing, and that Britain can’t just export ideas and financial services (someone will steal the ideas and handle money more cheaply). Britain must still make things of value. America can’t be a complete knowledge economy.

At the same time, globalisation is here to stay. Toyota makes more cars in the USA than GM does (even before GM’s latest woes). Using principles like comparative advantage to figure out who should make which bits and making strong, simple, understandable trade agreements to level the playing field between larger and smaller players should become the order of the day.

The role of MBAs
We have not seen the last of the Enron days, nor the abuses of power that created them. We have not seen the end of multimillion dollar exectutive pay packages or office redecorations. These are necessary evils.

Where the MBAs will be seen helping out, though, is in identifying opportunities and choosing the best ones. In picking which customers to focus on and which ones are to expensive to keep. In redeploying workforces to be more effiicent.

Yes, this will mean redundancies, but what’s better– 1,000 redundancies or 10,000 people losing their jobs when the companies go bust?

The role of MBAs in development
The world of development is shifting. People want to see ROIs and the effect of their money. People want to know that they really are making a difference, and not just on the warm-fuzzy visits when the best aid projects are toured annually by big-ticket donors flying in business class.

People want more than Sally Struthers’ pictures of healthy kids, they want a whole new generation of healthy kids. They want to see whole systems analysis of the problems on the ground and paths out of poverty.

Donors (And social investors) want more.

Entrepreneurs on the ground want more as well. I talked to two guys the other day in Mukono District who were each hauling about 125kg of charcoal on their bicycles. They’d cycled 16km out to pick it up and were walking it back to town, where they’d sell it. I asked them how often they did it (about every 2 days) and how much they’d clear from it (about 5,000/= or $2.50).

I asked them if it was worth their time, and their answer was “no, but we have to do something”.

This, on the small scale, is the same problem I see at every scale, all over Africa. Entrepreneurs work hard– 10+ hours a day, 6 days a week, and are so desparate for customers that they have trouble covering their costs.

I am working with a company here that does $2mm of business a year and they can’t cover their costs. My suspicion is that they need someone to do some market and channel analysis and help them identify the customers they should focus on– but they don’t have the skills.

I have another company that makes a product that aids digesion in cows, producing 15%-40% increases in milk and meat production while reducing methane production (one of the most significant and long-lasting greenhouse gases), and they need a hand in developing promotion and pricing strategies, as well as streamlining their operations and preparing themselves for growth.

Africa needs MBAs
Along with the rest of the world, developing and developed, Africa needs MBAs to build or rebuild businesses.

Warren Buffet warned us for the last ten years to be cautious, and now he’s being greedy. This is the time when companies can take root and flourish or wither in obscurity, remembered only by people who liked their services (Kozmo, anyone?). This is the time when the next generation of entrepreneurs will prove themselves.

The raw talent is here, the drive for success exists, the education is here (though not nearly widespread enough). There are companies to build and a generation begging to be entrepreneurs. Invest.

MBAs can help this Cheetah generation come up and put an end to Africa’s difficult legacy, to the distortions of bad economic policies, colonialism, and too-rapid shifts. More and more MBAs and business students want to do well by doing good. We could use your hands.

Obama, Hope, Religion, and African “Can-do” creativity and spirit

glen — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 11:42:49 +0000

Author’s note: This is, necessarily, full of some fairly broad generalisations, but it is going somewhere– the subject matter is really broad, and I’m interested in your thoughts– in the comments. I’ll happily admit when (rather than if) I’m wrong.

Without, hopefully, making strong generalizations, (Africa is, after all a continent comprised of 53 countries, larger in area than the USA and all of Western Europe combined, with over a thousand languages, spread over six distinct language groups-by contrast, the Indo-European languages span all of Europe, through half of Asia.), Africa is a land full of very spiritual people-you see it everywhere, from the surfaces of Mtatus (combi-taxis) and Boda-Bodas (100cc motorcycle taxis), to the ever-present music and dance, to the rise of evangelical “Born-again” Christianity and Mormonism.

President-elect Barack Obama
is, as you might imagine, enormous across Africa. Kenya took off the day after the election. Nigeria (with much less connection) took off three or four days. Uganda, less so, but there’s an Obama club in Kitintale, a shop in Makindye, and. People who speak only Luganda or KiSwahili here offer me a fist bump, chanting “Obama” as I walk to work.

(I’m one of the few Mzungus here who walks anywhere over 500m. Everyone else takes taxis…)

Aside from the obvious link with the neighbouring country and the African origon, there’s no apparent direct reason to support Obama. Additional aid is a possibility, but not a certainty, particularly in this global economic climate.

Which brings us to religion
As many of you know, while I’m interested in religion generally and historically, I’m not a particularly religious person; I used to describe myself as an atheist, but that seems almost like a religion to too many people– very anti-lots of things, and not really worth the energy. I’d rather do things with my energy. I don’t really think I’m much of anything, to be quite honest. However, my view of religion is changing after seeing it operate in Africa.

Religion and spirituality cut across much of daily life in Africa. Family and religion are the centres of people’s lives, and it shows, whether Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, or traditional/animist.

The Christian religions have adopted many of the traditional ceremonies– the Baganda wedding ceremony is now the “father’s giving-away” ceremony, for instance, and takes place a week or so before the Christian wedding.

There is strong take-up of Mormonism and Pentecostal or Evangelical Christianity (referred to locally as Born Again Christianity) in recent years, much of which is in the wake of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Mormonism’s strong sense of community aligns itself well with traditional community values– where, for instance, children are often adopted by locals or the extended family if something happens to the family. Islam also promotes strong community and family bonds.

The rise of the Born Again movements coincides both with the rise of the same movements in the United States as well as the coming to a head of the HIV/AIDS problems (including government’s finally recognising these as problems) and economic problems over the last twenty years.

…and its role in society
For many people, the coming of the church (or the church-based NGO) means the buliding of a community centre, or a kitchen, or mosquito nets, improved stoves, or an actual school.

One man that I met, Moses, is the head of a programme that has been building schools in Mbale for a decade. At the below school, when he arrived, “The mango tree was the headmaster’s office, the primary school was the Magnolia…”

A school built by a community, a community built heavily on religion.

Alcoholism
Alcoholism is an enormous problem in much of Africa, whether it manifests in fathers drinking away their problems in cities while their children starve or “Evening Class”– where men gather at the end of the day and drink locally brewed beer made from Sorghum, Millet, or Cassava, sold in buckets, and drunk in the last light of the night until it runs out– typically resulting in falling-down-drunkness.

Alcohol is linked in many minds as equivalent to idleness, lack of development, crops failing, insufficient rain, malnutrition, and a whole host of other problems.

The puzzle of Sub Saharan Africa
Economists are pretty good, over the long-term, at figuring out what will happen. They’re often even better at figuring out what happened and why (especially when they were wrong in the first place). The Solow model would have most of Africa in better shape than it is.

Sub Saharan Africa, however, resists all of the Macroeconomic models. There are many issues that point to reasons for these problems– HIV/AIDS (and other disease), changing weather patterns, distorted effects of aid (often brought in in incomplete packages, so building less Capital Stock than expected), corruption, etc.

Sociologists point to arbitrary land barriers, the difficulty of integrating cultures (Tanzania, with its dozens of tribal groups) seems to have had an easier time than places like Nigeria or Uganda, which have a few distinct groups), corruption, etc.

African Ingenuity and entrepreneurialism
Africans as a whole are amazingly adaptable and ingenious. The uses of trash- plastic bottles and bags– for other purposes is something that people see here regularly. Much of this is driven by necessity. Anyone who’s seen a bush mechanic work knows how much he can do to fix a 30 year old Land Rover with only a ball peen hammer and a pair of pliers.

I passed a guy just yesterday who’d rigged up a grinding wheel to his bicycle, with a stand, so that he could be a mobile knife grinder.

A little loud, but it works…

…and if you can’t fix it, live with it
Also, if you absolutely can’t fix something, then you live with it in its broken state. This applies to being on time for (or even remembering) appointments as well as selling parts off of your broken down car.

Huge swaths of Africa live on used things– whether it’s shopping for used American clothes (with goodwill tags attached) at Owino Market or importing vehicles from Japan (who have to get rid of them at 100,000 km on the odometer), Africans make do with a lot of things, passing them down and down until they’re completely used up.

The role of hope and opportunity
At the risk of sounding a bit too pie-in-the-sky, I would suggest that hope and opportunity play important roles in development.

Religion provides hope. It may not work for everyone, but it works for some people– and for many, it’s the strength (or community pressure) they need to keep out of the bar and go home to their kids. Religion also provides a thought for future planning– important in a country with a life expectancy of 47. Many of the poorer people I’ve met here who are religious are looking at their children’s welfare, trying to get them through Secondary, their Highers, or University– at the very least, a step beyond where they went.

The critical things that religion provides are hope, community, and opportunity. The role of a direct link with God breaks down sociological and tribal barriers, while allowing pride of self to remain. All over Rwanda I see people from Kenya, Ethiopia, and other tribes working– whether for religious or secular NGOs, for the betterment of the country and region.

Opportunity is interlinked with hope. For many people, scraping out a living is the best they can do, and they find opportunity everwhere, whether it’s driving people around on a motorcycle, selling phone cards in traffic, or buying and selling whatever you can.

These guys spent all day to make about $2.50 for this wood. They said it wasn’t worth it, but they had to do something.

Business and government
If you’re a government minister, you’re in good shape. You have access to a car, driver, a house, and cash beyond the dreams of nearly anyone else in your country. There’s nowhere up to go, except to PM/President or head of the Army. There’s also no reason to leave office.

If you’re the President, it’s even worse. To step out of office is to step into relative poverty from Armani suits, limousines, and private jets.

Large businesses, in Uganda at least, are run by foreigners. The situation was the same in Mozambique during the revolution, and the economy was crippled when the management skills left. Zimbabwe, similarly, has a shortage of management skills.

The role of entrepreneurship and aid
There’s a growing trend thinking that aid is Africa’s problem. I personally don’t agree, although it has been (and in some cases continues to be) part of the problem. My colleague down here Arthur and I talked about the difference between MIT thinking and Local thinking. You have these MIT engineers who design some widget that will help the local people, without taking into consideration the habits and adjustment factors that need to change, without looking at the problem as a whole and finding a whole solution (which may be less effective on paper).

Aid workers must do sonmething beyond just coming to a country and hoping to find a solution. Throwing resources at a problem can often make things worse over the long run.

Tntrepreneurship will be critical to Africa’s development– growing businesses from the ground up, building management skills, and honing the skills that people have into thinking bigger about problems, approaching them in a structured way, and solving them for themselves. Businesses need to learn how to hold money, track what they’re doing, and market effectively.

My step now is to spend the next five months (one down! Five to go!) figuring out how to support that kind of work, how (and if) I can do it on a large scale, and how I can make lives better while doing it.

Postscript: Just as I was struggling to get this posted over sketchy Internet, one of our partners sent me this, which seems to support much of what I’m thinking…

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