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Potential, Poverty, Politics & Parties: Why Kenya Attracts the Brightest Social Entreprepreneurs
They flock from America’s top universities, grad programs and consulting firms to the pulsing heart of a new Africa. From glass towers and Ivied halls to cramped garages, cooperative work hubs, and overflowing makeshift live/workspaces, these young, talented and driven entrepreneurs are riding a new wave of social enterprises, crash landing into a rapidly rising east African capital. The most populated city in east Africa, and one of the fastest growing, Nairobi, Kenya has become an...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Zambikes Bamboo Bikes Turn Heads In U.S., Fight Poverty In Africa
In Zambia, bicycles grow on trees, or rather bamboo, the primary building material for many Zambikes . Groves of it grow outside the company’s factory, which is run by two Zambians and two Americans on a quest to build a local bike for Africans, and employ the "uneducated and underprivileged" to make them for the rest of the world. So far, Zambike has cranked out at least 8,000 metal bicycles and 900 bicycle ambulances and cargo carts i...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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UN Helps Expand Tanzania’s Economic Growth, Poverty Reduction Plans
Tanzania expects to receive some $777 million from the United Nations as support for the implementation of two of the country’s economic growth and poverty reduction strategies. The funds will finance the second phases of Tanzania’s national strategy for growth and poverty reduction, or MKUKUTA II, and the Zanzibar strategy for growth and poverty reduction or MKUZA II, the East African Business Week rep...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Kenya: Survey of Female Farmers Uncovers Challenges
In Kenya, a gender-disaggregated agricultural survey targeting 2,500 households and 5,000 individuals in eight regions, seeks women’s input and data to inform agricultural policy. The survey shows that female farmers have limited access to finance, as few women own property they can use as collateral for loans. Another observation is that as agriculture becomes ’feminized’ and men abandon farms to work in cities. The survey was conducted by Egerton University’s Tegemeo I...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Plan Farms for Climate Change: Minister
Adapting agriculture in Africa to accommodate drastic climate changes will reap benefits for future food security and the poor, International Relations and Co-operation Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane says. "Food security is important to Africa’s economy as it impacts heavily on a country’s poverty alleviation and sustainable development plans," she said at an African ministerial meeting on climate change in Johannesburg. "It is critical that governments and nations should...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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The Birth of a Virtuous New Asset Class
"BACKING someone to live," is how Leapfrog Investment’s first deal is described by Jim Roth, the co-founder of the "profit with purpose" private-equity firm. That was two years ago, a $6.7m stake in AllLife, a South African firm that provides life insurance to people with AIDS and infected with HIV, subject only to the condition that they submit to regular blood tests to prove they are taking their life-saving anti-retroviral drugs. "This provides cover to people whom other insurers...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Surfing the Radio Waves for Sustainable Agriculture
While the use of mobile phones is rapidly surging across Africa, access gaps persist between urban and rural users. But a new generation of social entrepreneurs is remedying this problem by combining new and old media to reach rural populations. Twenty-nine-year-old Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu is one of such entrepreneurs who sees the mobile telephony gap as a call to innovate. His organization connects rural farmers with the information they need through a combination of mobile telephony and ra...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Could Donkey Ambulances Save Lives in Poor Countries?
Professor Chris Lavy, an orthopaedic surgeon who spent years working in Africa, gives a vivid example of inappropriate medical technology for the developing world. One of the newest hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa, he points out, was built with infrared sensors to turn the taps on in the operating theatres. "Wonderful idea, but is it really appropriate in a country where there are no other infrared controlled taps and no engineer to fix them," he asks rhetorically. "Within a year most o...
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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