WDI Global Impact 2015 Insights from Emerging Markets Around the World: Tanzania

Showing posts with label Tanzania. Show all posts

Monday, August 17, 2015

A Traveler’s Tale: Here’s What Happens When Impact Meets Innovation in Tanzania

Diana Callaghan

Everyone loves a great story. And so far, during my Dar es Salaam-based fellowship with Land O’Lakes International Development’s United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Innovations in Gender Equality (IGE) program, I have accumulated many. In particular, I want tell you about my experiences meeting innovators competing for grant funds and capacity-building support through IGE-hosted Innovation Expos.

Children In Mbeya Checking Out the Great Expo 5 Innovations

The IGE Expos target entrepreneurs with technologies impacting women in agriculture. For the first Expo, I provided the 10 finalists with needs assessments and business development support. To do so, I traveled throughout Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Mwanza to sit and speak with:

A top mushroom-growing maven
An engineer creating customizable crop processing machines
An education-greenhouse organization
A fish-poultry-produce aquaculture company
A palm oil extraction company (palm oil is in Nutella… investment please…)
A company developing solar driers
A business creating solar bird and animal chasers

I was thrilled to see many of these organizations using clean energy sources to do everything from dry produce with solar driers to chase bird and animals away—about the latter, think of it as an automatic, screeching scarecrow with a solar panel. Each entrepreneur I met with had great stories. I eagerly listened to their experiences, and I was equally excited to brainstorm ideas with each of them about how to push their technologies even further. For example, through these meetings we learned that many had no accounting systems set up, and therefore had prices that were many times too low to have a sustainable business. In other cases, we heard that they planned to teach people how to develop their technologies, which contradicts the idea of growing their own business. During these visits I noted many areas for improvement, and with the IGE team, we have now developed trainings to help relieve many of these issues and will be working one-on-one with innovators to help push their development further.

Just as everyone has a story, every story has its setting.

Tarangire Lion Fresh From a Nap

Zanzibar Sunset Sail

Oh what a magical place I’ve found myself in! If you haven’t already checked it out, read my other blog post, Entrepreneurship in Agriculture & Impacting Women's Lives in Tanzania. Since I wrote that, so much has happened in my life here in Dar es Salaam.

I’ve traveled around Tanzania working with additional entrepreneurs in agriculture, met new friends from around the world while exploring the tiny uninhabited islands off the coast of Dar, attended a 3-day Strategic Planning meeting to help devise a strategic plan for a new organization, and even met some of my favorite Rossers for a memorable trip to Zanzibar.

Arusha

Mount Meru

Tarangire Safari Time

Mommy and Baby on a Walk

During my time working with Land O’Lakes, I was honored to explore some of the most beautiful parts of Tanzania. Arusha is like the Denver of Tanzania. Sitting at the foot of Mt. Meru, the city has a temperate climate with lush greenery, abundant produce and vails of flowers. Expats flock here for NGO work and the many tourist attractions the city brings. Hip English-clad coffee shops, restaurants and boutique hotels made me feel less like I was in an African country and more like I was in the Rockies. Points of interest near this city include Serengeti National Park, Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Mount Maru, and the infamous Mount Kilimanjaro.

Given time constraints (read: I’m not in my most “tip-top” shape), I was unfortunately unable to climb Kilimanjaro. Time also did not allow me to take the long trek to Serengeti but I was able to catch a Safari at the beautiful Tarangire National Park. Arusha is also where I met with the innovator developing a multi-crop processor and the organization building indirect solar driers.

DORGO Agro Multicrop Processor

SIWATO Indirect Solar Dryer

Mwanza

Lake Victoria Rocks

Lake Victoria Resort

I also spent some time in Mwanza, during which I made a quick visit to Lake Victoria, the second largest freshwater lake in the world behind Lake Superior (Go Michigan!). This is where I was reminded that some people are just natural entrepreneurs. In speaking with the warehouse innovator, we learned about all of the work she has personally done to develop her business. We heard success stories, saw prototypes, and heard about the awards she has received to date. In speaking with her, we learned that her innovations came from listening to the needs of potential customers and designing solutions to address those needs—a sign of a true entrepreneur.

JikoBora Warehouse Prototype

Jiko Bora Entrepreneur

Dar es Salaam

Returning to where my internship began, I worked on a kick-off event for 6 other innovators supported by IGE. In part, I developed and implemented a training on business model development and performed a needs assessment to identify any gaps in innovators’ business models. At the training, we openly and successfully brainstormed creative solutions to some of their most pressing problems.

Since then, I have also worked in conjunction with IGE staff members to develop a social media campaign, revised training materials, and developed strategies to help further support innovators in their development processes.

Easy Breeze with Tangawizi (Gingerale) and Skype at Bagamoyo

Mushroom Shelter and Spawn Production

Solar Bird and Animal Chaser

I only wish I had an additional time in this beautiful country. I’ve made some great friends along the way, joined a volleyball team, sang karaoke under the stars on the beach, had dinner at the Greek Club, learned how to negotiate with the Bajaji taxis (aka tuktuk) like a pro, danced until 5am at the local dance clubs, and became a regular on the islands of Mbudya and Bongoyo—to snorkel and dine on freshly caught fish and lobster. I’ve also attended restaurant openings, sat at wine tasting events, slept on a beach under the moon, swam in the Indian Ocean at night, explored the many restaurants of Dar, and met people from all around the world. And of course I can’t forget 4^th of July on Zanzibar with two of my favorite WDI Fellows.

Zanzibar Market

Me and My Boys

Sailing the Blue

Beautiful Kendwa Rocks on Zanzibar

Simplicity of the Sea (Not Posed)

Streets of Zanzibar

Julio, Shukun, and I Representing UofM and Ross in Africa

My experiences have been both personally and professionally rewarding. I wish all of the innovators I’ve met through IGE much success and I’m grateful for working with and learning from all of them. Kudos to Land O’Lakes for partnering with students to catalyze innovation to enhance women’s participation in the agricultural sector and to help improve food security.

Want to hear more travelers’ tales? Be sure to check out the fellows’ blog to read blog posts about WDI Fellows working in healthcare, energy, entrepreneurship, and education in emerging markets.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Entrepreneurship in Agriculture & Impacting Women's Lives in Tanzania

A year and a half ago I came to the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in order to jump career paths, and find a role that was more interesting and impactful than my previous life as a consultant. I wanted to be a “Double Wolverine”—returning from almost a decade in New York City to the Ann Arbor streets of my undergraduate days. One of the main reasons why I chose Ross was because of its strength in Entrepreneurship and Social Impact. I was intrigued by the challenge and potential rewards that both of those realms could provide. That is why it was the perfect opportunity when WDI posted a fellowship listing to work with Land O’Lakes International Development’s Innovations in Gender Equality (IGE) to Increase Household Food Security program in Tanzania.

In Tanzania, smallholder women farmers carry out most of the time and labor-intensive activities in agriculture, including farm preparation, planting, weeding, harvesting, transportation, storage and processing. They are also responsible for food preparation, which makes them the gatekeepers of nutritional security and dietary diversity for their households. This is a critical role, as 42 percent of children under the age of five suffer from stunting and 16 percent are underweight.

Moreover, limited decision-making power, biased socio-cultural norms and unfavorable regulations reduce women’s access to finance, land, technical training, labor saving-equipment, and other productive resources. Because of this, there exists a high barrier for women to lead technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and legal and regulatory change throughout the agricultural sector.

That’s where IGE comes in. Funded by USAID, the program seeks to promote household food security through the development of local capacities to enhance women’s status and empowerment in the agricultural sector. The program focuses on four main areas: agricultural technology development and dissemination, building community awareness on issues affecting women’s empowerment, supporting national policy changes for gender equality in agriculture, and promoting programmatic sustainability of IGE initiatives.

My role as a WDI Fellow is focused on the first main area: accelerating the advancement of agricultural innovations and technologies from the product prototyping, validation and piloting phases to the commercial production and scaling phases. Through various innovation expos conducted by IGE, local entrepreneurs showcase their products and services in order to compete for grants of up to US$ 100,000. My main focus is to consult with the selected innovators to help accelerate their businesses and to provide training and support in early stage business development.

My main focus areas include:

Increasing the business acumen of IGE-affiliated entrepreneurs through the development of training materials, the support of incubation trainings, and the participation of innovator expo competitions
Consulting with individual innovators on their business models and business plans and providing guidance on future access to external funding
Analyzing and enhancing IGE’s current social media marketing strategy

***

Upon arriving in Tanzania, I was not sure what to expect. I had recently spent a month in northern India with my incredible Multidisciplinary Action Project (MAP) team working to enhance the financial inclusion of women in self-help groups, and to develop their entrepreneurial capacities. The project was both challenging and extremely rewarding and I was now hoping to bring this experience to the IGE program. I was also excited to explore a new region of the world. Tanzania is home to the beautiful island of Zanzibar, Serengeti National Park, Mount Kilimanjaro, Lake Victoria, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, Tarangire National Park, and Lake Manyara, to name a few. The World Economic Forum Competitiveness study from 2011 named Tanzania second (only after Brazil) in terms of the richness of its natural resources. Needless to say, I was excited and felt blessed for this opportunity to spend my summer in such a beautiful country doing exciting, impactful work. I knew, however, that this would be a challenge and a new area of work for me.

My first few weeks of the program consisted of program orientation and meetings with IGE leadership. The IGE team consists of experts in agriculture, nutrition, gender initiatives, policy, microfinance, and entrepreneurship. I am lucky to have had such a kind, supportive and talented team with whom to work.

After concluding my orientation, I quickly prepared for Expo 4, the fourth IGE innovation competition, which was held in Morogoro, the agricultural heart of Tanzania. More than 20 innovators, out of an initial applicant base of more than 75, were asked to come to the two-day event to compete for funding and capacity building support.

The products and services selected had to be innovative, made out of local materials and impactful for women in agriculture. Technologies presented included mushroom-growing innovations, solar driers, coal briquette producers, multi-functional crop tilling machines, palm oil extractors and more. Each innovator was given five minutes to present, and a panel of judges followed up with five minutes of Q&A. At the end of day one, 10 innovations were selected as potential recipients for an IGE grant.

On the second day, an initial orientation was provided to the winners and trainings were conducted on how to build their budgets and statements of work. I then conducted a Needs Assessment presentation at the end of the day in order to gather information on the innovations that would later be used to help develop a capacity building strategy.

At the close of the event, I was even more excited to work with these innovators in developing their ideas and supporting their businesses’ development over the remainder of the fellowship. I know this internship will be challenging, but I am excited to get hands-on experience working with the design, maintenance and scale of early stage start-ups supporting Tanzanian women in agriculture. In the next few months, I will engage in one-on-one capacity building meetings with these entrepreneurs and help develop trainings based on their needs. I will also work with the IGE team to provide insight into external sources of funding and try to build a stronger social media presence for the program. Moreover, I look forward to exploring all of the beauty Tanzania has to offer and sharing my experience on this blog for readers to learn more and enjoy.