While in Dar Es Salaam we met with the entrepreneurs behind ride-sharing startup Twende, which actually means "Let's go!" in their native tongue of Swahili. Having worked in the auto industry with Goodyear for the past eight months, this company was right up my alley! The first question many of us had when we stepped into the Twende office was, "How in the world are you going to compete with Uber?" The ride-sharing incumbent already had strong roots in Dar Es Salaam, so we knew right away that this company had better have something unique up its sleeve. We soon discovered that they thought Uber was not meeting the needs of local citizens who zip around town on motorcycles ("boda bodas") and tricycles ("bajaj"). Because of risk and other reasons, Uber had not integrated these popular modes of transportation into its app. Even further differentiating from the ride-sharing giant, Twende started a partnership with mobile payment company Tigo Pesa. Within the first month of launching Twende had 1000 ride requests. Later they expanded to Arusha and they plan to grow throughout Tanzania and beyond with a goal of over two million users in the next five years. The unique take on ride-sharing does not come without challenges. Some major hurdles they face are getting adequate funding so as to make the app high-functioning even with heavy usage loads. They also need to deal with the problem of platform drop-offs. Without as many two-sided platforms as the US, people are less concerned with the rating system in Tanzania; it is common for a driver and rider to meet, drop off the platform, and exchange cash thereby avoiding the fee of the platform. Like many beginning apps they also struggle to create an iOS-compatible version of their platform. Lauren Nelson2018 MBA
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UNIVERSITY OF DAR ES SALAAM: BEYOND SILICON VALLEY, ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN TRANSITIONING ECONOMIES.2/19/2018 Students and professors took to a packed, and humid, auditorium at Dar Es Salaam University, where they listened to Professor Michael Goldberg’s iconic Beyond Silicon Valley speech. Goldberg opened with an introduction of how his speech, and views of entrepreneurship, came to fruition. The bottom line: Silicon Valley is just one Centre of business operations, but startups and entrepreneurs, are breathing organisms that can thrive beyond Silicon Valley, in any stable local economy. The undergraduate student body seemed to come alive after they were willingly (or unwillingly) pulled into to a barrage of entrepreneurial questions and transitions throughout the discussion. Leading into the panel discussion, the students brought forth factors they believed contributed most to a successful, but still developing, organization: drive, passion, capital, and leadership. Perhaps most exciting, for the undergraduate student body, was the opportunity to participate and listen to a panel discussion consisting of successful Tanzanian entrepreneurs. Everyone on the panel was unique in his or her own right. However, they all had one thing in common: an appreciation for education and the understanding of the challenges an early stage business is faced. Benjamin aka Benji Fernandes (also a host of our trip), appeared to be a crowd favorite, not just at the University, but seemingly, a local celebrity all over Tanzania. Benji graduated from Stanford University, and with over 145K Instagram followers, possesses unrivaled knowledge in the realm of social media “content” delivery. He is also in the mist of getting his venture-backed startup, an African electronic payments platform technologies firm, off the ground. Like Benjamin, Hyasintha Ntuyeko is an entrepreneur. Hyasintha founded Kasole Secretes, which developed organic sanitary products for women. She is a 2015 Young African Leader Initiative (“YALI”, Mandela Washington Fellowship) Awardee who also runs Hedhi Salama, or “Safe Menstruation”, a campaign which aims to educate African women on the importance of female health and sanitation. In accordance with Goldberg’s tone, set at the onset of the event, these leaders discussed the importance of locally grown business and how current (and future) East-African legislation will impact the early stages of founding an organization. Through these discussions, the Case Western University guests were in a unique position to engage further with those University of Dar Es Salaam in attendance, which was a learning experience for both parties. The local student body was amped for the engagement. As guests, we answered questions of business culture in the United States, our perception(s) of Tanzania, and recommendations for U.S. tourist destination. For those questions that needed further guidance- those surrounding what programs are offered to students, outside the United States, who wish to study abroad- were directed to the appropriate source of desired information. The experience was invaluable, in that, it exemplified the student’s individual desire and passion to grow and acquire knowledge- a desire that parallels even the most ambitious U.S. based-student. Moreover, the experience enabled students of different culture, backgrounds, and beliefs to connect at a higher level- free of prejudice or other political factors that inhibit the latter. Authors: Justin Glogore & Emily Mills
We had the pleasure of working with Mercy Nenelwa Kitomari, founder and CEO of Nelwa’s Gelato. Mercy was a wonderful person and extremely easy to relate to with an infectious personality. Though she has endured the journey of entrepreneurship for 5 years, she persists in the “very challenging” environment and market that she works in. She has experienced a lot of trial and error over the years and is now pivoting to a new, yet highly refined business model. Mercy was inspired to start Nelwa’s after witnessing the popularity of the treat when she was studying for her master’s degree in business administration in London. She took a class while there on how to make gelato and started Nelwa’s upon returning to her home country of Tanzania. Mercy believed she could capitalize on the fresh fruits and spices that are amply available in Tanzania to create a rich and fresh tasting gelato. Her product also contains a lower fat percentage than traditional ice cream. Mercy gets all of her supplies fresh from local merchants. She began the company in 2013, making the gelato in her mother’s kitchen. Her original business plan focused on selling by the scoop from her own cafe in Dar es Salaam. After struggling to hold down a rental space, Mercy decided to reinvent her brand. Now Mercy focuses on selling in bulk to restaurants, hotels, cafes, and bakeries. She also does custom orders for events, such as weddings and birthdays, able to serve crowds of up to 1000 individuals. Her flavors range from the usual chocolate and vanilla to ubuyu, a fruit produced by the native boabab trees. In the past, Mercy has produced some very unique flavor combinations for her custom orders, such as rum and coke. Nelwa’s Gelato currently employs six individuals, and Mercy specifically looks to higher young women who are often single mothers and unable to complete their education. In the long-term, Mercy hopes to grow the company to a level where she is able to set aside funds to send her employees back to work. In addition to her gelato sale, Mercy has a number of side projects. Mercy teaches a class on how to make soft serve ice cream to allow small businesses to add ice cream to their product list. She also gives talks on entrepreneurship to youth and supports a local orphanage, by providing food, as well as gelato of course. Over the years, Mercy has earned a number of awards and recognition for her work, including entrepreneur of the year, start-up of the year, and Tanzanian top 50 brands. She was also featured in multiple media outlets, including segments on CNN and BBC that highlighted her entrepreneurial success. Moving forward, Mercy’s biggest challenges will be establishing a larger consumer base and continuing to secure the necessary capital in order to expand and meet the demands of her growing business. Amber and Hannah Many of us in the US can remember the days when using the internet meant clogging up your family's phone line while dial-up tone screeched its way to connectivity. And we've experienced the subsequent steps to broad band, wifi, and now ubiquitous 4G high-speed wireless internet connection. In Tanzania, dial-up internet was basically never a thing largely due to the heavy fixed costs of hard phone lines. You might be surprised then to know that more Tanzanians use mobile payment than Americans. How is this possible? Today most people have a cell phone there, and the telecom companies, such as Vodacom's MPesa have made it extremely easy for people with basic cellphones to transfer money, enabling merchants, taxi drivers and consumers to exchange money without a bank account. All it takes is setting up a "mobile wallet" with a local agent, dialing a series of numbers on a cell phone, the payment amount in Tanzanian Shillings, and voila! A payment is made. MPesa is just one of the examples of how a determined entrepreneur can disrupt any industry, even if it's not their own! Lauren Nelson2018 MBA My parent's are mostly convinced that I hoodwinked them into sending me to Tanzania over winter break simply for a vacation. I haven't had the chance to see them since being back to catch them up on all my adventures. Instead, I've sent them the link to this blog, so this one is for them. While traversing the capital of Tanzania, Dar es Salaam, our group was honored to have the opportunity to meet with the former first lady, Mama Anna Mkapa. She was the first lady from 1995 to 2005, alongside Hilary Clinton and then Laura Bush (both of whom she met on multiple occasions). In June 1997 she began the organization that would largely consume the next 20 years (and counting) of her life. The Equal Opportunities for all Trust Fund is an organization that focuses on the advancement and betterment of the lives of the poor, with a particular focus on women and children. She was inspired to start the organization after viewing the daily living conditions of these people when on campaign trips with her husband in rural areas. The organization has three main pillars, women's economic empowerment, education, and health care. The economic empowerment program focuses on giving the necessary tools and teaching to the people living in poverty to raise them out of poverty in a sustainable manner. The organization gives them an education on a trade or trains them in entrepreneurship rather than giving out grants. The health initiative focuses largely on maternal health by increasing access to prenatal care and birthing centers. They also offer family planning services. One of the largest efforts of the organization is education and increasing the rural youths' access to it. Many rural children do not receive any schooling, as the family's cannot afford it. EOTF will assist with tuition and school fees, as well as sponsor students to in higher education, including college in America. They are also working to bring more educational opportunities to the rural area, through programs like Books for Africa. Mama Mkapa, in conjunction with EOTF, also founded an orphanage. While she has taken a backseat role on many of the organizations programs, she still remains highly active with the orphanage, spending every Friday with the kids there. When asked about the highs and lows of her time as first lady and with EOTF, the former first lady had immediate responses to both. During her time as first lady, she said she was able to get government support for essentially whatever she wanted, which made started EOTF easier. However, she also noted her position could conflict with her EOTF goals. She had to learn how to balance supporting her husband's goals and ideas with her own, and struggled with having her plans always second to her husband's. Overall the visit with Mama Mkapa was my favorite visit of the trip. Her kindness and compassion for the people of her country was both palpable and admirable. I was particularly touched by her dedication to the orphanage. Naturally we ended the visit with a small photo shoot of our group with the first lady, and we were about to leave the establishment when Bernice made a really valid point. She said, "How many times in your life will you have the opportunity to take a picture with a first lady?" Well if my life continues on a similar trajectory, statistically speaking, about once every 21 years the opportunity will present itself. On that note, I figured I better not pass up my first chance. Thankfully Mama Mkapa was kind enough to oblige my whimsical millennial desires. Posted by Amber Guavay is a social enterprise based in Dar es Salaam focused on manufacturing organic fertilizer from organic waste. The waste is comprised of food waste (~60%) and sawdust (~40%), and then it is combined with a novel nitrogen solution to give the fertilizer the necessary nutrients for growing fruits and vegetables. This approach allows the company to simultaneously reduce waste while creating a useful product. This product is then sold to hundreds of local farmers. They currently create the product in a 2000 m2 facility at a rate of several tonnes per month. The nitrogen fortification is produced in a biological process with a 10 tonne bioreactor. We met with Ahad Katera, an industrial engineer and the CEO of Guavay, at the Tanzania Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH), which runs an incubator for early stage science and technology startups. Ahad co-founded the company with a microbiologist, a bio-technician, and a businessperson that he met at a local entrepreneurship competition organized by Cambridge University in Dar es Salaam. The inspiration for their company came from observing the growing amounts of food waste generated in urban markets and decreasing soil fertility in rural regions. Using funds won from innovation competitions, they started a small production facility in an abandoned building. In November of 2017, they received a grant from the Swedish government worth $500,000. This grant will help with market research and product development, but it is short the necessary capital to expand production. Guavay faces several challenges. First, expanding production requires significant capital-–Guavay estimates an additional $2 million is necessary to achieve the scale to break even. On the product side, the food waste used to make the fertilizer is often contaminated, so they are experimenting with incentives to secure stable, high-quality deliveries of food waste. On the operations side, their bioreactors’ efficiency ranges from 30-50% efficiency, which is too wide for mass production. In addition, Guavay must distribute their product from Dar es Salaam on the coast to rural regions inland, which requires working with existing regional and local distributors or creating their own distribution network. We got the pleasure of visiting with the third First Lady of Tanzania, the Honorable Mama Anna Mkapa, at her NGO, Equal Opportunity for All Trust Fund (EOTF). She began the fund in 1997 after witnessing the unequal treatment of women in rural areas, despite years of independence. Her organization is a grassroots movement that focuses on giving women in the rural areas proper training and foundational skills to build careers, including farming, textiles, and proper nutrition. A major investment of EOFT is in cashew crops and other related agricultural ventures. This provides ample work for the rural women to learn a valuable skill in a safe and prosperous environment. Economic empowerment of rural women in Tanzania is the keystone principal for EOFT and one of Mama Mkapa’s greatest passions.
Along with economic empowerment, she also focuses on promoting women’s health through maternity wards, ambulance services, and education in women’s health best practices. Her passion for helping women and families extends to the orphanage that she runs through EOFT. Single women in Tanzania are typically disadvantaged by a culture that does not fully foster their independence. As a result, a majority of children in the orphanage come from single mothers that have either passed away or can no longer support their children on their own. Education in Tanzania was not subsidized until very recently, resulting in lower income families not getting the luxury of giving their children an education. Mama Mkapa said that “many children need to go to school”, and this experience is a vital part of improving quality of life for the women of Tanzania and establishing a sustainable infrastructure for women’s economic success. The children in her orphanage and educational program are further supported by the organization through tutoring, transportation to school, and necessary supplies. Despite years of success and progress made by EOFT, a bottleneck of the process continues to be lack of electricity in rural schools. They are currently looking for opportunities to partner with solar power developers to provide affordable electricity to these key areas. The educational branch of EOFT also works closely with the nonprofit organization, Books for Africa. The use this strategic partnership to provide vital educational materials to the children in the program. Through EOFT and Books for Africa, Mama Mkapa aims to teach children how to think, instead of just memorizing information, as has been the historical style of education in Tanzania. The students in this program often score very well on state examinations and even obtain sponsorships from the organization to study in the UK and the US. It was interesting hearing Mama Mkapa speak about her time as First Lady of Tanzania. While she enjoyed the experience, it also forced her to put her career and personal development on hold while she supported her husband. As a highly educated, independent, and successful woman herself, she is very driven and passionate about spreading education and economic empowerment to the women of her country. Posted by: Hannah During the first part of our social entrepreneurship course, in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, we were fortunate to have the opportunity to visit Vodacom M-Pesa, a financial service offered by Vodacom Tanzania in which Tanzanians can transfer money using a mobile phone not only immediately, but also safely and reliably. Introduced in 2008, it is Vodacom M-Pesa 10th year of operating, striving to get as many people to use M-Pesa as possible and driving financial inclusion as it is an infrastructure available to all. They have moved money transfers and services from urban, local areas to rural areas, where banking was not strong. Mobile money is increasingly becoming more widespread around the world. At first the USD model was used, but with smartphones gaining momentum and popularity in Tanzania, they are now building their own apps. Some statistics demonstrating the success and momentum Vodacom M-Pesa is experiencing include their 8 million customers, 106k agents, 8k merchants accepting payments, 500 ATMs, 71000 businesses accepting payments with M-Pesa, and 30 commercial banks in Tanzania. The way the business model operates looks like this: 1. Funds In - a customer deposits money with no fee and the agent receives commission, resulting in a net cost to Vodacom 2. Transaction - the customer pays a fee resulting in revenue to Vodacom 3. Funds Out - the customer pays a fee and the agent receives a commission, still resulting in a net revenue to Vodacom. Services offered by M-Pesa for consumers include airtime purchases, international remittances, online payments, ATM withdraws, national remittances, savings and loans, virtual payments (cards), and banking services (enabling access and convenience of financial services). Services offered by M-Pesa for businesses include increasing money controls and optimizing operational costs, collection accounts, different cash collection, zero cost link to the bank world, administration efficiency, easy petty cash allocation, and simplified batch payments. What I found most exciting during the presentation was the information about M-Pesa’s co-platforms and how it works with other organizations on projects to impact the community. One example includes the M-Pesa Women Empowerment Initiative (MWEI), in which Vodacom has partnered with local government and M-Pesa agents to give women their first opportunity to access zero interest loans to support enterprise projects, improving the financial exclusion disproportionality that affects Tanzanian women. TransportMYpatient is another initiative Vodacom has been a part of, in which mobile money technology is used to transfer funds covering transport costs for people with disabilities, focusing on women with obstetric fistula and patients with cleft lip and/or cleft palate. The process is efficient, responsive, and allows for much more accessibility of transport for people with disabilities in some of the poorest and most vulnerable parts of the world. Another partnership Vodacom Tanzania has partaken in is with the UN World Food Program (WFP), encouraging vulnerable, food insecure communities in the Mtwara region (in which chronic malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency is of high prevalence) to take advantage of nutrition and health education through a mobile money platform. Women who attend a health clinic for educational sessions, focusing on a child’s first thousand days, including breastfeeding education, will receive cash transfer through Vodacom M-Pesa, enabling them to purchase healthier and more nutritious food. This project supports national efforts tackling undernutrition in Tanzania and allows Vodacom to see its mobile money transform people’s lives. Mwanga community bank is another organization that Vodacom M-Pesa has partnered with to bring full-service banking to savings groups in Tanzania for the first time, enabling customers to use mobile money to repay bank loans. They are working with CARE, a global poverty fighting organization, to help build Village Savings & Loan Associations (VSLAs), so that accounts can be open with Mwanga Community Bank and cash can be deposited into interest-bearing group savings accounts without visiting a physical branch. While individuals had accessed bank accounts with mobile phones previously, this is the first system allowing groups that same type of secure mobile access. To ensure security, they developed a security verification system with PINs required by three VSLA members for each transaction so one individual cannot access the group’s cash alone. VSLAs are typically built by women living on less than $2 a day and each VSLA is provided with one year of intensive group saving and lending training to ensure they have the skills and knowledge necessary to interact with a formal bank. This is an innovative and exciting initiative that allows for financial services to reach people in the poorest and more remote communities. Overall, the visit to Vodacom M-Pesa was incredibly interesting and I am excited to follow what happens in the years to come, especially in the areas of growth they identified including utilization of social media, improving group savings and loans, and more innovation around payments including the use of smartphones, data and usage, apps, and overall making payments easier. Posted by: Ivy During our first day in Dar es Salaam, we had the incredible opportunity to meet with one of Tanzania’s largest media companies, Global Group. This group has multiple businesses including “Global Digital” and “Global TV”, but their largest business by far comes from their news sector, “Global Publishers”. Global Publishers is a 20 year old company that releases newspapers on a daily basis. They alternate between their 7 publications titles such as “Champion”, the sports newspaper that has claimed to be the “King of Sports Newspapers” in Tanzania. The group distributes around 400,000 physical newspapers per week, and news is also relayed through the Global TV studios and social media. When asked about the challenges that the company faces in Tanzania, the leadership spoke on how as a private company there is no assistance or subsidies from the government. In fact, there are issues with regulation and what the group is allowed to cover. Another challenge the company faces is the rise of digital media and its potential to overpower the printed newspaper. Admittedly, the market for newspapers is not as large as it used to be. As a result, Global Group is working on expanding their online and televised sectors to keep up with the markets. At this point, they have over 480K subscribers to their social media pages and the largest television studio in Tanzania. They do believe, however, that there may be a few more years before printing papers becomes obsolete. In Tanzania, there is a lacking of trustworthy media, especially in online formats. Global’s goal is to remain a trustworthy news source for Tanzanians. Global hopes to inspire start ups and teach them how to succeed. Their managing editor conducts seminars to motivate people to start businesses in Tanzania. Global Group leadership encourages aspiring entrepreneurs to "have and believe in your dream". Posted by: Saukhya |
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