Zanzibar brought surprises around every corner. In Stonetown this was quite literal with its winding streets and brightly painted doorways at each turn. While on this beautiful island we were fortunate enough to be connected with a young group of Entrepreneurship students from the University of Zanzibar who started an app-based e-commerce platform aiming to connect local merchants with producers. Some challenges we hope to solve, or at least explore, for them this semester include:
As you can see, these are some of the same challenges that entrepreneurs in the US face, only the stakes are higher. In our meeting we learned that it is the custom in Zanzibar for young people to find their own home upon college graduation, so it is the mission of this young team to earn enough income to support themselves from this business. Beyond their short-term goals these entrepreneurs see themselves as a piece of Tanzania's rising startup scene. They imagine a world where all businesses are growing through Mjasiri. We are excited to help them reach their inspiring goals this semester and beyond. Lauren Nelson2018 MBA
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Link to Soundcloud site: https://soundcloud.com/strzanzibar As the only record company in Zanzibar, Stone Town Records (STR) originally eluded us. Entering through a winding corridor of concrete steps, we finally emerged into the spacious open-air coworking space, wondering where Stone Town Records could be, not really sure what to expect. Mixed with tenants and businesses, clothes hung from lines and sustainable planters were hung all around, contributing to the local permaculture business. Through this peaceful, collaborative vibe, we entered the small corner studio of Stone Town Records. A young man, producing director Walid Ecta (known ad DJ Walid), was playing an upbeat, well-mixed track in the acoustic paneled room. Embodying the grassroots passion for music that Stone Town Records is centered around, Walid became part of the team through persistence to showcase his DJ talents to the team. He is part of a group of 5 local artists that the record company supports. After listening to his story of burgeoning within Stone Town Records, we got to meet their CEO and creative director Mash Marley. Mash is probably one of the most passionate people we have met about music and spreading its benefits to the community. He studied music at the prestigious The Mwalim Nyerere Memorial Academy in Dar es Salaam. After graduating, he realized how important it was to him to created creative spaces in the Zanzibar community and through a grant from a German music foundation, began the journey that led to STR. Stone Town Records prides itself on being the only record company in Zanzibar. They want to help local artists as much as possible and spread the positive message of music around the island. Most of the team are musicians themselves, which is how they started STR in 2015. They are also part of a larger collective of creative entrepreneurs called Creative Education and Empowerment Zanzibar that promotes social change through a for-profit company. All vocals and mixing takes place within the corner studio we visited. STR has a unique sound, unlike anything we have ever heard before. We were pleasantly surprised how genuinely cool the mixes were and definitely thought that they would be popular back in the States. STR is passionate about creating unexpected collaborations of cultures and incorporates English, Swahili, German, French and other languages into the music it produces. Their slogan “Connection. Community. Creativity.” well articulates their mission. STR is currently looking for ways to maintain steady revenue to purchase a more reliable mixing board and to expand into a bigger studio somewhere else in Zanzibar, away from the familiar ground of Stone Town, with the goal of the world knowing their music. Their current revenue stream mainly comes from selling t-shirts, other merchandise, and food and drinks at their numerous community concerts and events, as part of their mission currently includes not charging the artists they support. They do have a strict selection criteria however, so only artists that align with their values and exhibit unique talent are supported by their company. Amber and Hannah I will start with posting the end of the Sultan's Palace tour because I am currently searching for my original photography . Historic narrative to come. During winter break, I was fortunate to travel to Tanzania for a course on social entrepreneurship in the global economy—a class that bridges business and engineering through the collaboration of Professor Michael Goldberg and Professor Dan Lacks. This trip was also my first visit to an African country, and I could not imagine a warmer welcome to this incredible continent than our hosts provided us. Before the course started, part of the class met Saidi Amiri—a Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) fellow who visited Weatherhead last July—in his hometown near Arusha. We spent our time captivated by the incredible wildlife in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area during a safari and by our glimpse of daily life in a small village during a cultural bicycle tour. We next flew to Dar es Salaam, the largest city and commercial center in Tanzania, to meet the rest of our classmates and our hosts for the remainder of the trip, Bernice and Benjamin Fernandes. Bernice and Benjamin are siblings, social entrepreneurs, and spectacular ambassadors of their home country—they both embody business leaders as agents of world benefit! During our trip, we split into small groups—composed of engineering and business students—to meet with eight social entrepreneurs, whose business models ranged from gelato prepared with local spices to organic fertilizer for rural farms made from urban food waste. Having studied engineering in my undergrad, the collaboration between business and engineering students felt natural. Our conversations with the social entrepreneurs touched on many common entrepreneur dilemmas—creating value, converting customers, securing funding—and they each shared a passion to create businesses that positively impact their country. In addition, we traveled to Tumabtu, a small island off the coast of Zanzibar, to install solar panels and LED lights in a rural village home. My prior work as a lighting engineer came in handy during the install, though we faced many challenges installing the lights. For example, when our screwdriver broke, we could not simply run to a hardware store to buy another—thankfully, someone in the village loaned us a replacement. I hope the new lights will provide a lasting benefit similar to my memories of this day will have on my life. Since returning to Cleveland, turning on the lights reminds me of the many blessings I take for granted daily, which challenges me to use resources more responsibly and talents more creatively to positively impact others. My eight days in Tanzania bestowed knowledge, friendships, and life experiences that I would normally struggle to gather in a year. This single post scratches the surface of this course—for video footage of our trip, check out these videos (Link 1 & Link 2), which includes footage of the solar panels and LED lights we installed on Tumbatu, or the drone footage of the island below! During our course, we met with Mash Marley, co-founder of Peponi Permaculture Paradise and CEO of Stone Town Records. Peponi Permaculture Paradise (PPP) aims to establish a self-sustaining eco-hostel in southern Zanzibar based on permaculture principles. Permaculture is an abbreviation for “permanent agriculture” or sustainable and self-sufficient agriculture ecosystems. Mash first learned about permaculture from the Practical Permaculture Institute of East Africa, which has an educational site located 25 minutes from Stone Town. After graduating from their first class two years ago, Mash started a monthly workshop in Stone Town on urban gardening. In the common courtyard shared by PPP and Stone Town Records, we saw many recycled planters made as part of the workshop. About a year ago, the scope of Mash’s permaculture ambitions expanded. With help from his co-founder Laura Maier, the operations manager of the Practical Permaculture Institute of Zanzibar, construction began on the Peponi Permaculture Paradise. To date, the main structures, using earthbag-dome construction, are nearly complete and work has started on the pool and gardens. Southern Zanzibar is less fertile and rockier than the north. To overcome this, PPP requires raised gardens with soil enriched with dry grass and food waste. An expected feature of the rocky soil is the possibility for a music studio in an underground cave for optimal acoustics. The hostel will also utilize solar power to provide electricity for pumps, lights, etc. PPP faces an immediate challenge to secure additional investment to complete enough of the eco-hostel to begin hosting guests. In addition to a source of income, guests may provide valuable labor to maintain and expand PPP’s permaculture. Mash also envisions hosting a Permaculture Music Festival at the PPP, to bring together permaculture and music enthusiasts from across Africa and the World. Our fourth day in Tanzania, the first full day in Zanzibar, we set off early on a bus ride to Mkokotoni. We took inventory of all the equipment we brought with us, and purchased the remaining items for our solar installation. After ensuring we had everything we needed, we loaded into a small boat, barely large enough to fit everyone, and headed off to Tumbatu Island. The short ride in the small craft gave everyone a nice spray of salt water, but otherwise went by without any hiccups.
Upon arriving on the island, the women in our group needed to put on a head covering before we started walking into the village of Jongowe. We received a brief tour of the town center before we moved towards the outskirts of town to find a home in need of electricity. It was not long before we found a family with several children that had very little lighting inside of their small home. We worked hard for a couple of hours to install the solar system into the home. Power was generated from three solar panels totaling 40 Watts of power generation. The panels fed the power into two batteries to store the energy until it was needed. We added a light into each of the two rooms inside of the home, and two more lights outside. After we finished the installation, the village leader came to thank us and try to encourage us to return. After it all was said and done, it was time to leave. The day was long, so long that the tide gone out quite far. We had to walk back across the exposed seabed, avoiding sea urchins, in order to board our boat that was going to take us back to the mainland. And with that, our solar installation trip concluded. Joseph Toth |
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