DoSomething,
headed by Fast Company columnist Nancy Lublin, has recognized four
young social entrepreneurs with $10,000 grants--and one with a prize of
$100,000. Fast Company will profile one of these enterprising youth
each day this week.
It's the morning after the night before, and Darius Weems can't get over his red-carpet experience. "Russell Simmons!" he says in awe. "Russell Simmons! He was standing there, shoulder to shoulder with me." And later, during the Do Something awards ceremony at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Simmons had presented Weems with $10,000 and honored him for his work raising awareness for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal genetic disorder that took his brother's life and will eventually claim his too.
For this small-town, wheelchair-bound kid from Georgia, the awards were the latest stop in a wild journey that began with a fantastic question posed by Weems and a group of his buddies: Do you think we could get MTV to pimp my ride?
"I was just chilling at home--didn't know nothing but my hometown," Weems says. Then, in the summer of 2005, he and his friends got that idea, boarded an RV, and set out for L.A. They stopped in Florida, where he saw the ocean for the first time. ("I'd heard people talk about the beach. Years and years, I was wondering how something that beautiful would look," he says. "It was amazing.") They visited New Orleans, Carlsbad Caverns, the Grand Canyon, San Diego, and finally, L.A. There, (spoiler alert) MTV rejected his request--and became the ultimate villain of the affecting, effective documentary that recorded the trip, "Darius Goes West." (The movie's subtitle: "The Roll of His Life.")
The film, which came out in 2006, won awards at dozens of film festivals and became the platform for Weems to raise more than $2 million for Duchenne research. "Not a lot of people know about [the disease]--too many people don't know," Weems says. "But they see the movie, they're down with the cause."
After seeing the movie, kids have organized dance marathons, held bake sales, given their savings to aid research into the 100% fatal disease, which kills more young boys than any other genetic disorder. Students at one Georgia high school teamed up to send a DVD of "Darius Goes West" and a handwritten letter to every other high school in America; a Syracuse, New York, junior high did the same for middle schools. Adults, too, have embraced his cause: Weems and Logan Smalley, the director of the documentary, were made TED fellows, and Volvo gave Weems $25,000 as part of a program honoring America's hometown heroes.
The outpouring of goodwill--which has been accompanied by plenty of criticism of MTV--has encouraged Weems to keep talking about his condition. "I've got to use my mouth for something," he says. His new goal is to sell 1 million DVDs by the end of September. (Seventeen dollars from each sale goes to Duchenne research.)
But the constant travel--speeches, public appearances, as many as three screenings per day--"has kind of tired me out," he says. He logged more than 30,000 miles between September and March, which prompted his doctor to force him to slow down, worried that the work was overtaxing Weems's ever-frailer body. He is now 19, the same age as his brother Mario was when he died.
At the Do Something awards, Weems got an additional prize to remind him that the work he has started will continue even if he can't be on the road himself. MTV announced that it will air his movie on MTV2 and MTVu.
A purple banner hangs over the doorway to the old parish church in Nyamata. "If you had known yourself and had known me," it reads in the local tongue, Kinyarwanda, "you wouldn't have killed me." Ten thousand people died in that church, where they had sought sanctuary from the death that was enveloping Rwanda in the spring of 1994. Today, 15 years later, the church is a memorial—a reminder of a time and place to which this small African nation hopes never to return.
"I would like tourists to come here so that they can go home and talk about what happened here," says Andre Kamana, a survivor of 1994 who now manages the site. But the problem is a lack of tourist infrastructure: no guidebooks, few guides, no printed materials to explain to visitors what they are seeing. What are these piles of clothes? (Left behind by the dead, they're stacked on the pews to commemorate those who were killed.) Who is in the white coffin? (A pregnant woman who suffered a particularly grisly death.) How does this place pay for itself? (It doesn't really; as I talk with Kamana, a British/Canadian group leaves, and only one of the 12 people puts money—less than $2—in the donation basket.)
The group Rwanda Works, founded by Columbia University professor Josh Ruxin, is helping to build that infrastructure out—starting with a sign to inform foreigners that they're expected to give something. It is also helping Kamana create educational materials and to get assistance with preserving the artifacts, including those clothes, from experts in Europe. Eventually, there could even be a small bookshop as well as exhibition space in a now-derelict structure next to the former church. "Nobody else has come to do this kind of thing," Kamana says softly. "We are very grateful that someone is paying attention."
Since 1994, the tiny African nation of Rwanda has effectively been run by rebel leader-turned-politician Paul Kagame. He has won praise for stamping out corruption and restoring stability, while critics have raised questions about his regime's commitment to democracy as well as its involvement in the unrest in the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo. As his country prepared to mark the 15th anniversary of the genocide that killed about an eighth of its population, he told Fast Company why Rwanda's political system make sense, explained the place of the genocide in the national memory, and made the case for why foreigners should invest in his homeland.
FC: Much of the Rwandan national "brand identity" is associated with the
genocide and the recovery from that tragedy. But government officials
repeatedly reiterate that Rwanda is forward-looking and that the
genocide is in the past. How do you feel about the image of the country
and the place of the genocide in it?
Kagame: We will not forget the genocide, but we will not be defined by it
either. Each year, we use the memory of the genocide to convene a
national discussion, but then we use the discussion to talk about the
future. We want to be known as a purpose-driven nation, a nation of
individual responsibility in harmony with the collective good. We will
attract investment and increase our ability to export high quality
products that achieve price premiums, and with the economic surpluses
we create, to continue to invest in knowledge, skills and abilities. We
know that if that past is never to happen again, we must grow our
economy, create opportunities for higher wages, so that we create the
conditions for tolerance, trust, and optimism. That is Rwanda’s new
"brand identity," as you call it.
FC: At last year's genocide commemoration, you told your countrymen that they should be ashamed that Rwanda relies on taxpayer funds from foreign countries. Why?
Kagame: No country can depend on development aid forever. Such support may play a positive but transitory role, as in mitigating a natural disaster, emergency or recovery from conflict when re-building strategic infrastructures or vital institutions is vital due to the fact that domestic productivity can not raise enough resources. Otherwise, commerce, industry, and value addition to local products for export or local consumption are the stuff that any successful country has to be preoccupied with in realising prosperity through hard work and earnings of its people and taxpayers. Why [would] Africa or Rwanda acquiesce to a different lifestyle and practice--where we are sustained by the outside world--especially when our continent is endowed with vast human and natural resources? Such dependency dehumanises us and robs of us our dignity, and quite frankly it is an unacceptable proposition, besides being unsustainable.
FC: Why should non-Rwandans invest in Rwanda?
Kagame: Rwanda has considerable investment opportunities in various
sectors including agro-processing, tourism, energy, and mining. We are
strategically located in the heart of Africa sitting in the East
African Community--a market of nearly 130 million people that is,
furthermore in the process of integrating with the Common Market for
Southern and Eastern Africa as well as the Southern African Development
Community. This bigger market has over half of Africa’s population of
almost a billion people. I have no doubt that the more we integrate,
improve our regional infrastructure and institutions, this part of our
continent becomes more attractive to foreign direct investment not only
from our traditional trading partners of North America and Western
Europe but also from successful economies of China and India. Rwanda is
part of this emerging market.
FC: What effect does the overall security situation in the region--including the Congo--have on Rwanda’s business prospects? And what do you say to investors concerned by the rumours of Rwandan involvement in the Congo?
Kagame: A geographical neighbourhood a particular country is located in is a matter of historical accident than design. We happen to be part of the Great Lakes Region bordering DRC and Burundi--two countries that have recently emerged from considerable socioeconomic and political upheavals, as was the case in our country since the early 1990s to the later part of that decade. Nonetheless trans-border commerce in our region is a centuries-old tradition regardless of the security situation of the day. I am happy to say that things are looking up, as on the one hand, institutional frameworks to enhance economic and political ties between the DRC, Burundi and Rwanda are being revived and strengthened, and on the other hand the regional integration in the East African Community that incorporates Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi and ourselves continues to momentum. These developments are what any investor would welcome--larger markets for legitimate trade and investment in peaceful regional environment, as opposed to smaller markets further rendered unviable by wars, conflict and insecurity is what our region needs.
FC: Your Presidential Advisory Council seems to have no parallel
anywhere in the world. Why did you opt for this relationship-based
strategy for economic development in Rwanda?
Kagame: We have
friends with a vast experience in many important fields--people who
have led governments, faith-based institutions or global companies.
This pool of talent constitutes an inexhaustible source of advice and
inspiration from people with vast knowledge and experience in some of
the things that we need to do to create prosperity in our country. By
bringing together Rwandans and our overseas colleagues together
regularly, the Presidential Advisory Council enables us to transform
ideas into practical tools of improving lives in our country.
FC: So much of Rwanda’s efforts seem tied to yours, and many of those who have chosen to invest are drawn largely because of your leadership. What perils do you see in having it pinned on one person? How long do you intend to be at the helm in Rwanda, and have you made any contingencies for the day when you are not?
Kagame: We have come a long way in Rwanda since 1994 from a shattered social, economic, political and cultural fabric to something entirely different--new institutions that provide a foundation, rules, and values for inclusive leadership as well as its transfer from a set of leaders to the next. Besides setting a two-term limit for a sitting president, our Constitution also institutionalises power-sharing by, for example, demanding that the presidency and parliamentary speaker cannot be held simultaneously by one party, and that even the council of ministers in the executive cannot be drawn from a single party. Beyond the formal institutions, we are a country that has paid a heavy price of genocide from decades of mal-governance--our concept of leadership is one that is broad-based, decentralised and reflected at all levels including especially at community level that is hinged in local responsibilities and accountabilities. My leadership is not divorced from these hard-earned dividends in the new Rwanda.
FC: By some estimates, 90% of Rwandans are subsistence farmers, and rural development is something that has vexed experts and policymakers. Why do you think you will succeed? What strategies are you offering that are novel?
Kagame: Rural development the world over--not only in Rwanda--is something that needs a multi-pronged strategy with short-, medium-, and long terms clearly goals and objectives that are relentlessly pursued. Investment in education is fundamental--and here we are making good progress, as the first nine years of basic education is tuition-free for the first time in our history. Over 96% of school-age Rwandan children have access to basic education. Technical and vocational training continue to undergo reform to provide skills badly needed by our people, especially the rural population--literacy and skills are essential for self-improvement, including the improved ability to engage better agricultural practices such as use of modern inputs like fertilizer. Improved rural roads to market forms part of the strategy. Additionally, we have been decentralizing government to bring national institutions closer to rural populations so that ministries, departments and agencies respond to local needs. These factors also breed local leaders who in turn engage their constituencies for better social, economic, and political outcomes. These are some of the recipes not only for rural development but also for successful transformation generally.
FC: Your government has taken a much stronger position on managing NGOs and development groups than other countries. What is the proper role for the NGO in Rwandan development?
Non-governmental organizations are welcome in Rwanda as long as they serve the interest of their members--and our country is no exception in understanding NGOs in this fashion. In the normal sense of the concept, these agencies are critical for forming healthy, national tripartite arrangements that bring together government, business and civil society with a shared purpose of building strong and successful nations. Put differently, community-based initiatives are part of socioeconomic transformation and platforms of improving lives. What we have difficulty with are self-serving NGOs--some of them with hardly any members to serve but narrow interests.
FC: One of the first things that many Westerners note when visiting Rwanda is that there’s a ban on plastic bags. Why? And how does this fit into any broader strategy?
Kagame: The broader strategy is that the world community must do all it can to save our environment. Plastic bags degrade our environment, besides the fact that they add to the costs of cleaning of our cities, towns and villages.
FC: Rwanda under your leadership has not received top marks on freedom and human rights, and you have been angered by some of the outside reports on the topic. Why have the reports troubled you, and how high a priority is it for your government to strengthen and safeguard rights and freedoms?
Kagame: Any fair-minded person would readily see that Rwanda is now a country of laws, a country with an innovative constitution, and a country with increasingly robust private sector and civil society institutions that never existed before. The problem is that some people analyze good governance in a generic one size-fits-all [way]--true, there are critical universal features but equally important are society-specific characteristics that are informed by a country’s peculiar history. For example, in our Constitution, power-sharing is central to the extent that a winning party at the polls should not control both the presidency and parliament. This is based on the fact that winner-takes-all principle and practice that exclusion and genocide. Our critics see our innovations as anti-democratic and limits to human rights. We Rwandans know otherwise.
pop·u·lous
Pronunciation: \ˈpä-pyə-ləs\
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin populosus, from populus people
Date: 15th century
1 a: densely populated b: having a large population
2 a: numerous b: filled to capacity
3 a: the new name of HOK Sport Venue Event, the Kansas City firm that leads the field of sports architecture and was named in March to Fast Company's list of the 10 most innovative companies in sports.
Why the new name for a firm that has become synonymous with its work on major stadiums, including Camden Yards in Baltimore and London's Wembley Stadium? "In essence, we had to change the name," says Populous spokesperson Gina Leo. At the end of 2008, Kansas City-based HOK Sport split from HOK in a management buyout. The unit had been operating autonomously for the past eight years, and its leadership felt that this was the time to declare independence and stand entirely on its own.
The name change comes at an auspicious--and busy--moment for Populous. This month, the Yankees and the Mets play their first games in their new stadiums, both designed by the company. Later this year, it will open a new football stadium at the University of Minnesota. And next year, planned openings include a new baseball park for the Minnesota Twins, a stadium for Ireland's national soccer and rugby teams, venues for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver, and arenas for the NBA's Orlando Magic and the NHL's Pittsburgh Penguins.
The rebranding was led by Milkshake Media, the Austin, Texas, firm whose best-known work is the creation of the brand "Livestrong" for Lance Armstrong's cancer campaign. Milkshake was recommended to the architecture firm by Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, whose city had been advised by the agency and is a good friend of a Populous executive.
The name is clever--perhaps too much so. One potential problem is its subtlety. When Leo first told me what it was, I wasn't entirely sure what she said: Populace? Populous? Populist? Once the word is clear, it takes a second or two to get to that a-ha moment, when the thing makes sense: populous = lots of people = what you find in a stadium watching sports. At least at first, the Populous staff will have some explaining to do. The short version: Leo says that the name was inspired by a question that pervades Populous' work: "What draws people together?"
As part of the company's brand-building effort, the company is inviting people to answer that question. (See their Web site--still www.hoksport.com for the moment--for some initial responses.) Leo and her boss, Bob White, will pack a couple of Flip video cameras as they head for New York and the Yankees' and Mets' home openers. They plan to roam the new stadiums asking people what draws them together. The answer they no doubt want to hear: "You."
If there is such a thing as a sensation in African development, it would be Dambisa Moyo. The author of the new book Dead Aid, she has taken on many of the conventions of the relationship between the West and Africa--aid, celebrity spokespeople, the "China does bad" storyline that has been covered in this magazine. In her book, she argues that government aid has not helped Africa, despite an inflation-adjusted $1 trillion being poured into the continent over the last four decades. She stopped by Fast Company's New York offices to chat about her book and her ideas. Here's an edited transcript of our conversation--and click here for her answers to readers' questions.
FC: The book has been received with such enthusiasm. Why do you think that is? Moyo: It's kind of bizarre. The book is kind of obvious--there's a lot of restating of well-known arguments. Perhaps those arguments have been in localized quarters--among academia and development experts. But maybe the interest has been sparked because people outside of the development business know something's been going wrong and that there are alternatives. I think that's what people are excited about: There is another way.
FC: What's surprised you about the response to the book? Moyo: The thing that surprised me the most is just how NGOs have taken a very aggressive approach to the book. The book was written in a polemical sense to try to get the debate going. I wanted everyone to get involved, from people who are diehard aid proponents to people who hate aid. I want to have them really question the system the way we are now questioning the capitalist system--one year of problem with the credit crisis, after 300 years of evidence that capitalism works, and it's out the window. We have 60 years of problems with aid and nobody has really been saying anything.
FC: What have the NGOs said? Moyo: I'm a bit annoyed because I think they have been quite mean, misrepresenting some of the things I say. I keep saying there are three types of aid: humanitarian aid, charity aid--I'm not talking about those in the book--and government aid. I keep getting these emails saying, Oh, Dambisa Moyo is going to kill babies. African babies are going to die of malaria and AIDS. They don't want to move the debate forward.
FC: Who has attacked you publicly? Moyo: ONE, Bono's organization. They wrote a letter that's on their Web site. I've spoken to them one on one--no pun intended--and I've told them numerous times that I'm not criticizing their kind of aid. They say, Yeah, yeah, let's have dinner and chat some more. The next thing I know they've launched a campaign.
FC: You've been called the Anti-Bono. Moyo: By New York magazine. I was not happy about that at all, because it's a red herring. The celebrity thing is incidental to the issue. There's freedom of speech--anybody can comment--but this is about economic policy and serious government interventions. To focus on the celebrities ... Who cares? Besides, they perpetuate a negative view of Africa. All that comes out from them is what I call it the Four Horsemen of Africa's Apocalypse: war, disease, corruption, poverty. They never say, "Wow, guys, let's try and change people's image." They focus very much on the negative. They've become the face of Africa, and that's an artifact of the aid model. Where are the African governments? They should be at the forefront, articulating a view for this continent. But they just can't be bothered to say anything. I think they would care if they needed to, but they're sitting on aid. They basically can't be bothered to articulate a view. So anyone can jump in and say, "I'm speaking on behalf of Africa and Africans," which is essentially what these celebrities have done.
FC: Bono worked very hard on debt relief, which you criticize. Moyo: I don't have a problem with debt relief in and of itself. I see the arguments. But there's this problem of moral hazard: people behave badly if they think they're always going to get bailed out. What's the point of giving debt relief if you're just going to add new aid? I don't view it as a break with the aid cycle.
FC: What countries are the worst offenders? Moyo: Across the continent, most countries have at least 70% dependency on aid. It's easier for me to strip out the good ones. South Africa and Botswana--those two are on one scale. Ghana. Rwanda--President Kagame has been on record saying that aid is not the solution. Barring those guys, everyone else is guilty on some level of pursuing a lax model. For instance, I get irritated when I hear of countries pulling their bond ratings. Zambia is one. Yes, we know the system of bond ratings is not perfect, but it's a good thing to be transparently measured.
FC: Why would they pull the ratings? Moyo: Many African countries have a lazy muscle. Why go to the trouble of getting a bond rating when I can just go to the World Bank? Or go to the G20? Or actually, have Bono go to the G20 and ask for you. I don't even have to leave my country. That's a cynical view, but it's hard for me to interpret it any other way.
FC: You write positively about microfinance but lately there has been much criticism of microfinance. Moyo: Has there?
FC: Well, there's the problem of scale, for one thing. Also, it helps people be a little less poor but doesn't necessarily help pull them out of poverty. Moyo: Scale is an issue. That's absolutely right. Somebody yesterday said to me that Kiva has been sitting on a lot of money and can't find anyone to borrow it. But I don't think that's a reason we should shy away from it. Those organizations can scale up--instead of lending $25 or $100, they will start to lend $10,000, which would be good because there is that gap in the market. But we also haven't done it long enough. I see why people say it doesn't meaningfully move people out of poverty--maybe they're earning $5 a day now instead of $1. But the economy has to move as a whole. Without being a monopolist or a thief, I don't think you can see big jumps in income in an economy. Microfinance is quite localized. Until the economy as a whole starts to grow, it's always going to be small.
FC: You're a big fan of China in Africa. Moyo: I love the Chinese.
FC: We did a story in our June 2008 issue called China Storms Africa that looks at the many negatives: the environmental destruction, for instance, and the corruption. Moyo: Stuff that the West never did, of course. It's slightly hypocritical--only slightly. The Chinese in Africa are not perfect. They shouldn't come in carte blanche. But it's the responsibility of African governments to manage those alliances—and they'll only do it if they are incentivized to do it. Under an aid model, what do they care? Let's take the extreme example of Sudan. I don't want to live in a place with a tyrannical dictator running footloose and fancy-free, and it's not great with a civil war, but the infrastructure in Sudan right now is amazing and the West did not deliver that in 60 years. There was a brilliant survey in 2007 in which Pew basically went to 15 countries and surveyed Africans and asked what they think of Chinese being there. Consistently and by big margins, the Chinese were viewed as positive. [Ed. note: The one exception was South Africa.]
FC: The Chinese really never bother about what kind of government is in power. Moyo: Nobody does really.
FC: The West talks about it much more. Moyo: It seems to me to be a double standard. The West doesn't really care--come on. They gave money to Mugabe up until 2006. Most of the biggest despots in Africa--Mobutu, Idi Amin, Bokassa--who was in charge at those times?
FC: You make the argument that democracy is not a prerequisite for economic growth. Moyo: The evidence shows it's not: China, Singapore, Chile achieved record growth and poverty reduction without relying on democracy. What's really important is the economics first. There's a great paper by Adam Przeworski I cite in the book that says you can't get long-term, stable democracy to stick unless your people earn at least $6000 a year. Thailand, which had a coup recently, is below $6000 a year, and Africa has had four coups in the past month--Madagascar, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania. His point is not disproven.
FC: Would you go so far as to say it's a hindrance to economic growth? Moyo: Look, the job of African president is bloody hard. Some of these countries have been completely addicted to aid. They've been force-fed the notion of democracy. Kagame is doing some amazing things in Rwanda, but what I hear is: He's an authoritarian! You can just see how these cycles can be perpetuated. There's scope to transform things dramatically, but only if you have the right incentives. They don't right now.
FC: What incentives would you put in place? Moyo: We're not going to get innovation or people contributing to the global community with this dependence on aid. So I would give a finite, clear timeline--10 years--to say we are going to reduce our dependence on aid. I had a meeting with Kagame in February, and he said, "Don't talk to me about getting off aid. I buy it. How?"
First thing I said was, "Do you have credit ratings?" I'm not saying you necessarily have to go to the bond market, though it is a great way to raise funds. But it's a great indicator for investors. What's the credit rating of a company? What's the credit rating of the country? He said, We have some rating from such and such. I said most investors will only look at S&P and Moody's, even though they have their history. Get that box ticked.
Second, how much money are you making from trade? They have to focus much more on building alliances with China.
The other thing I find incredibly irritating is how fragmented the continent is. I went to Kenya, Tanzania, and Rwanda, and I needed three visas and to change currencies three times. Give me a break. I would really try to do much more in terms of regional integration. Zambia is 10 million people. Southern Africa is 200 million. That's a big difference to the investor.
We asked some of our friends on Twitter to submit questions for Goldman alumna and development-economics star Dambisa Moyo. (Thanks to @wiwibloggs, @sinatraj, @socialentrprnr, @ellmcgirt, and @rebekahco for their submissions.) Moyo declined, by the way, to answer a question about her views on Madonna's attempt to adopt another Malawian baby. But here's an edited transcript of the rest of her responses on topics ranging from the bond markets to the problem with Pepfar, the U.S. government's major but controversial effort to battle AIDS in Africa. (To read the rest of the interview--including her scathing thoughts on celebrities in Africa--click here.)
FC: We have some reader questions for you. The first one ties in with something we were just talking about: credit ratings and the bond markets. You're very big on the capital markets, but doesn't it have just as horrible a record over the decades? Is it that much better for development? Moyo: Absolutely. Look at China. China was worse off than many African countries 30 years ago. They've moved, in 20 to 25 years, 300 million people into the middle class.
FC: But has that been because of the capital markets or because of the power of the government? Moyo: I think the government. I should clarify that there are clearly differences between the free-market system that has pervaded Western society and the ethos of the Chinese model. China has encouraged entrepreneurship, free-ish trade, and the investment into the country. I would consider that as broadly in line with the Western view of a capitalist model, but of course it's a command model.
My point is that Africa is nowhere near that. It's aid dependent. Health care, infrastructure, security--it's all provided by foreigners.
FC: Do you have an example of a country that has done well in the capital markets, where it has been a major component of its development? Moyo: Ghana. Ghana has done well. It's been against the wishes of the donor community. I saw a letter from the World Bank saying they shouldn't go to the capital markets. It said, "It's cheaper to borrow from us." It's cheaper in the financial sense, but the stigma associated with continuing to be a borrower from the World Bank as opposed to having a transparent credit rating where you can price your risk--it's enormous. Nobody wants to invest in a basketcase. If you say, they're dependent on aid from the World Bank, most investors will say thanks but no thanks.
FC: How about outside of Africa? Moyo: Lots of countries in South America and Eastern Europe. Argentina, although it's defaulted. People do default. Malaysia, Indonesia, South Korea have used the bond markets well.
FC: But if they default, they're not really better off, are they? Moyo: It depends on why they default. When investors put money into a country, the expectation is that they're not going to default. In the book I give the example of Brazil. When you go to investors, you have to articulate a vision for the country: This is a great place to come and invest. You pitch the story and investors buy the story. You talk about your tax base and how you plan to pay them back. Brazil had a coffee frost. It wiped out the tax base. That's unanticipated, but investors usually factor that in. And so if Brazil turns around and says, "I'm defaulting," at least you can see the government didn't run away with the money and put it in a Swiss bank account.
FC: Another reader question: What one or two government policies are the biggest barriers to African economic independence? Moyo: Dependence on aid. I'd actually call it an obsession with aid. South Africa is already a member of the G20, but they decided to invite three other representatives from Africa to speak on behalf of the continent. The whole thesis is, Give us more aid. They've got aid on the mind. It irritates me. We can be sympathetic for bailout aid: Eastern Europe has a balance-of-payments crisis and they're asking for money. That's fine. We understand that when the crisis is over they're going to be going back to a free-market model. That's not Africa. Africa is asking for an open-ended commitment with no cancellation. The other side of that is a lack of motivation to create an environment that's conducive to investment.
FC: A question about AIDS funding: It's been a huge part of U.S. government aid. Has it skewed the priorities of the governments receiving money? Moyo: Yes. Here, I go back to my original question: What is the role of government? Let me be a little facetious. If government is supposed to provide health care, education, infrastructure, and security, and African governments are not providing these things--UNICEF is providing education, Gates Foundation is providing health care, the Chinese are providing infrastructure, the U.N. is providing security or whatever combination. Very facetiously speaking, shouldn't we not bother to elect African officials but instead vote for which NGO will provide the best healthcare?
Let's talk about Pepfar [the U.S. government's strategy to fund AIDS treatments and prevention]. They've increased it to $30 billion for 15 countries. Say every country roughly gets $2 billion. Zambia has 10 million people, so that's roughly $200 a person. That's approximately the per-capita income of Zambia—you're roughly doubling the per capita income. But that has had no meaningful impact on the health sector. $2 billion and you can't overhaul the system? That seems to me completely absurd. African governments have completely abdicated their responsibility.
Pepfar get authorization from Congress. That money is split amongst four organizations. Then those organizations give the money to another layer. It hasn't even left the shores of America yet. Then those guys give money to local NGOs--and some of them aren't even local NGOs. They're American NGOs registered locally. The dollar amount that hits the individual is 20 cents on the dollar if you're lucky.
We haven't even gotten to the philosophical questions: Should we focus on abstinence? Forget that. As a practical thing, does a dollar approved by Congress go to the person on the ground?
FC: Next, mobile-payment schemes. Are they a viable possibility for the unbanked? Do they help? Moyo: They're incredibly innovative. They're working already. Grameen Bank has rolled out a quite aggressive system in Bangladesh. I write about the M-PESA system in Kenya--it's a good way of getting money to the rural sector. We need innovation--and here's a good example. I was actually talking to Chris Hughes about this. He said he wanted to do something in Africa. Getting information out, getting ideas out, getting money out--how do we do it? Well, many people have mobile phones. That's one thing you could use. It circumvents government, and that's a good way.
FC: What about fair trade and cooperatives? Cadbury's recently announced they're going to buy all of their cocoa for Dairy Milk from Ghanaian fair-trade coops. Moyo: You don't want to just grow the cocoa. You want to make the chocolate.
FC: So who are the leaders who are helping to make that happen, who are helping to "make the chocolate"? Moyo: I really admire Kagame. He's doing something against the grain, but he's an anomaly. Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson in Liberia is doing it to some degree. But that's about it. I'm not very sanguine. That's precisely why I've decided not to be a crusader. I've said what I have to say.
There's nothing like a conference to breed and spread fresh jargon. At the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship, they've included "impact," "accountability," "social business," that old standby "best practices," and of course "social entrepreneurship." Paul Farmer, of Mountains Beyond Mountains and Partners in Health fame observed wryly in his panel discussion that "metrics is the second-most fetishized word here after scale."
Over the three days of the Skoll Forum, I've collected new (to me) and noxious terms that popped up in the panel discussions I attended. I'll be clear: It's not the concepts that offend me so much as the gobbledygookishness of these phrases, which somehow is directly proportional to the likelihood they'll enter wider industry use.
I've added more terms culled from #swf09 tweets as well as other delegates' keen ears. Consider this a public service announcement: Beware these terms. (Definitions provided where possible.) Thanks to @jessicashortall for her assiduous hunting as well. And if you've got more, please comment!
Disconnected ambiguity
Empowerment coefficient
Humanity scouts - people who go ant-like ahead of others and show the way forward. Syn.: pioneer.
Humanizing capitalism – as in, capitalism that humanizes.
Justice entrepreneur - I do not have a clue what this means. Someone who makes money from justice? Sells justice? Makes money from getting justice for others?
Participative capital
Spinternet – Spin + internet.
Spontaneous community - Syn.: slum.
Strategic apex - Not to be confused with the nonstrategic kind.
Toxic accountability - "The problem is not a lack of accountability, but too much of the wrong kind."
Global economic crisis. Financial collapse. The current climate. Whatever term you want to use to describe our present state of affairs, I've heard it in the halls and meeting rooms at the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship. Funding is down, outlooks are uncertain, and people are worried. Except, perhaps, for the fair-trade folks. Demand for sustainably made, socially responsible products seems to be growing even as the global economy staggers.
A few weeks before the forum, candymaker Cadbury announced that, by this summer, all of its flagship Dairy Milk bars in Britain and Ireland will be made exclusively from fair-trade cocoa grown by Ghanaian farmers. By the end of the year, every cup of coffee that Starbucks sells in the U.K. will be brewed with fair-trade beans, and in 2009, the company plans to double the amount of fair-trade coffee it imports into the U.S. Sam's Club is quadrupling its purchases of fair-trade bananas this year, and eliminating non-FT bananas from dozens of its stores. Transfair USA is planning to certify up to a dozen new products in 2009, including avocados and olive oil, and will begin a pilot project for cotton apparel--its first beyond food. So is fair trade recession-proof?
Prices for fair-trade products may be higher, but one Harvard study has showed that consumers expect them to be: Sales actually increased when the price went up. "Not only is this consumer segment--which is growing, trend-setting--willing to pay a little more for products that speak to those values, but they expect to pay more," Transfair USA CEO Paul Rice said in a session at the forum. It's as if the higher price signals that the certification isn't just a marketing gimmick but guarantees the veracity of the claim.
Rice thinks that companies investing now are being particularly forward-looking. "Companies who are announcing big increases in FT product lines are really trying to position themselves for when we come out of the recession," he says. "They're positioning themselves now, at this unlikely moment, to establish credibility." He believes there's good reason to do so, citing studies that show up to 30% of U.S. adult consumers--some 60 million people--regularly shop for products "that are consistent with their values."
Earlier in the week, Oxford development economist Jim Cust told me "there's arguably no altruistic act in the world. Economists look at the underlying utility you derive from doing something." That's as true of the consumer, and especially the corporation, as it is of the social entrepreneur. Fair trade is certainly seen by corporations as a differentiator for marketing purposes. "We've done something that's far beyond what any coffee company in the U.K. has ever done before," Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said last fall. "This long-term commitment … will give our customers the assurance that the coffee they're buying in Starbucks in terms of espresso-based beverages is at a price that will allow sustainability for those people who need it most."
The conventional wisdom here at the forum seems to be that the ranks of the ethical shopper are growing. The question is whether this is just what one of my acquaintances calls "an ethical corsage" (thanks, Dan McQuillan!) thanks to clever marketing and corporate strategy, or whether the growth in fair trade really presages some kind of permanent shift in the way we consume.
Maybe fair trade seems recession-proof because the people who tend to buy those products are less vulnerable to the rises and falls of the broader economy. The one problem with the Harvard study that Paul Rice cited was that it was done at ABC Carpet &
Home, an upscale Manhattan home-furnishings store/yuppie magnet
frequented by folks who are a little more insulated from recession than
your average consumer.
They're not living paycheck to paycheck. People using food stamps aren't buying fair-trade coffee. Let's say there comes a time when smarter, fairer shopping isn't just a yuppie lifestyle choice--not the only option, but the generally preferred one. That actually could mean that fair trade becomes less recession-proof, not more.
On Monday evening, in a hotel room in London, Kjerstin Erickson made her hit list. Laid out in Excel, it is meticulous: name, organization, responsibility--65 names in all. The next day, Erickson boarded a train and made her way to Oxford, where she knew her targets would be gathered, and then she began picking them off one by one.
Erickson is a social entrepreneur--just 25, she founded and heads a group called FORGE, which encourages entrepreneurship among African refugees--and she has spent this week at the Skoll World Forum in Oxford. It's her first major conference, packed with the titans of her industry, and she's here to court donors, make connections, and seek out journalists. (Full disclosure: I met her when she glanced at my nametag and said triumphantly: "You're on my list!") Her week has been at turns exhilarating and frustrating, not unlike her career. And her story illustrates the importance--and the challenges--of industry gatherings, especially for someone trying to build not just a career but also a young company.
A few months ago, it looked as if FORGE wouldn't survive. The money was not coming in, and in this environment, who, really, was handing out more? Erickson blogged about her predicament on Social Edge, a Skoll-backed site for social entrepreneurs, and soon she had the pro-bono services of a consultant who helped her stabilize the organization. He also had some frank advice: "He said, 'You need to be out there. It's amazing that you've been doing this as long as you have and you're not at all plugged in!'" she recalls. "But I didn't want to be egocentric. I didn't want the focus to be on the founder, but on the cause."
But sometimes the focus on the founder actually helps the cause. And so in recent months, she has shifted the balance of her work from 85% programming to 75% marketing, networking, and outreach. She certainly has the personality for it: open, curious, charming, and just edgy enough to be cool yet nonthreatening--like the tattoos just hidden under the sleeves of her black power suit. (The one on the inside of her right wrist reads: "One life." On her left, it says: "Be love.")
On Wednesday, she went to a tea party and knocked one journalist and one foundation executive off her list. At dinner, she met more of her targets, including Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America. She gave them each a brief rundown of FORGE's work in Zambia--"I've been practicing my pitch for five-and-a-half years," she said, ever since she started the organization as a Stanford student. It's often nerve-wracking: "There's an element of, 'I really don't want to bother you right now,' but I care so much that I am willing to risk that personal rejection."
She hasn't spent much time attending panel discussions--"I do a ton of reading and I'm up on things," she says. Instead, she's networking and trying to identify, by the lanyards and nametags that awkwardly hang about crotch-high, yet another of her targets. There have been moments when Erickson wonders whether she should even be here, striding around in her suit and heels, shaking hands and doling out business cards. "I'm thinking, 'Holy shit, how do I belong here?'" she says. "My organization is half a million dollars a year, and I'm very young. And I'm in the company of giants!"
She has no expectation that any of those giants--or, really, the non--will write her a check to take back with her to California, but she does hope that those she has met will remember her and her work, and continue the conversation after they've all gone home. Maybe the money and the advice will come later.
The person she most wants to meet before flying home is former Irish President Mary Robinson. "I'm fascinated by female leadership," says Erickson. "I'm always looking for models, and my pie-in-the-sky dream is that she would meet me and mentor me."
But as of late Thursday, Erickson hadn't yet tracked her down amid the din of 800 delegates. "I'm realistic," she says, as she scrolls through her spreadsheet, glancing over the names of those she has not yet met and counting up those she has. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven … Eight."
The morning after the Oscars, a full-page ad appeared in The New York Times. It had a photo of the Mumbai cityspace and a "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" gameboard. "Why do millions of people die from treatable diseases every year?" it asked. "A. They're poor. B. They lack access to medication. C. They're not our problem. D. It is written." The words "Slumdog Millionaire" weren't anywhere on the page, but the look, the vibe, and the allusion were unmistakable. The organization that placed the ad was a not-for-profit pharmaceutical company called the Institute for OneWorld Health.
The ad kicked off a yearlong campaign to bring attention to global poverty--and specifically to OneWorld's strategy of tackling poverty by making medicine. (As Fast Company wrote about when we named OneWorld Health one of our Social Enterprises of the Year in December, its first drug is a treatment for leishmaniasis.) The Slumdog-centric campaign is also an unusual spin on cause-related marketing.
Typically, it's corporations and for-profits that piggyback off a
cause. Here, it's a not-for-profit capitalizing on a pop-culture
"brand," totally independent of the film's makers or its distributor,
Fox Searchlight.
"Let's be honest: For a feel-good movie, watching 'Slumdog Millionaire' doesn't feel very good until the end of the film," CEO Richard Chin wrote on the Huffington Post. "How the Western world channels its enthusiasm for 'Slumdog Millionaire' into meaningful action will be the test of whether this feel-good movie can do good, too."
To that end, OneWorld followed up the print ad with two weeks of online ads at nytimes.com. And various other non-Slumdog-related parts of the campaign will unfold over coming months; in the run-up to Mother's Day, for instance, Pandora Jewelry will sell a charm bracelet shaped like a microbe--what Mom has always wanted!--with the slogan "Charm your mother and save a life" and proceeds to support OneWorld Health.
The OneWorld Health team had been talking about the movie for months, but it wasn't until just after the film's success at the Golden Globes that its publicity plans crystallized. "Suddenly we didn't have to fly people to India so that they can see the disease and the living conditions," OneWorld Health VP Jim Hickman told me at the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship. "There are moments in time when people are collectively focused, and if you can get into that discussion, you can have a real impact." (OneWorld Health is a past winner of the Skoll Foundation's Social Entrepreneurship Award.)
It was the first time that OneWorld Health had ever bought ads in The New York Times, and the organization was pleased with the results. On the day of the ad, traffic to OneWorld Health's Website nearly quadrupled. During the duration of the online run, traffic was up 50%. The organization saw a small bump in donations. And it doubled the number of people on its Facebook Causes page.
OneWorld Health is now pondering ways to better exploit social media, which "has made campaigns like this so much easier," Hickman says. It's also thinking about whether to run more such advertising. He wouldn't give me any other specific benchmarks or targets, other than simply to "raise awareness" and, obviously, more money. But he did wryly note that the firm that created the Slumdog ads was GMMB, the Washington agency that now has Chris Hughes on its team and worked on Obama '08. "Everyone," Hickman notes, "hopes to replicate the Obama campaign's success."
It's the morning after the night before, and Darius Weems can't get over his red-carpet experience. "Russell Simmons!" he says in awe. "Russell Simmons! He was standing there, shoulder to shoulder with me." And later, during the Do Something awards ceremony at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, Simmons had presented Weems with $10,000 and honored him for his work raising awareness for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal genetic disorder that took his brother's life and will eventually claim his too.
The film, which came out in 2006, won awards at dozens of film festivals and became the platform for Weems to raise more than $2 million for Duchenne research. "Not a lot of people know about [the disease]--too many people don't know," Weems says. "But they see the movie, they're down with the cause."
But the constant travel--speeches, public appearances, as many as three screenings per day--"has kind of tired me out," he says. He logged more than 30,000 miles between September and March, which prompted his doctor to force him to slow down, worried that the work was overtaxing Weems's ever-frailer body. He is now 19, the same age as his brother Mario was when he died.
If there is such a thing as a sensation in African development, it would be Dambisa Moyo. The author of the new book Dead Aid, she has taken on many of the conventions of the relationship between the West and Africa--aid, celebrity spokespeople, the "China does bad" storyline that has been 
On Monday evening, in a hotel room in London, Kjerstin Erickson made her hit list. Laid out in Excel, it is meticulous: name, organization, responsibility--65 names in all. The next day, Erickson boarded a train and made her way to Oxford, where she knew her targets would be gathered, and then she began picking them off one by one.
