In Uganda, one of the poorest countries in the world, these entrepreneurs create opportunity for themselves and others.
A true entrepreneur sees opportunity in scarcity and innovates accordingly. I saw that in action, when I recently visited Uganda with the United Nations Foundation and its Global Entrepreneur Council (disclosure: my trip was paid for by UNF). We met traditional business owners in Kampala, some of whom were fellows of The Unreasonable Institute, a U.S. based organization (and 30 Under 30 alum) that mentors and coaches businesses seeking to solve big world problems. But we also saw the entrepreneurial spirit thriving at the UNHCR-run Nakivale Refugee Settlement, and among women operating cottage enterprises on Bussi Island. Here’s a look how promising entrepreneurs are bringing innovation to one of the poorest countries in the world:
Moses Sanga, founder of Eco-Fuel Africa, worked with engineering students to develop a simple kiln that turns animal dung into biochar, a powder used as fertilizer and as a charcoal substitute. He leases kilns to 2,500 farmers and teaches them how to carbonize animal waste. Sanga takes half the biochar until the cost of the kiln is paid off, typically in three to six months. The farmers use biochar as fertilizer while Sanga compresses it into briquettes and sells it as a cheaper, cleaner-burning fuel for cook stoves. He’s also a TED fellow and a graduate of The Unreasonable Institute.
Rebecca and Eric Kaduru, who met and married in Uganda, started their farm after discovering that 70 percent of the passion fruit in Uganda was imported. With $20,000 from a local investment firm, they did seed research, built trellises, and planted their crop. Now their company, KadAfrica, partners with Catholic Relief Services to teach 1,500 girls aged 14 to 20 how grow passion fruit. KadAfrica buys the fruit from the girls and sells it in Kampala to hotels and supermarkets. The farm, which will grow to 90 acres this year, also exports 40 percent of its crop to the UK.
Abu Musuuza started Village Energy as a manufacturer of small solar power systems, but found that after-sale servicing was time consuming and expensive. So Musuuza pivoted and now leaves the manufacturing to Chinese companies, who pay him to service the systems. He trains local radio repairmen who become his franchisees. And leveraging what he learned about LED lighting as a solar manufacturer, he’s also become the largest importer of LED lights in Uganda.
Michael Wilkerson, the founder of Tugende, first came to Uganda as an intern at The Daily Monitor newspaper. His primary method of transportation was Kampala’s ubiquitous Boda-Boda motorcycle taxis. When he learned that drivers rent their motorcycles from landlords, he had an aha moment. Why not sell motorcycles to them, making loans with monthly payments that were only slightly higher than rent? He’s raised $350,000 in convertible debt to grow Tugende, which has sold 290 bikes. Seventy of them are paid off and now owned by drivers.
While working in the public-health sector in Uganda, Sophia Klumpp noticed that girls skipped school during their monthly periods because they could not afford sanitary napkins. So she made a prototype, a washable, reusable pad. Today, she and her fiancé run AFRIpads, a five-year-old manufacturing company that employs 70 people, and has reached more than 250,000 women in East Africa through customers such as UNICEF, Save the Children, and Oxfam.
John Businge and Robert Makune started Forever Sanitation to provide affordable pit latrine emptying to the poorest of the poor in Kampala’s slums, which are often inaccessible to large waste trucks. The company uses a manually operated pump called a Gulper, then empties the waste into barrels loaded in the bed of a pickup truck. Forever Sanitation now serves more than 300 households and has just been accepted into The Unreasonable Institute’s East Africa program.
On isolated and impoverished Bussi Island, in Lake Victoria, a local not-for-profit called HOPE ties education on family planning into lessons on sustainability and economic independence (i.e. spacing and/or limiting pregnancies means more time to generate income). This group of women, The Young Mothers Club, started a business that makes and sells liquid soap, floor mats, brooms, and baked goods.
Annet Samaya, pictured with members of UNF’s Global Entrepreneurs Council, leads a cluster of five model households on Bussi Island. HOPE has taught them sustainable agriculture and animal husbandry, sanitation and hygiene, and family planning. With income from her small farm, she has earned enough to send two of her children to boarding school on the mainland. She teaches other residents how to be similarly entrepreneurial.
Nakivale Refugee Settlement, operated by UNHCR, is filled with refugees who have fled violence, mostly from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It’s also filled with entrepreneurs. In 2012, these men, who are co-founders of Umeme Group, were given a maize mill by a German NGO. When the maize market became flooded, they converted the machine into an electricity generator, and now sell power to 27 fellow refugees and to new businesses that require electricity, such as a soft drink shop, and a little cinema.
At the Nakivale Refugee Settlement, UNHCR has built four vocational training centers, to teach refugees income-generating skills such as tailoring, concrete brick production, agriculture, and carpentry. These graduates of the carpentry program now have a furniture-making business in one of settlement’s public markets, which is also patronized by people in nearby villages. Tools are in short supply so they, too, must be made (note the saw!).
This article was syndicated and originally appeared on the Inc.com website
