In the Mongolian language, the book explores how Mongolia’s vibrant rock and pop music scene led on business innovation and entrepreneurship in the country during the transition years (post-1989). Written by an ethnomusicologist, it details the key moments and events in this story, while splicing the narrative with first-person interviews with the major players.
Education is recognized as critical for development and improving people’s lives. Universal primary education is a Millennium Development Goal and countries are now allocating more funds for primary education across the global South. However, the options available to youth after primary education are often very limited.
The World Bank estimates that only nine percent of youth in the developing world will be able to go to a university or benefit from higher education scholarships. For the vast majority of youth, getting a job is often the only viable option to securing a livelihood; but in most developing countries the number of formal sector jobs is low and the only option is self-employment. Acquiring relevant training and practical skills can be crucial to becoming successfully self-employed. But where will the training and skills come from and who will provide it and pay for it?
This dilemma is being addressed by the “self-sufficient schools” concept. The model combines entrepreneurship and vocational education through school-based businesses that blend training and revenue-generation. The principle is simple: entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial skills are taught by successful entrepreneurs.
The model is being pioneered in several countries and has been successfully applied by UK-based charity TeachAManToFish in Ghana and Paraguay, targeting rural youth from farming families through a network of 250 vocational experts and institutions in 45 countries. The approach promotes a model for making education both more relevant and financially sustainable in rural communities.
Self-sufficient schools share several characteristics: they produce and sell goods and services; they focus on developing an entrepreneurial culture; they make a direct connection between theory, practical work and financial reward; they encourage learning by doing; they strive to keep improving in order to remain economically competitive; students are encouraged to work cooperatively; and students receive support after graduating, often in the form of microfinance for their new businesses.
In the South American nation of Paraguay, the Fundacion Paraguaya – San Francisco Agricultural High School – run by an NGO committed to poverty reduction through supporting entrepreneurship – found that small-scale farmers not only knew how to produce food, they also knew how to make a prosperous living out of it when given the right tools. Taking over a school previously run by a religious order, the NGO had the opportunity to put the concept to the test.
The organization’s head, Martin Burt states, ”It is not a matter of knowing how to grow the crop, or raise the animal; it is a matter of how to make money and then how to be financially successful doing farming in poor countries.”
The Paraguayan school is half way through its five-year plan, and already is covering two thirds of its recurring costs from the production and sale of goods and services, including specialist cheeses.
Published: May 2007
Resources
A paper on the concept of self-sufficient schools: Click here
CIDA City Campus, Johannesburg, South Africa: CIDA is the country’s only “’free’, open-access, holistic, higher educational facility” and is “operated and managed by its students, from administration duties to facilities management. In addition every student is required to return to their rural schools and communities, during holidays, to teach what they have learnt.”
The First International Conference on Self-Sufficient Schools is being planned by TeachAManToFish. Expressions of interest are sought from all individuals and organizations interested in taking part in the conference. Email conference@teachamantofish.org.uk for more information.
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
A Kenyan entrepreneur has cooked up a fuel-efficient stove and oven that uses less of a precious national resource: wood from trees.
Most African households using fuel-burning stoves either cannot afford clean-burning fuels like natural gas or electric stoves, or do not have access to them. They are stuck having to burn wood or other materials like animal dung – collectively called biomass – on open fires.
As well as using up wood and contributing to deforestation, there is another downside to these stoves. The use of polluting fuel-burning stoves by half the world’s population – including 80 percent of rural households – is a documented contributor to a host of health problems. Poor households not only have to contend with the ill health effects of dirty water and poor sanitation, the fumes from burning dung, wood, coal or crop leftovers lead to the global deaths of more than 1.6 million people a year from breathing toxic indoor air (WHO).
Two solutions in Kenya are helping people to cook more efficiently (meaning less time wasted on gathering material to burn, and less fuel used) and reducing cooking time by using heat more effectively.
Invented by Dr Maxwell Kinyanjui, the Kinyanjui Jiko is a fuel-efficient charcoal oven that comes in small, medium and large industrial sizes. Made entirely in Kenya, the ovens are custom designed for a variety of environments, from domestic household use and on-the-go safari models to high-capacity models for micro-enterprises and large institutions. Cooks can use the ovens to bake, toast, steam or boil. And they are 40 percent cheaper than cooking with electricity and between 15 and 20 percent cheaper than gas.
Kinyanjui’s Musaki Enterprises Ltd. (www.reskqu.blogspot.com/2009/01/arboretum-project.html) has developed a reputation for pioneering work in developing fuel-efficient stoves and ovens. Its most popular success to date has been the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (jiko is Swahili for cooker), or KCJ, a cheap, simple and effective stove. The company was set up in 1992, but has been involved in international aid-funded research and development efforts since the 1980s.
“My dad was on a very good team of highly motivated individuals in the early 80s who developed the stove through pragmatism, logic and good old-fashioned ingenuity,” said his son, Teddy Kinyanjui. “He then set up the independent Musaki Enterprises.”
The KCJ uses a ceramic liner placed inside a metal container. The metal is usually recycled, often taken from 55 gallon steel drums. The ceramic liner stops the heat energy from simply escaping into the environment and helps to focus the heat on cooking. Simply adding the ceramic liner reduces the stove’s fuel consumption by between 25 and 40 percent. The charcoal or wood sits in the ceramic basin and the burnt ash falls through holes in the bottom of the liner.
The stove design was a result of international and Kenyan cooperation, and has become popular in many African countries, including Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Malawi, Niger, Senegal and Sudan. It is used in 50 percent of urban homes in Kenya and 16 percent of rural homes.
Musaki Enterprises say the KCJ stoves on average save between 1 and 1.5 tons of CO2 per stove per year compared to other models. In supermarkets, the KCJs retail for around US $5 and the Kinyanjui Jiko ovens start at around US $100.
The deployment of the KCJ stoves has helped in slowing the deforestation of the country, but has not been able to bring it to a halt because of population growth and poor re-forestation efforts, says Teddy Kinyanjui.
“The lack of forward planning in tree planting is making firewood and charcoal harder and harder to obtain,” he said. “Fossil fuels are unavailable or unaffordable. Tree planting must begin now on a huge scale for people to continue cooking.”
Teddy won’t reveal how profitable the KCJ stoves have been, but says, “I wouldn’t have gone to school if they didn’t sell well.”
“Well, more and more people keep buying the damn things as fast as we can make them, so I think our customers like them,” he said. “They really all seem to like that the stoves cook really well for really cheap and are very high quality.”
Kammen, D. M. (2000), “Case Study #1: Research, development, and commercialization of the Kenya Ceramic Jiko (KCJ)”, in Methodological and Technological Issues in Technology Transfer (Cambridge University Press: New York, Cambridge UK and New York, NY), 383 – 384.
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
A global survey has unearthed hotspots across the global South for start-up businesses and private enterprise. It shows there are now many places in the South where people are actively encouraged to start businesses and engage in innovation and enterprise. The top place in the world for entrepreneurship, according to the survey for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), is Indonesia.
The poll shows that Indonesians perceive their country as a place where it is easy to put ideas into practice. Innovation and creativity are highly valued in Indonesia as well, two important elements of business success. Asia as a whole, with a few exceptions, stood out for valuing these qualities.
India came second in the survey, while China and Nigeria were also perceived by their own people as relatively favourable places for new businesses.
The survey for the BBC’s Extreme World TV series polled more than 24,000 people across 24 countries (http://www.globescan.com/news_archives/bbc2011_entrepreneur/backgrounder.html). Respondents were asked whether innovation was highly valued in their country; whether it was hard for people like them to start a business; whether entrepreneurs were highly valued; and whether people with good ideas could usually put them into practice.
Interestingly, not only were several countries in East Asia and the Pacific doing well, but three sub-Saharan African countries – Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana – ranked above the global average.
The survey found work still needed to be done in Latin America. While Mexico and Peru scored highly, Brazil and Colombia ranked below average.
So, what are the things that make Indonesia so positive for entrepreneurs and private business? And what do they do – or not do – for small business start-ups?
According to Bali International Consulting Group, the Indonesian economy is highly dependent on small and medium-sized enterprises: they make up 99.95 percent of the total number of enterprises, and provide most of the country’s jobs. Authorities have identified a problem with the sector, however: productivity per worker is very low compared to large enterprises. Poor productivity matters because it means people are working very hard for low return and this affects the overall standard of living in the country and its human development.
The Indonesian government has set about boosting productivity in the sector, adopting a ‘clustering’ approach in partnership with non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Like-minded businesses tend to cluster together across the archipelago of islands that makes up the nation. By targeting these places with resources and support, it can use those resources more efficiently. The country has a dedicated ministry for small and medium enterprises (http://www.depkop.go.id) and a wide range of businesses and services targeting them. From dedicated trading and office facilities (http://www.smescoindonesia.com) to an online marketplace to display, trade and sell SME products (http://www.smescotrade.com), extensive resources are applied to give SMEs a boost and a competitive edge in the global marketplace.
From past experience, Indonesia learned it was more effective to use business development services in clusters to promote and develop SMEs, rather than centralised, top-down government models or other approaches.
As Bali International Consulting Group notes, “The government has introduced many models for promoting SMEs, including business incubators, business consulting clinics and technology centers. However, those sponsoring programs have not been productive and could not sustain themselves for a long time. The government then turned to supporting BDS (Business Development Services) providers to serve a certain cluster in a selected area.”
Developed countries like the United States significantly grew their wealth by allowing entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises to flourish. The USA’s highly innovative and globe-straddling high tech and information technology businesses would not have been so successful without entrepreneurs. Think of Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, or Steve Jobs, one of the pioneers behind the Apple computer brand.
China – the country that has seen the largest lifting of people out of poverty in our time – is awash with entrepreneurs. So successful at providing manufacturing services to foreign companies, China is fast on track to become the wealthiest country in the world. The International Monetary Fund recently issued a report predicting China would be number one within five years.
Entrepreneurs play a key role in any country’s economic strategy. The more they are encouraged to flourish – and build wealth and their businesses – the better a country can do. Large human development gains can come about when entrepreneurs are matched with a fair and transparent tax system, balancing between social and economic needs.
China is the source of one of the most successful aids to small business growth in the global South. Hong Kong-based Alibaba (http://www.alibaba.com) is an online trading and selling marketplace aimed at small businesses and start-ups. Packed with support, advice and inspiration, it makes it possible for people anywhere in the world to get trading and selling.
To help small businesses trade with each other, New Delhi, India-based Go4World Business.com (http://indonesia.go4worldbusiness.com) has for the past 12 years helped exporters and importers to explore new markets and increase their international business in a simple, cost effective manner.
The Internet has not only radically transformed how to trade and sell, it has also opened up many ways for small and medium-sized businesses to raise funds and borrow money. Examples include Zopa (www.zopa.com) – “Where people meet to lend and borrow money”; social lenders like Kiva (www.kiva.org)w, whose mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of alleviating poverty; and Betterplace (www.betterplace.org), an online marketplace for projects to raise funds. It is free to use, and it passes on 100 percent of the money raised on the platform to the projects. For those with a creative business idea, Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com) is a funding platform for artists, designers, filmmakers, musicians, journalists, inventors, and explorers.
Published: June 2011
Resources
1) Small business guide: An online resource packed with advice and resources on starting a small business. Website:http://www.smallbusiness.co.uk/
2) The red dot logo stands for belonging to the best in design and business. The red dot is an internationally recognized quality label for excellent design that is aimed at all those who would like to improve their business activities with the help of design. Website: http://www.red-dot.de
3) Dutch Designers in Development: The Dutch NGO works with producers to develop skills and adapt producers’ products to present and future demands in Europe. By following this approach, Southern producers can reduce the risk of making products nobody wants, or that lack originality in the marketplace and thus won’t sell. Website:http://www.ddid.nl/english/index.html
5) African Alliance for Capital Expansion: A management consultancy focused on private sector development and agribusiness in West Africa. Website:http://www.africanace.com/v3
6) World Business Fair: The World Business Fair is an international trade platform for global entrepreneurs and professionals. Website: http://www.worldbusinessfair.com
7) Small businesses looking to develop their brand can find plenty of free advice and resources here. Website: www.brandingstrategyinsider.com
8) Brandchannel: The world’s only online exchange about branding, packed with resources, debates and contacts to help businesses intelligently build their brand. Website:www.brandchannel.com
9) ZanaAfrica (ZanaA) is a non-profit whose mission is to craft tools from within Africa to slay the giants of poverty. The tools are in the nexus of health, education, and environment with a particular focus on gender and technology. These tools address root causes of poverty, and are primarily market-based solutions with a national and replicable scope to provide leveraged, lasting solutions with significant multiplier effects. Website:http://www.zanaa.org/
11) SME Toolkit Indonesia: The SME Toolkit Indonesia offers a wide range of how-to articles, business forms, free business software, online training, self-assessment exercises, quizzes, and resources to help entrepreneurs, business owners, and managers in emerging markets and developing countries start, finance, formalize, and grow their businesses. Website:http://indonesia.smetoolkit.org/indonesia/en
12) The 3rd Indonesia International Conference on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Small Business 2011: From July 25 to 28, is aimed at challenging researchers, Indonesians in particular, to study and create local knowledge on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Small Business. Website:http://www.ciel-sbm-itb.com/iicies2011
Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator.
David South Consulting 
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