As a board member of a local nonprofit, I sometimes get to thinking about the more theoretical aspects of non-profit governance. I’ve recently been thinking again about how nonprofit governance applies to CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) in for-profit organizations and achieving common objectives, or social co-creation.
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BY SUZANA MOREIRA
On March 14th, the NY Times reported that the Washington Post was not using Twitter, YouTube or Foursquare to map road blockages and resource availability during the disruptive snow storm, but rather Ushahidi, an IT platform built in Kenya. Because Ushahidi originated in crisis from a bedroom, no one tried to patent and monopolize it. Because Kenya is poor, with computer systems out of the reach for many, Ushahidi made its system work on cellphones. Because Ushahidi had no venture-capital backing, it used open-source software and was thus free to let others remix its tool for new projects.” Ushahidi today is used all around the world in crisis and crowd situations.
Ushahidi, is an African start-up that has attracted the world’s attention, likewise, M-Pesa, African inspired Kiva and Integr8 are world renowned business models that were conceived in Africa and have overcome the usual African challenges of poverty, corruption and inadequate policies. Each of these challenges should be viewed as creative catalysts in the knowledge that the resulting model will be at least innovative and at most disruptive. It is the processes and systems that are adopted to overcome these challenges that turn the African start-up into the success stories we hear about in the developed world.
Africa is becoming a business destination and many start-ups are positioning themselves to become part of this growing business trend. As Vijay Mahajan points out in ‘Africa Rising’, 300 million of the 900 million consumers are tirelessly working their way out of extreme poverty to become lower middle class citizens. The World Bank says the percentage of Africans living on $1.25 a day or less dropped from 59{abb65e2b6815f549a727af2ea9f3a377a727ddc064972a198a74f88a6b766686} to 51{abb65e2b6815f549a727af2ea9f3a377a727ddc064972a198a74f88a6b766686} from 1996 to 2005 and has decreased further since. The Development Policy Forum (DPF) estimates that by mid-century, the greatest population concentration will be in neither China nor India but in sub-Saharan Africa. The region is expected to gain a billion inhabitants – from 900 million today to 1.8 billion in 2050. The urban population alone will triple from 300 million to over a billion in 2050. Africa offers huge business potential in the upcoming years.
The principles of doing business in Africa are the same as doing business in any developed country in the world. Emphasis however lies on conducting extensive due diligence, understanding that decisions take time and that access to capital is best sought internationally. Depending on the scale and nature of the business, corruption can be an issue to be offset but as most Africans will attest to – there are options and an entrepreneur can proceed without being involved in these somewhat complicated and thwarting business practices.
Although Africa is not as connected offering the hi-tech wizardry of the developed world, Africans are overcoming electricity shortages and lack of internet connections by applying unique mobile phone technologies that deliver services which range from connecting farmers to agricultural cooperatives to mobile phone education aimed at youth, and, interestingly corporate companies are rolling out mobile phone training programmes for their staff. As with any start-up, on the ground market research will expose countless opportunities.
Success in many African countries is in engaging and developing relationships with village elders or with church and health leaders in particular communities. These are the people who can endorse the offering that you are taking to market. This is familiar to the business ways of the developed world, where business success is associated with brand leaders and strong sponsors. Village and community leaders are also useful in negotiating premises, recommending resources and providing the bridge between a start-up and the local authorities.
Perhaps most challenging in Africa, depending on the industry, is infrastructure capacity. Whereby e-commerce and sophisticated distribution models are taken for granted in the developed world, logistics and distribution can turn the viability of a great start-up concept into a failure. Start-ups need to carefully analyse supply chain complexities and the constraints of accessing marketplaces.
Many innovative start-ups are piloting there innovative technologies in Africa. moWoza is a social endeavour that is emblematic of a new generation of African start-ups that have recognised the pressing need for transformation and empowerment amongst the people of Africa. Initially operating between South Africa and Mozambique, moWoza, is servicing the low income economic migrant who regularly remits goods back to their dependants in the home country.
Most African migrant workers are extremely price sensitive and prefer to shop in South Africa where there exists a larger competitively priced product selection than in their home countries. However, sending these goods across borders is costly and by relying on informal distributors to transport the goods across the South African borders to their home countries they are risking confiscation at the border crossing, extremely late deliveries and the dependant receiving damaged goods.
moWoza provides a unique mobile phone powered cash-to-goods, end –to-end service that guarantees the migrant worker that the dependant will receive the goods in the dispatched condition on a confirmed date. By committing the time and resources to conduct extensive market research across various African countries, forming focus groups and understanding what situations migrant workers faced, moWoza was able to develop a value proposition that delivers a superior offering to its target market.
Illiteracy and malnutrition are high on moWoza’s agenda. The World Bank has set targets to reduce illiteracy and relapse into illiteracy – this has spurred moWoza, whose low-income migrant target market are predominantly illiterate, to design and deliver literacy programmes through its agent network. In addition, most Mozambican migrants in South Africa originate from rural areas where malnutrition amongst children is acute. By offering food packages that conform to the World Health Organisation basic food basket standards, moWoza is ensuring that its economic migrant workers’ dependants are consuming nutritional food.
There are many possibilities and with a good service offering, it is only a matter time before moWoza will pursue secondary revenue streams. Community leaders are opening doors and suggesting other services that can be commercialised. This is Africa. A new era has begun, and for start-ups that are willing to commit themselves to the development of Africa there are endless opportunities.
No doubt about it, clean technology is growing, not only due to government and internationally set renewable energy targets such as the 2020, Kyoto, etc… but also because it’s simply something that we need to implement in order not to completely botch up this little planet of ours.
However, as with anything there are current trends in the sector, and it’s sub specializations. Today we look at the current trends in clean-tech and talk a little about what is currently hot and where is the outlook.
The solar sector is currently seeing a price war, with the average currently at approximately $1.50/watt, and most manufacturing coming out of China, western companies are having difficulties competing on price. However, company’s such as US’s BioSolar and Brazil’s Heliotek are currently developing organic solar panels that if they work should bring the price down to $0.50/watt.
The future in solar is predominantly on two fronts, 1. Lower prices per watts generated, and 2. higher efficiency in generating power from captured solar energy.
In terms of investments if a company can have a distinct competitive advantage in either of the two, investment will follow, additionally, there is opportunity for solar farms in the SEE area, predominantly the Balkan region and Bulgaria, however outside of the EU, socio-political risk may still be a factor as well as corruption.
Energy Accumulation at the moment is primarily focused on the automobile industry, this is specifically as there are more hybrids, and electric cars entering the market, and their fundamental weak point is the length of charge, time to full recharge, and mileage.
This is why we’re seeing companies such as Holland’s Epyon focusing on ultra fast charging, US’s Bloom Energy which is claiming to make high efficiency fuel cells moving the industry forward. There is still a lot of room for growth in the sector and energy accumulation will undoubtedly move away from automotive and into home, building, and corporate use over the years. Investment into Energy Accumulation technologies is slated to grow.
One of the biggest problems, and therefore opportunities in the market today is municipal solid waste. Within this sector you’ve got the following major trends, biomass/biogas processing storage and use, recycling – sorting organic and inorganic waste. Additionally, waste generation in Asia at the moment is spiraling out of control, and this now, as in the future is the market for waste management technologies.
Current technologies in the sector exist – however they are not efficient, in one case something around 50{abb65e2b6815f549a727af2ea9f3a377a727ddc064972a198a74f88a6b766686} of municipal solid waste was being recycled, and this was a market leader, a new company had devised technology to augment this to 85-90{abb65e2b6815f549a727af2ea9f3a377a727ddc064972a198a74f88a6b766686}. Quite the difference in efficiency.
The first thing to remember is that cost/kw h is still high when it comes to Wind though has been coming down. Due to these costs decreasing you’re starting to see a lot of new players entering the field, typically, larger companies that have traditionally not been part of the Wind Energy generation industry, these are companies such as GE, Siemens, United Technologies, and these big guys are not developing in house.
Typically, they’re buying into the market. This is good news, as we’ll undoubtedly see more wind farms popping up in the future, and that is also where the majority of new investment will fall. Wind farms. Coastal regions as well as mountain regions in the EU, but also globally will see a large increase in wind power generation, and there is definite investment opportunity there.
Additionally, in the area of efficiency, if a company can create a more efficient turbine, grab more energy from wind, etc… they will undoubtedly be a target for large scale investment.
Though we must still remember, investment in clean tech is a long term process that can take 5-10-15 years to develop a product from idea to market.
There is a reason that social responsibility has bee getting more and more attention in the corporate world and across some of the top business schools globally. Many will simply say that the whole thing is a trend, that it’s nothing more than the next wave of the “in” and that as a whole CSR is just a form of greenwashing one’s corporate activities.
These people are for the most part wrong. Given that greenwashing does occur, take BP for example, they retained the “BP” but re-branded themselves beyond petroleum – a name that inspires and gives hope, however, those close to the company, or for that matter anyone who wants to download and read their annual statement will see that only a small percentage of their revenues gets invested in new and clean energies.
The bright side is that CSR and business ethics as a whole are on the rise, ethical behaviour and operational transparency are only the first steps, and for the most part have been growing. A baseline study conducted by the UNDP on the Study of CSR Practices in New EU Member States and Candidate Countries shows a healty understanding and movement towards better overall CSR. But is it enough?
We say no, but it’s progress, and progress is a good thing. But the truth is that any established company will take time to re-align itself with any new(er) type practices, and at heart this may mean a change to the company culture which by no means is an easy thing to achieve for anyone.
With startups though this is a different story, since startups take on the cutlure of their founders, it then depends on those founders to create companies which are socially responsible. But what is CSR? By definition it is known as corporate responsibility, corporate citizenship, responsible business, sustainable responsible business (SRB), or corporate social performance, is a form of corporate self-regulation integrated into a business model. Ideally, CSR policy would function as a built-in, self-regulating mechanism whereby business would monitor and ensure its adherence to law, ethical standards, and international norms.
But it’s more than that, a few weeks back we showed a video on how Entrepreneurs shape and change the world, this is it, by taking a new idea, whatever it is, we can simply and easily add an aspect of CSR into the business model. Why, it directly affects your bottom line, consumers will be more inclined to purchase products from companies that they believe are socially responsible, i.e. Starbucks + Shade Grown + Fair Trade Coffee.
The question of ethical integrity should never be a question, but should be incorporated into your business from the onset. Why? It’s quite simple, people trust honest businesses, and honest businesses tend to do better in the long run, but don’t take out word for it, here’s a video – in a Did you know? – format that quickly sums up where we’re headed with CSR, and why your stakeholders will want you as an enterprise to actively employ socially responsible practices in your day to day business.
Thoughts?
