Entrepreneur Mellena Haile speaks at an Africa House Luncheon

On August 15, 2011, Africa House and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation hosted a lecture and luncheon with Mellena Haile, a 2011-2012 Kauffman Foundation Fellow.

The event focused on the intersection of information technology and entrepreneurial innovation in Africa. Dr. Yaw Nyarko, the director of Africa House, began the event by discussing the relationship between the Kauffman Foundation’s projects and Africa House’s own multifaceted developmental work, from political debate to economics to IT innovations and the arts.

Ms. Haile then discussed the Kauffman Foundation’s seminars in Lagos, Nigeria, that brought together on-the-ground entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and foundations for networking, grantmaking and consultations. By the end of the seminar, at least half of those present secure funding, she noted.

The program, however, needs to expand, and there are many unanswered questions about the entrepreneurs the Foundation was working with. Some of the questions Ms. Haile asked herself after participating in the conference were, “Where are these entrepreneurs? Where are they located? What are the daily challenges they face?”

“We’re talking about over 50 African countries,” she noted. But given the distances and cultural differences between these countries, how could the Kauffman Foundation accurately collect and analyze information about entrepreneurs, information that would be of value to the entrepreneurs themselves once it was distilled and available through a single source? “What if I can send out text messages to an entrepreneur in, say, Ghana and ask him or her what industry they’re involved in, what are the realities of your journey?” as Ms. Haile put it.

The solution, she said, is to take advantage of the “Mobile Revolution” in Africa. Even the most small-scale street vendor has a mobile phone these days, so why not obtain information from the entrepreneurs that way? So, in order to obtain this data and ultimately process so that the entrepreneurs themselves can access it, Ms. Haile is developing the “E-Pulse” program.

The E-Pulse program will use “IT innovation to maximize networking options for entrepreneurs and illustrate the relationships among different entrepreneurs, markets, companies, official agencies, and the nonprofit community.”

Ms. Haile originally had an engineering and architectural background, but, she said, “I caught the entrepreneurial bug in 2008. I need to move to understand entrepreneurship with the economy collapsing all around us.

The Kauffman Foundation focuses on “expeditionary economics,” or ExpECON, in Africa. The focus of ExpECON, outlined in an influential Foreign Affairs article by Kauffman Foundation President Carl J. Schramm, falls on developing indigenous entrepreneurship in spurring economic growth in developing and post-conflict countries.

Kauffman’s role is to set up the framework for the partnerships they create with entrepreneurs. A program called SourceLink will collect data on the entrepreneurs’ businesses and provide “just-in-time” entrepreneurship information for them and the Kauffman Foundation

Ms. Haile is already in talks with Vodafone to help co-develop a technology to develop a mobile survey, a technique first piloted by organizations conducting public health surveys in African countries. An initial entrepreneurial survey, that is, a fact-finding mission, is already being put into practice.

In the long-term, the results of the surveys will contribute to the development of the Kauffman Global Founders Network, which focuses on the Foundation's next steps to developing entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world. It will, as Ms. Haile put it at the start of the event, track the evolution of entrepreneurship in Africa

Distinguished faculty from Stern, Steinhardt and the Medical College attended the event, as well as representatives from Indego Africa, the Africa Travel Association, Human Rights First and the United Nations.

During the question and answer session, Dr. Mark Foran of the NYU Medical College discussed his experience with the aforementioned public health surveys and offered his advice on marketing, scaling p and making E-Pulse accessible. He suggested sending blanket survey questions to the entire market, and then asking those who response send the phone numbers of up to 3 people you know who are also interested in entrepreneurship. He also suggested that “by capturing GIS coordinates of the SMS replies to the survey, a map could be created that would list people, their activities, and could be sorted by type, such as government official, business owner, by industry, etc. This map could be open access on the internet, or people with only SMS or smart phones could access parts of it via phone.

Although there are still many specific details to be worked out regarding the program, the project design has been carefully thought out and will be modified once the data collection starts delivering information that the Kauffman Foundation, and specifically, Ms. Haile, can analyze.

Africa House is very interested to see how E-Pulse will develop, and what it can tell us about free market growth and innovation in Africa.

Discussing Ghana's Energy Future at the Second Economic Lecture Series in Accra

On July 21, 2011, NYU’s Development Research Institute and the Dei Center presented the second event in their new discussion series, Nyansapo, or “wisdom knots.” This evening of the arts and economics was held at the Dei Center in Accra and broadcast on Ghanaian television and covered in the Ghanaian media. Professors Yaw Nyarko and David Rice of the Development Research Institute (DRI) organized the event in cooperation with the Dei Center.

The DRI and the Dei Center assembled a panel of experts to discuss the future of Ghana’s oil and natural gas discoveries. The panel focused on the questions that weigh heavily on the minds of Ghanaian officials and economists, as well as the average citizen: how will Ghana manage revenue from these resources? What laws will prevent abuse of oil and gas profits? How will these new energy resources affect the country’s own electrical generation?

Our two keynote speakers, Joe Amoako-Tuffour and Kewku Awotwi addressed all of these concerns and other questions that came up during the course of the evening.

Dr. Joe Amoako-Tuffour the Chair of the Economics Department at St. Frances Xavier University. He splits his time between teaching in the U.S. and working at think tanks in Ghana.

He remarked upon the future benefits – and risks – that Ghana could accrue from sound revenue management, and his comments were well received by those in attendance. He then outlined three key elements for successfully turning Ghanaian’s new energy resources into catalysts for growth: management of the macroeconomic environment, using natural gas domestically, and management of the petroleum revenue. “We have to provide a stable environment in which to carry on this development,” Mr. Amoako-Tuffour explained. “Oil is going to introduce new functions, how the sectors function and how the economy behaves overall.”

In 2008, Dr. Amoako-Tuffour was asked by the Ministry of Finance to lead the team that wrote Ghana’s revenue management law for oil and natural gas – a law that is generating interest among other oil and natural gas producing nations because of its long-term strategic vision and strict regulatory provisions.

Dr. Amoako-Tuffour also noted that Ghana’s track record for effective government management and transparency of public funds was weak and a source of great concern for him in developing the revenue management: “Our biggest challenge is planning. We need guidelines that tell us where each penny goes.”

Mr. Kweku Awotwi is the CEO of the Volta River Authority, the main power-generating agency in Ghana. This is the second time he has served as CEO of the Volta River Authority – he was recently asked to resume a leadership role to help the company restructure itself as Ghana works to privatize its utilities.

Speaking after Dr. Amoako-Tuffour, Mr. Awotwi spoke on the continuing innovations and challenges the Volta River Authority is addressing as Ghana works to privatize its utilities sector.

Mr. Awotwi noted that Ghana is the only sub-Saharan nation that has taken important steps to privatize utilities by separating transmission from power generation – but that there is much to be done. Two years ago, Dr. Awotwi says he was hesitant to proceed with privatization, but that now he recognizes the necessity of it. “The idea is to have an operator neutral to all parties, and Ghana has taken the lead.”

But, he noted, much remains to be done: “A lot more law and operational rights needs to be put into place so investors feel the playing is level and the rules are clear, and that they will see returns on their investment,” he explained, cautioning the audience that unless Ghana moved carefully, the country could find itself with “lots of oil, plenty of gas, and very little electricity.”

The evening began with an introduction from Dr. Nyarko, who thanked Seth and Colleen Dei for their generous assistance in producing tonight’s event. Dr. Nyarko outlined the value of combining an economics discussion with an arts forum by noting that art helps economists to avoid being “overly materialistic” and to think of the next generation who will inherit the works – artistic and economic – that his generation will leave behind.

Mr. Seth Dei discussed the mission of the Dei Center: “My goal is to leave behind these paintings for a future generation. I’ve been a member of the board of the Ghanaian museum and I know what difficulties there are in preserving and promoting art. That’s why I partnered with NYU, which has one of the largest arts programs in the U.S. Art is the history of our experience, of what we do, what we want to do.”

Following the presentation, an art auction was held to promote the works of young Ghanaian artists that the Dei Center has been working with to promote their works. Although only several sales were made, the audience, and television viewers in Ghana, were introduced to the artists’ works and the Dei Center’s mission.

The auction was then followed by dinner at the Dei’s home, to which all audience members were invited.

During the dinner, both speakers fielded questions from members of the audience on their presentations. “Here I thought my dinner was free,” Mr. Awotwi jocularly remarked.

The audience members grilled the speakers on important issues such as the enforceability of the revenue management law, the relationship between Ghana and foreign energy companies, how the oil and natural gas income would affect government planning and the future of Ghana’s utilities sector.

Mr. Awotwi discussed in greater detail his vision for modernizing the utilities sector: “For 45 years we’ve been producing our electricity, and we buy all of our transformers and cables from India and China. We are now developing a local content policy and we are very serious about that. It’s a shame that we are getting all of these supplies from foreign countries. We hope that will change over time, in the next five to ten years.”

Dr. Amoako-Tuffour affirmed the need to see that the government properly enforces the revenue management law and discussed the national budget. He ended the evening on an upbeat note: “No matter how hard it is, I believe in this country. Even though some of us choose to live comfortably in an academic environment in Canada and the U.S., there is a country to build. No matter what the IMF thinks, or what people say is happening in Nigeria, we have our way. We will do it our way. And we have done it. And it gives me a great deal of hope.”