The Vision Pioneers Blog

by Josef Garvi

Recently, somebody asked me for advice on how to improve the productivity of run-down cocoa plantations on the Gold Coast. My contact displayed a lot of good intentions, laudable and politically correct in our times: fair trade, biological farming, enhanced agricultural output. His concern was how to make sustainable cultivation systems that would solve a global supply problem and benefit the Africans in the process. The group he represented was foreseeing a sharp rise in cocoa demand on the world markets in the coming years. Yet if production levels did not follow suit, this would set off a price hike, making chocolate delicacies less accessible to common people in the rich world. Whilst the systems for upscaling production were at hand, the main problem faced by this group was how to build the necessary motivation amongst the people in Ghana.

This motivational concern highlights a question that is so easily taken for granted: is such a business ultimately in the best interest of the Ghanaian people themselves? Or is it simply projecting the wishes of a «developed» world looking for the necessary input to sustain its high-consumption lifestyle?

Cocoa, like most widely exploited crops in sub-Saharan Africa, is not originally native. In the early 20th century, large cocoa plantations were set up on the Gold Coast by the British as a means to cash in on their colony, and an export crop it has remained ever since. As with most Third World exports, its price on world markets has been unstable, and its cultivation for a long time unprofitable. When Ghanaians grow such crops, be it biologically and under fairer trade agreements, they are subject to the whims of the world economy and forced to import that other, life-sustaining commodity: food, which price is volatile as well. They are not trading from a surplus, but using their best lands that could otherwise provide for the fundamental needs of their people. Thus they are ensuring that richer people throughout the world can buy a luxury at a decent price - not that their own children and brothers eat well.

Ever since the Portuguese fathomed the immensity of the riches of the Congo, and the Arabs set up their trading cities along Africa’s East coast, the outside world’s view of Africa can be summed up in a single, enthralling word: resources. Be it human beings, precious minerals or agricultural output, focus has been on what those outside can obtain from her.

Today, the world’s approach towards Africa may be less brutal, but the fact that a politer tone is being used has not erased its fundamental aim. It is still about what the world can obtain from the continent, not about what is best for the Africans themselves. In the eyes of the world, Africa’s primordial duty remains to supply the outside world with resources, instead of ensuring that her own children may enjoy the benefits of their birthright.

As Henning Melber put it: «The plundering continues».

by Esther Garvi

Copyright Eden Foundation

If you can turn a barren field into a fruit-bearing Eden Garden, even when you reside next to the Sahara desert, you have invested in the future.

Copyright Eden Foundation

Your family will rely on the trees and harvest fruits and leaves throughout the year, even in times of need.

Copyright Eden Foundation

Your children will grow up healthy, enjoying a nutritious and varied diet.

Copyright Eden Foundation

Your surplus of fruit will easily be sold at the market, giving you a source of income that you never thought possible before.

Copyright Eden Foundation

The Eden Garden will provide activity for every member of the family; uniting brothers and sisters, husbands and wives.

Copyright Eden Foundation

Your daughters will grow up to be self-confident young women, knowing that their Eden Garden provides them with endless means and opportunities.

Copyright Eden Foundation

If you can turn your barren field into a fruit-bearing Eden Garden, your family will achieve self-sustainability and you will no longer be considered poor.

* * *

Eden Foundation was founded in 1985, based on the following vision:

There are more than 70,000 edible species in the world, of which merely 20 provide 90% of what we humans consume.

Copyright Eden Foundation

Imagine what this untapped potential - the Lost Treasures of Eden - could do for the poorest of the poor!

Out of seven countries in West Africa, Niger was chosen as the starting place - where the challenge was the greatest.

Copyright Eden Foundation

Today, a quarter of a century later, there are 2,700 registered Eden Gardens in the Tanout area in the northeastern part of the country.

Copyright Eden Foundation

As the trees produce fruit, their guardians reach for a sustainable life, independent of outside aid.

That is vision pioneering.

by Miriam Garvi

With so many quasi-ideas out there being endorsed by the big money, it is funny how difficult it can be for people with real commitment to find the resources they need to do something good. Quasi-ideas have a remarkable way of ending up in fancy packages, and they are never on display without their wrapping.

So when the dean of a business school I happen to know very well becomes involved with a company for mobile learning, proposing to supply teaching programs for the people of Africa or for hundreds of millions of farmers in China, I am intrigued. Being “of the world, by the world, and for the world” is deluxe wrapping indeed, but what benefit is intended for the citizens of African countries or the farmers in China, and how does it relate to their true needs?

When hearing this, I wonder whether teaching the world through a mobile interface is in fact a superior pedagogical idea, or if it is simply an easy way of re-churning pre-recorded messages to the greatest possible audience.

During the Internet boom almost ten years ago, e-learning was hot, and any business adding an e- prefix to its idea could retain astonishing amounts of venture capital. Today it appears that by changing the prefix to m- (mobile learning or m-learning) and dreaming of conquering the world, pockets will be filled once again. Only this time instead of JP Morgan and others we have government institutions such as the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) willing to endorse any dreamer of a «mobile academy» that will target the Third World. But to what purpose?

So many ideas are brought about not because we believe they will be good for the world, but because they might be an opportunity to make more money, enhance careers, or make better connections. And with the right packaging, the client becomes the excuse that legitimizes us making ourselves the beneficiary of it all.

Every once in a while, I have this wish that we would do away with the glossy paper and the fancy bows and see things for what they actually are. And in that light, we might come to recognize those treasures that are truly worth their weight in gold. The ones that impress without the wrapping.

Those are the ideas worth fighting for.

by Miriam Garvi

Aid in the form of loans certainly came in fashion when Mohammad Yunus was laureated with the Nobel peace prize for promoting micro finance as an instrument for development. Such micro credits would propel households of meager means into business activities otherwise inaccessible. As for any micro-enterprise that showed particular promise, it could be muscled up with venture capital provided by international funds and corporations looking to position themselves on untapped markets.

The ideal win-win relationship between David and Goliath that would put poverty in a museum?

Making financial resources available to those willing to start up an enterprise has long been seen by the economic establishment as the way to growth and prosperity for a nation. Nothing radical then about extending credits to lower-income households in developing countries in order to encourage them to launch into business. Micro debts may sound rather insignificant on the aggregate level, but when a family of meager income finds itself unable to service its loan, the cost quickly becomes unbearable.

In West Africa, however, a phenomenon is on the rise that is challenging the relationship between seed money, growth and prosperity as we know it.

In one of the more remote regions bordering the Sahara desert that offers few natural resources, a new generation of rural teen-age girls are enjoying a purchasing power that is unknown to most urban families. As food prices around the world are on the rise, these girls are not only buying what they need for the family household, but also luxury items such as jewelery and fashionable clothes. Those who were once the most vulnerable of all have become a powerful clientele attracting a wider supply of goods than in the city markets. And in response to growing demand, shops are opening aimed particularly at this young and empowered rural generation.

The source of this new-found wealth? A number of perennial, fruit-bearing trees that can grow naturally in the harsh, sub-Saharan environment. By allowing various species to grow in their fields, these farming households are now the proprietors of production units which produce fruit throughout the year, fruit that is much-in-demand at marketplaces spread throughout the region.

The original investment? A handful of seeds distributed for free to motivated farmers by the Eden Foundation.

The cost of these production units? The labor of sowing seeds in one’s field, coupled with some initial weeding during the first years of a seedling’s life. The vitality of the seed will do the rest.

The return on investment? Self-sufficient households with a surplus to spend on the lifestyle of their choice. And the process is completed without indebtment to any creditor eager to channel the recipient only into the kind of entrepreneurship that will enable them to feed off their investment.

Talk about a sustainable economy that is bringing prosperity to those who were once the poorest of them all.

by Miriam Garvi

With the on-going financial crisis affecting major financial markets all over the world, even Alan Greenspan, one of Ayn Rand’s most devoted followers, has admitted to finding a flaw in his/her ideology.

A set-back for those who profess that greed will make the world a better place?

The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, however, are keeping their mantra: Liberalize, Deregulate, Privatize. Come to us for capital and we will help you reform your economies. Open up domestic markets to foreign investment, roll out the red carpet for the multinationals, remove all the brake pads in order for capital to flow freely.

To whose benefit?

Paul Wolfowitz, former World Bank director, illustrates how anybody can claim to be passionate about «helping the people who have less than one dollar a day». But these mammoth institutions are pressuring for reforms that will streamline such markets according to Western standards. And so their intention is not to empower Third World populations but to subject them to a regime where they are denied the right to exploit their own natural resources whilst being burdened with increasing debts.

Governments of Thirld World countries are not free to choose a path that they believe would be good for their people. In the past, leaders who have come in the way of foreign economic interests have had a macabre tendency to end up dead. We remember Thomas Sankara of Burkina Faso, Jaime Roldó of Ecuador, Omar Torrijos of Panama. With the invisible hand of the CIA or of a former colonial power lurking in the background.

As entire populations of poorer countries find themselves eating out of the hand of the IMF and the World Bank, this is the enslavement of our times. Liberalization, deregulation, privatization have become synonymous with neo-slavery. And there are penalties to be paid for those who struggle not to be trapped in this system.

When greed threatens our future pensions or the college funds of our children, we feel compelled to react. But who will stand up for other people’s right to choose their own direction?

by Miriam Garvi

Since his speech in Davos last January, Bill Gates has been receiving accolades for launching his version of capitalism, which he has labeled «creative capital».

Creative capital à la Bill Gates (“Microsoft”) is a wonderland vision where global corporations satisfy their hunger for new markets by introducing technology to the poor, making everyone prosperous in the process. According to Gates, this will generate both profit and recognition, whilst making astonishing headway in the fight against world poverty. An improved variant of corporate social responsibility that we simply cannot do without.

And since the speech, creative capital has been center-stage.

But beyond the shimmering rhetoric, however, what does his suggestion really mean? Are we to understand that for the first time in history, the profit maximizing agendas of global corporations find themselves in harmony with the needs of the poorest of the poor? That products and services will now be created that can really help people out of their miseries?

Inspired by professor C.K. Prahalad’s fortune at the bottom of the pyramid, Gate’s version of creative capital envisions to reach untapped markets with technological salvation, making the rest of the world dependent on the know-how of those controlling the innovation.

This is not an eradication of poverty through profits, but a strategy for creating the capacity to consume where there would appear to be none. It would seem that our global society welcomes the poor as consumers, as long as they are not empowered.

by Miriam Garvi

Of all the research interviews I have done, one particular conversation still stands out in my mind. A serial entrepreneur, founder of a VC company and keynote speaker at many a growth event described himself as an «enlightened despot» whose leadership style was based on a fondness for what he called «doers» - meaning people who would execute strategy. Needless to add that in his world there were clear boundaries between «thinkers» and «doers», between the elite who could read the strategic game and lay out the next move and those who were to implement decisions and report back on their effect.

In other words, any real thinking should only be done by those behind the scenes?

As I was tracing the origins of the venture capital phenomenon, I became aware of how easily something is labeled «the solution», endorsed by those institutions which will give it credibility, and of the strong impact that such labeling will have on business and policies (see chapter 7 in my dissertation).

It is interesting to note how little attention is given to understanding a problem and the real causes of observed symptoms in favour of cure-all remedies. The promotion of microcredits, laureated with a Nobel peace price, illustrates this trend in a different setting.

Are cure-alls becoming the new religion? As long as someone is conveniently labeling the solution no one is asking us to think for ourselves. We are urged to buy into «inconvenient truths» and endorse whatever is promoted as the next panacea for growth, world poverty or for saving the planet.

But if we choose to put our faith in ideas and technologies that are placed on a pedestal, we will inevitably be deceived. Because real solutions demand that we go beyond the symptoms and ask ourselves why a particular choice is important and what goals are fulfilled in the process.

There is no easy way out for true progress.