…Take water, for example. Charity can pay for a new well, but if no one has a personal interest in it, or responsibility for maintaining it, soon it will fall into disrepair and disuse. Structuring that donation as a for-profit, micro-utility creates incentives and resources to maintain it – improving its sustainability and long-term impact.
Local commercial enterprises have proven to be much more sustainable than charity projects. This flies in the face of the common misperception that developing economies are “aid dependent” – i.e., they cannot possibly have the resources to support commercial enterprises.
On the contrary, free money can crowd out vital private sector solutions. Private enterprise cannot compete with highly subsidized capital, and the net result is that charity often provides a short-term fix at the expense of a long-term solution.
A better approach is to partner with communities to use the donor subsidies to reduce the risk to investors to enter developing markets, by helping to fund private, for-profit ventures. This is an approach we advocate and practice at The Tony Elumelu Foundation and Heirs Holdings.
Private investors are willing to take risk, but are often wary of taking the full brunt of development risk in emerging regions. Philanthropic dollars can help in many ways, from co-investing with the private sector, to partially subsidizing operations until businesses can achieve profitability and sustainability, or subsidizing management training to help specific businesses gain the skill sets they need for growth.
Based on our experience, and the experience of many other forward-thinking philanthropic organizations, I believe it is time for a philosophical shift in how aid is deployed in Africa. The impact of African philanthropy could be substantially improved by adopting three key tenets:
I will share those three in the next post and conclude the series.
#TOEWay #Africapitalism #HHGroup
https://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2013/0506/In-Africa-the-best-charity-is-aid-for-business