Social Entrepreneurship: When Great Ideas Impact on Communities

Despite Africa receiving donor funding over the years and help from developed countries, challenges such as food insecurity, poor infrastructure, unemployment and lack of access to adequate health facilities is still persistent across the continent. Social entrepreneurship might be a way to help cope with the different issues Africa has to face every day. A workshop held last week at the Tangaza College in Kenya brought together social entrepreneurs. Africa Report gives you an insight on what was discussed.

The forum dubbed ‘Bridging The Gap’ focused on ways social entrepreneurs can provide solutions to Africa’s challenges. Unlike ordinary entrepreneurs who are essentially profit driven, social entrepreneurs seek to solve challenges such as insecurity, food shortage and environmental degradation using sustainable business models.

The forum which aimed at creating a platform for networking and knowledge exchange brought together leading social enterprises, social venture capital firms, academicians, government representatives and financiers. Quite a wide panel to discuss and analyze entrepreneurial solutions.

David Kuria the recipient of the 2009 Africa Social Entrepreneur of the Year award and founder of Ecotact, a firm that provide sanitation services to low-income communities in Kenya and Salim Mohamed, the East Africa Representative of Ashoka, a global association of the world’s leading social entrepreneurs, were the key speakers at the forum.

Whereas traditionally social challenges have been solved by Government and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), the downside has been that most projects are not sustainable and rely too much on donor funding, argued Carlo Chege the Executive Director of The East Africa Social Entrepreneurs Network (EASEN) a lobby group for social entrepreneurs in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

Donor funding has not provided the real solutions that we have been craving for. That is creating sustainable enterprises and sustainable jobs.  With dwindling donor resources we have to look for alternative ways of solving social challenges,” said Chege.

Some of the leading social enterprises in Kenya have provided solutions in sanitation, renewable energy, financing for small scale traders, access to education and medical care. County Governments are supposed to take force by 2013 according to the New Constitution and this is expected to create more opportunities for social enterprises in the country.

For years the public has waited for the Government to provide solutions to their problems. In areas where the Government has not been able to deliver these services, social enterprises can partner with county Governments to solve social challenges at the grass root level,” said Walter Lamberson, a partner at Open Capital, an organization that helps entrepreneurs prepare for and access financing.

Are social enterprises a replacement of NGOs?
Though social enterprises exist to address community challenges, a function that has traditionally been performed by NGOs, Kuria argues that the role of civil society in Africa will remain relevant in areas of advocacy, good governance, transformative thinking and research. Prof Ronnie George, the Business Development Manager of the MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and Management programme offered at the Tangaza College told participants that the main challenge most social entrepreneurs’ face is access to financing. No surprise although more and more alternatives to standard financing through banks are offered to entrepreneurs in Africa (check for example: Finance and expertise lead to success

Access to business development services such as how to draft a suitable business plan for a social enterprise are hard to come by as well as lack of policy on how social enterprises should be taxed were also identified as challenges.

According to Chege, EASEN is championing the Government to start looking at social enterprises as another avenue of delivering public service. Though it is undeniable that social enterprises have made positive impacts, there is no data to clearly document this.

If you are interested in starting a social enterprise you should know that there are many opportunities for social enterprises. These includes the emergence of financiers who strictly fund social enterprises as well as mentoring programmes such as the KCB Acumen Fund Fellowship which recently unveiled  its 20 social entrepreneurs  who are currently  undergoing  intensive leadership training.

And if you are interested in social entrepreneurship, then keep reading Africa Report to find out more about opportunities for social enterprises.