During my visit to the Johannesburg office, I got an opportunity to talk informally with Simon, TechnoServe’s vice president for Africa and his one regional director, Sandra. Among the topics I discussed with them was how difficult economic development is. I understood this from a theoretical level from all my research and reading, none of which provided a simple recipe for success. But this discussion was very practical, tangible, and real. We talked at both the macro and personal levels. At the macro level, many people are aware of the vast amounts of money and human resources that have been put into development projects. Post–World War II Germany and Japan have generated economic miracles from devastation while much of Africa is worse off than fifty years ago. Many development efforts have been successful, but many more have not. The development professionals have learned a lot of expensive lessons but were getting better at it. Even when development works, it can proceed very slowly. Simon and Sandra agreed that sometimes it felt like trying to run through deep water. This was very hard for aggressive, business-oriented people who wanted to demonstrate that they could produce results, and quickly. Specifically, I talked about my concern that I wouldn’t be able to point to any fully completed project when I left Swaziland at the end of my tenure. Simon and Sandra, who admitted to having similar feelings earlier in their careers, assured me that, at some future time, my work would produce tangible results.
At the same time, I could see how challenging development work had continued to be for them. The regional executives, like many others at TechnoServe, had spent time in the commercial sector, and some of the nonprofit practices really wore on them. TechnoServe had been very successful in recent years as donors recognized the wisdom of the TechnoServe approach. This had meant rapid growth in funding and programs. But donors always want their money to go directly to the beneficiaries of programs, not what they perceive as overhead. Donors also want precise accounting to show that funds are segregated and their funds go directly to achieve their objectives. This isn’t unreasonable; it’s just hard and requires overhead. Consequently, there’s always a strain on the infrastructure and the management team, which have to be lean, particularly during a period of growth. I had seen this before, especially in consulting firms and the rapidly growing high-technology companies that had been my management consulting clients. TechnoServe’s particular challenge was that it was essentially a rapidly-growing, non-profit, consulting firm. The strain on the regional executives was obvious.
It was also obvious that all of the really competent expats in development kept asking themselves if this is what they really wanted to do. Most had experience in the private sector and constantly wondered if they should go back and instantly double their salaries. They wondered if they would ever be able to move back to their home countries and afford to buy a house. They wondered if their current location was the right place to raise children of school-age. They wondered because there were big consequences to all of these decisions, no matter which choices they made. I empathized with them and felt very lucky to have the freedom to choose what I wanted to do without the huge consequences. Of course, my freedom only came because I was much older and at a different stage in my life and career.
My visit to the Johannesburg office was positive overall, but it forced me to do a lot of hard thinking and introspection. On the other hand, the visit to the Kenya office was positively joyful. The Kenya office had been open since 1973 and could point to a long record of significant impact. The office had grown rapidly over the past year and had nearly forty professionals. Among their recent successful creations were three major dairy hubs with cooling tanks. These hubs collected small quantities of milk from thousands of farmers who owned only a few cows each. The milk was tested and then held in a cooling tank until a large truck from a major dairy processor could pick it up. As with many TechnoServe projects, the dairy hubs connected smallholder farmers to commercial markets, allowing them to create a steady income. The hubs also allowed farmers with a steady record of milk deliveries to establish credit for purchases such as seed, veterinary services, and school fees. The Kenya office also had great projects in other sectors, such as bananas. Donors were asking them to replicate their Kenyan success in Uganda. Working with the Kenyan Ministry for Youth, the Kenya team was developing a business plan competition that might generate ten thousand entries. The Kenyan office staff was energetic and motivated. I was excited and had a great time sharing experiences.
Junior Achievement
As we flew back to Swaziland together, Wendy and I discussed her progress and plans for Junior Achievement (JA) and her experience at the conference. I already knew that she had achieved a very solid milestone before leaving Swaziland. The JA vice president for Africa had sent out an e-mail to JA World-wide that the Democratic Republic of Congo would be the ninth JA member nation in Africa, and Swaziland and Gambia had become JA affiliates with plans for eventual full membership. TechnoServe would build the capacity of LULOTE to become responsible for the School-Age Youth Entrepreneurship (SAYE) program for sixteen to twenty-four-year-olds. Together, they planned to pilot JA Economics for Success and the JA Company programs within a few months then add JA Job Shadowing and JA Service Learning the following year and maybe a JA Company student competition in year three. Within five years, the plan was to serve over 7,500 SAYE students.
While the notice was very inspirational, the steps between the JA vice president of Africa’s announcement and the actual pilot of the first training classes required many, many hours of detailed efforts before Wendy and I left Swaziland. Although there was general agreement on what would happen, Wendy had to use all of her project management and relationship skills to work with the multiple divisions within JA to receive, customize, and reproduce the classroom materials that would be required.
In the end, Wendy was able to customize and locally print some of the JA materials that had been received electronically. However, several heavy boxes of student workbooks and other classroom handouts had to be transported in Leslie’s luggage as she returned from a visit to the United States. In addition to preparing the materials, Wendy also had to train the local trainers who would be delivering the classes and had never seen JA materials before. I was going to help with the training, and at least I had previously volunteered to teach a couple of JA programs in the United States so had a clue where she was leading the trainees.
The JA conference in Nairobi was an energizing experience for Wendy and a diversion from her flurry of activity in Swaziland. As is usually the case, the people were the highlight. She felt privileged to spend time with the twenty other JA country managers and staff. She said that the challenges these people were overcoming daily to make an impact on their countries made the stresses of JA United States and her own challenges in Swaziland seem quite small. She described many of the individuals starting with Phil and Robert from Zimbabwe whose humor kept their whole group laughing for three days and who had made JA successful despite their political environment (a very positive attitude and a sense of humor must be necessities to survive in Zimbabwe). Then she went on to describe Jules, a great dancer from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who had to start up JA despite the uncertainty of upcoming elections and ongoing violence throughout the country. Then there was Luciano from Angola who would need all of his pastoral skills and spiritual perspective for starting up JA in a country coming out of many years of instability. Quiet and shy Teddy from Zambia had persisted over the previous few years to serve a few hundred JA students annually when many others would have given up.
At their JA Africa “graduation,” the two women from Nigeria, Franca and Kunbi, dressed in traditional costumes including the wrapped headgear and put everyone in a festive mood. At the conclusion of the conference, each participant received a tongue-in-cheek award that was announced by the person whose last name preceded theirs in the alphabet. Wendy’s award was announced by John Wali from Kenya (sounds the same as Walleigh, but there’s no familial relationship or resemblance). The Swazi participants from TechnoServe and LULOTE bonded with their peers who greatly respected their initiative. It was a good start for the Swaziland JA program. Wendy said that the conference was typical of many JA events she had attended—very long, intense, and satisfying despite 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. daily schedules. She was inspired from her three days with JA colleagues from all over Africa who shared their passion and energy despite political instability, HIV/AIDS, and global neglect. It was very humbling for her to know what these JA people had survived while retaining their energy and commitment. She also felt that everyone learned a lot from each other and that there really was hope for the future of Africa with people like these.
Back in Swaziland, with the inspiration from her African peers still fresh, we continued our JA activities the very next weekend. On Saturday, Wendy and I, along with five additional volunteer trainers from TechnoServe and our Swazi partner LULOTE, simultaneously taught the first JA classes in Swaziland in three different locations. The JA Economics for Success was chosen as the first class to be taught. With this introductory course as a pilot, Wendy and her colleagues could gauge what class content was appropriate for each age group, how long the sessions needed to be, and how to help prepare the JA volunteer teachers.
Fortunately, Wendy and I had previously taught this class in the United States so it was adapting the material to the new culture and training teachers who had never observed, never mind taught, the classes that were challenging. In one example of how Wendy had to rewrite the content, one module teaches young people in the United States the dangers of spending too much money on their credit cards and building up large balances. In Swaziland, credit cards for young people were almost nonexistent and the students couldn’t understand how people could be so foolish as to spend large amounts of money they didn’t have. (Who says U.S. society is more advanced than Africa?) In all, over one hundred sixteen- to eighteen-year-old students from nine secondary schools learned how to assess their skills, interests, and values; make informed choices and decisions; and to appreciate the consequences. We piloted the JA Economics for Success on three sequential Saturday mornings in multiple locations to benchmark the capabilities of students from rural and urban areas and public and parochial schools. The first class consisted of playing a game to have a successful career with realistic simulation of choices about schooling and spending money. All of the volunteers enjoyed themselves, and it seemed as though the kids did too. It was great to see that teenagers are similar all over the world.
Over the next few weeks, Wendy kept busy with the SAYE (School-Age Youth Entrepreneurship) youth program. In addition to choosing, modifying, and piloting the curriculum, Wendy was asked to help pursue donor funding to support the program long-term. She called on her sales and marketing skills from her corporate days as well as her fund-raising experience from JA Silicon Valley, where she had led the staff to annually raise U.S. $1 million through grants, events, and donor solicitation. Through a few published lists of businesses and financial, civil, and other institutions as well as online research and colleague information, Wendy created a potential donor list to start targeting. In her remaining time in Swaziland, she helped create a presentation to appeal to business donors then began to set up appointments for Leslie and herself in both Swaziland and South Africa where most of the multinationals were headquartered.
Wendy also arranged and facilitated the final session of JA Economics for Success, which was especially interesting for us because it included three local guest speakers. The first was Mrs. Gamedze, the executive director of LULOTE and a Swazi senator, chairman of the SwaziBank board of directors and on the board of multiple other institutions. Wendy had become very impressed with her and her passion toward developing youth. She spoke from her heart to the thirty-plus young people about growing up poor but aiming to get a diploma to teach business classes in secondary school. She went on to graduate from university, eventually received a master’s degree in Scotland, took courses in the United States, and now runs an NGO among her other duties.
The second speaker ran a local enterprise, Gone Rural, which had been nominated for global recognition by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). Her staff worked with nearly seven hundred rural women who gathered weaving grass, sold it for dying to Gone Rural, who sold it back to the women to weave into home-ware products that will sell well because of Gone Rural’s coaching on design, color, and quality. Gone Rural would then buy these finished products back from the women to sell in their shops. Gone Rural’s president was a white Swazi by birth and commitment, who talked frankly to the students about her business’s global competition. She emphasized that whatever business they start, these young people will need to keep ahead of global competitors who copy designs and then manufacture and sell products at lower prices.
The third and final speaker was a former employee of Mrs. Gamedze at LULOTE who now owns and operates a supermarket in the nearby city of Malkerns and a café in Manzini. He talked partly in Siswati so we didn’t understand everything, but he grew up in poverty and at one point raised his many siblings for a few years on his own while his mother was very ill. He really connected with the kids as he talked about his interrupted education, chaotic life, and persistence toward achieving his goals. One young woman asked what kept him going, and he said his Catholic faith. In a country that is 90-plus percent Christian, I’m sure that resonated. When she arranged the session, Wendy knew that these three speakers would have a much greater impact than anything she or I could have said. They did, and they powerfully reinforced the concepts we had taught in the previous JA program sessions.
Our Emafini cottage with our backyard swing was a retreat from nearby bustling Mbabane, Swaziland.
Performers demonstrate the Swazi Tribal Wedding Dance at the Swaziland Cultural Center near Mbabane, Swaziland.
Sad, sick hippo hangs out at the stone wall (with a nearby opening!) a few feet in front of us at Mlilwane Park, Swaziland.
Rick is assisted in getting redressed as a proper Swazi man before we attend the Reed Dance in Swaziland.
Men from the royal Dlamini family attend the Reed Dance.
A royal Dlamini family princess—indicated by the red feathers in her hair—relaxes with her mobile phone before she marches in the Reed Dance in Swaziland.
Nearly 40,000 young women parade before King Mswati III of Swaziland during the Reed Dance, in hopes of being chosen to be his next wife.
Incomplete and abandoned buildings contribute to an eerie feeling in the downtown area of Maputo, Mozambique.
Rick stops along typically littered sidewalk near a colorful car, in Maputo, Mozambique.
During the Junior Achievement pilot, a LULOTE staffer teaches one part of the JA Personal Economics program to Swazi high schoolers in Manzini, Swaziland.
High school girls discuss a team activity during the pilot of the JA Personal Economics program in Manzini, Swaziland.
High school boys work on an individual activity during the pilot of the JA Personal Economics program in Manzini, Swaziland.
At our Emafini cottage, Rick stands next to our car with a few now-shrunken hailstones which destroyed the windshield, blew out the back window, dented the car and broke both rear view mirrors during our last week in Swaziland.
Businesswoman of the Year Award Dinner
The big event of the next week was the Swaziland Businesswoman of the Year Award dinner. This was an annual award that had been initiated the previous year. TechnoServe had purchased a table’s worth of tickets, so ten of us from the office attended. In many ways, it was like all the award dinners for many causes that Wendy and I have attended in the past. On the other hand, it had its own Swaziland peculiarities.
Wendy was an expert in running this type of event. She didn’t enjoy doing it, but she was an expert. She had run many events for Junior Achievement in Silicon Valley over the previous four years, including the annual awards dinner for over five hundred people. The organizers of the Swazi event could have used her help. One of her first rules was to plan the schedule very tightly and then force people, especially speakers, to adhere to it. This is a principle that the Oscar Awards finally adopted when it started to appear that the ceremonies would run completely overnight. A second principle was to limit the number of speakers to only those you must have. She used these principles to keep the events to a reasonable length and to keep the audience somewhat attentive.
The organizers for this dinner didn’t adhere to either of these principles. The opening remarks by the mistress of ceremonies were followed by welcoming speeches from each of the two major sponsors. Then there were speeches by the acting prime minister, the minister of Industry and Employment, and finally the keynote speech by the businesswoman of the year from South Africa. All of these speeches preceded the presentation of the profiles of the candidates, and all of the above preceded the main course. Dinner was served at 10:00 p.m.!
In partial defense of the speakers, one of the reasons that any speech had to be so long was the Swazi custom of recognizing and honoring all of the attending dignitaries at the beginning of each speech. Not to do this was considered very bad form, and if you overlook someone, you may have made a powerful enemy for life. Consequently, each speech began, “Honorable acting prime minister, honorable minister of Industry and Employment, global chairman of sponsor number one, African chairman of sponsor number one, Swaziland managing director of sponsor number one, managing director of sponsor number two (fortunately, they were a local company and didn’t have visiting chairmen), members of parliament, members of the diplomatic corps, captains of industry, etc., ladies and gentlemen.” This only added to the tedium of the speeches and the restlessness of the audience. A few times, the audience had to be quieted down so the speaker could actually be heard.
However, no one had to be quieted when the minister of Industry and Employment was speaking. He was a dynamic, engaging personality, and he used humor to keep the audience attentive. However, it was the sort of humor, directed at women, that hasn’t been heard in an open speech in the United States for nearly fifty years. It wasn’t directly hostile, just offensive to people like us who really believe in the equality of women. He joked about women’s weight, age, attractiveness, and role in the household. I winced with every barb. He got laughs, but I just kept wondering what the primarily female audience was really thinking. Did they just accept it as harmless as women would have done in the United States fifty years ago? Or were they being outwardly polite while seething inside? There was no way to know.
Producing Cotton, Milk, and Pork
With Insights on Race
