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I continued to work on the sales and marketing plan with Phiwa and one of his salesladies, emphasizing that they had to be very specific about where the sales were coming from and how they would make them happen. They had to justify the future sales numbers based on extrapolating their experience to date. Numbers in a spreadsheet without support were not going to be acceptable, especially since the business had never achieved breakeven volume. I explained that their first deliverable had to be a detailed spreadsheet of all the sales through the various channels with supporting backup that showed why they were confident in their estimates. Tasty Meals’s second deliverable had to be the marketing plan that supported the sales numbers. If they needed signs to support sales in small shops, it had to be in the marketing plan. If they needed specialized racks and displays for the supermarkets, it had to be in the marketing plan. And there had to be a person and date assigned to get things done. The less money available, the better a plan has to be. Tasty Meals had no money available, and getting more would be difficult, so we had to have an excellent plan. They realized that they had a lot of work ahead.

When I met again with Tasty Meals, they confirmed that they could rent enough land to supply themselves with mealies year round, but they still didn’t have any money to commit to planting. In the good news category, they had made great progress on the sales plan. Several women who had been selling the mealie bread were visiting shops throughout the country to evaluate their sales opportunities. Then the women were projecting sales for each store, based on their prior experience with similar stores and their conversations with the owners. The numbers were good with solid logic behind them. More importantly, the projections would generate a good profit for the business, and the women weren’t finished. They felt they needed another week to go through all the possibilities in the whole country. The short-term news was negative, but there was hope in the long-term. Phiwa took us out to lunch, and we briefly forgot about the threat that was looming over him.

Later that evening, we met with a food-processing expert who had come from the United States to meet with a number of bakeries. Many bakeries had problems with their products drying out and going stale. This expert was recommending the use of defatted soy flour to help extend shelf life. Shelf life had been a problem for Tasty Meals as well, so we thought the consultant might have some ideas. As he explained to us, Tasty Meals didn’t have a problem with their product drying out and becoming stale. Tasty Meal’s problem was that the product was moist and would readily allow the growth of mold. Although Tasty Meals had tried various preservatives in the recipe, nothing seemed to work in concentrations that didn’t spoil the taste. The expert suggested that a dilute solution of preservative could be sprayed on the outside of the product rather than mixing it into the batter. In this way, the preservative would go only where it was needed, on the outside of the product, and it would be so dilute as to not impact taste. We all thanked the consultant, and Phiwa committed to trying it out. This would make it easier to sell the product in smaller shops and in more remote areas that would have slower turnover and less frequent deliveries.

As I tried to help my individual clients, I kept thinking about the whole office and how we could quickly make a visible impact. From my business school and consulting days, I remembered the standard mantra of strategy—focus. My perception was that our office had not been focused on a limited number of industries to support. This was understandable since the Swaziland office was new and hadn’t yet had time to do a complete analysis of which industries had the most promise. However, I thought that we had done enough analysis of enough sectors that we could at least begin to focus. I volunteered to facilitate an off-site planning session with the intent of focusing our efforts and getting tangible results quicker. This was an activity I had done many times in my career as a management consultant, and I felt quite comfortable taking the initiative. I also felt that it would be a team-building exercise for the business advisors as they shared their activities and plans with each other.

The objective for the full-day session was to position all of our existing and potential projects (representing subindustries) into a two-by-two matrix based on the magnitude of the benefits that the project would produce and the speed at which those benefits could be achieved. Then we would concentrate our resources on the projects that would deliver the most benefits quickly. Since we didn’t think that there would be many projects with large and rapid benefits, we also decided to pursue a portfolio of other projects. Some of these projects would produce very large benefits but might take three to four years to achieve. Other projects would generate smaller benefits but could be accomplished quickly. We would choose a few of each.

At the end of the day, we had categorized all of our projects. We had decided which ones we would pursue and which ones we wouldn’t. We had also determined the levels and types of resources we would need to pursue these projects and agreed on some hiring plans. Overall, it was a really good day. Next, the business advisors needed to develop their more detailed plans and decide what benefits they would commit to delivering and the timeframe for achieving the results. But none of this was imposed from above. It was generated by the business advisors themselves, and consequently was more motivating. I felt good about the day, and even if we didn’t see radically different results right away, I felt that it gave us more focus and the results would come.

TechnoServe in Maputo, Johannesburg, and Nairobi

We spent the next weekend and the following Monday in Maputo, Mozambique. Leslie and her husband, Stuart, had a one-year-old son, Charlie. Since they had lived most of the past four years in Mozambique, they decided to have Charlie’s birthday party in Maputo with friends. We decided to ride along and avoid the $300 charge for a special waiver to take our rental car into Mozambique. We also decided to avoid the chance that our car would be vandalized in Maputo and that we would have to pay the hefty deductible on the insurance. The drive to Mozambique was pleasant and seemed quick because there were four of us chatting. We went through a new, less trafficked border post and there was no one in line at immigration. The best part was that our unused visas from our previous attempt to go to Maputo were still effective, so we didn’t have to pay again.

Much of the drive was through lightly populated areas, especially in Mozambique. The small settlements we saw in the rural parts of Mozambique appeared cute and quaint. The grass houses looked neat and clean, almost like dioramas in a museum. The appearance and the warm emotion they generated in us were deceiving. These houses weren’t built with grass and other natural materials because they make a great house. The people living in them didn’t have anything else. These people were much poorer than those living in the awful-looking shacks in the South African townships, but who can say that one or the other is better off ? The people in rural Mozambique probably didn’t worry too much about crime, and they lived amidst pleasant scenery. On the other hand, they probably didn’t have good access to schooling and had little hope that they or their children would ever have a better existence. The daily struggle in the townships was probably much more threatening, but at least the people in the townships had some small chance that things could get better for them or ultimately their children. I was very thankful that I wasn’t in either place.

As we drove through the outskirts of Maputo, we began to see the informal settlements that surround the city, just like Johannesburg or Cape Town. Somehow they didn’t seem quite as bad or as big, but they were still upsetting. As we got into the major part of Maputo, we began to understand the mixed messages that we had gotten about the city. Leslie and Stuart had commented about the lovely beach area with its fish market and ocean views. Maputo also has movie theatres, interesting restaurants, and nightclubs, which are limited or nonexistent in Swaziland. But we had also heard lots of stories about the crime and the decay in the city. Through the weekend, these competing themes dominated our feelings.

On the way into the city, we stopped for a nice cup of Portuguese coffee. However, in choosing where to get our coffee, the primary criterion was being able to closely observe and protect our parked car. As we arrived at the home of Leslie and Stuart’s friends, where the party would be, their security guard led us through the gate in the high fence, topped with barbed wire, which surrounded their house and garden. As we went through the yard and into the house, we passed the large diesel generator that was used when the power went off. There were no overt threats or serious inconveniences, just little hints from the surroundings that we were in a very different place.

On Sunday, Wendy and I walked around the more interesting parts of the city, some of which were in the older and more run-down sections. The area right around city hall was actually quite attractive and clean, but only a few blocks away, the sidewalks deteriorated and so did the buildings. Some were just broken shells that looked like they were bombed out twenty years ago and were now just strewn with trash. We thought that these buildings might actually have been bombed out during the long civil war. However, we were told that the civil war never actually reached Maputo. These crumbling hulks were just the result of poor construction, neglect, and urban decay.

Although we were walking a recommended route from the guidebook, Wendy and I frequently felt uncomfortable. The good news and the bad news was that in almost every block, there was at least one building with a security guard standing outside. These guards provided a deterrent to petty burglars, but not to serious criminals. We heard several stories of people being robbed by thugs with guns while an unarmed security guard could only watch. In defense of the city, our feelings were probably worse because it was Sunday, and there were few people around many of the areas we traversed. And we didn’t feel hassled by aggressive panhandlers or hawkers. However, we did have a locally provided map with clearly marked “NO GO” areas on it, which we carefully avoided.

After probably a four-mile walk through the downtown area, we decided it was time to go back to our modern hotel overlooking the beach. We had already decided to go to a famous fish restaurant farther up the coast for dinner. When we emerged from the five-mile cab ride, we were underwhelmed by the décor of the famous restaurant, to say the least. The interior had concrete floors and furniture of 1940s diner style. It seemed clean but was definitely without ambiance. At first, we took a table outside on the open porch, but when a thunderstorm began, we quickly moved inside. The wonderful food made up for the lack of décor. We both had the biggest prawns we’ve ever seen in our lives. I had four with tails about ten inches long. They were simply and delightfully prepared, and it was like eating four small lobsters. On the menu, they were only quoted at “market price,” and so we panicked when the waiter told us that each plate would be a million metacais. I quickly did the math and realized that they would be expensive, but less than $40 per plate. It was a great meal, and on the cab ride back to the hotel, we got to watch a spectacular lightning show over the Indian Ocean.

The cab, like all of the ones we took in Maputo, was pretty run-down. And it seemed that all cabbies drove around on empty. I think they bought gas only when they got a fare, and once our driver actually had to stop at a gas station immediately after he picked us up. When we arrived back at the hotel, I wanted to tip the cabbie, but only had the exact change or a larger bill that was three times the fare. I asked him if he could change the larger bill. He checked his cash and all that he had was the fare that I had given him on the trip to the restaurant. I pulled out my exact fare and Wendy was able to dig through her cash and find enough for a decent tip, but it gave us an idea of how much he was earning.

On Monday morning, we visited the TechnoServe office in Maputo and met with Jake, the country director. Jake had been the country director since TechnoServe started in Mozambique nine years earlier, and he had overseen some outstanding projects. TechnoServe had played an important role in revitalizing Mozambique’s cashew industry, and they had begun to develop the domestic poultry sector. Jake was excellent in articulating the TechnoServe approach to development and of giving examples of how it had been carried out in Mozambique. It was really great to hear the success story of a mature office. In Swaziland, TechnoServe had only been operating for seven months and so couldn’t demonstrate a lot of results. I was always asking why we couldn’t focus more and get results quicker, but then I’d remind myself that development is really hard and often takes time. Sometimes it felt like pushing a rope, but the Mozambique story was reassuring. After our meeting with Jake, the driver from the Maputo office took us to the border, and Kiki, the driver from the Swaziland office picked us up and drove us back to Mbabane.

Maputo was interesting and energizing, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes because we were nervous or concerned. It definitely had features, like a social scene, that made it attractive to volunteers in their twenties and early thirties, but we were definitely more comfortable going back to our much-less-exciting life in safe and predictable Mbabane.

Only a week and a half later, I visited the TechnoServe offices in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Nairobi, Kenya. Seeing the TechnoServe Maputo office had been wonderful, and I wanted to observe more mature offices. It was a good week to go because Wendy was going to Nairobi for a Junior Achievement pan-Africa conference, and from Swaziland, you had to go through Johannesburg to fly to Nairobi. We flew together to Johannesburg and met in Nairobi to fly home to Swaziland.

Though Johannesburg was the headquarters for TechnoServe in South Africa and the regional African headquarters office as well, it was not a big office. It had four full-time employees, two part-timers, and a volunteer. Most of TechnoServe’s employees worked in the field, very remote from Johannesburg. The office was in an attractive area of the city and was surrounded by a ten-foot wall with a massive electronic gate. This type of protection was common and perceived as necessary for homes and small office buildings in Johannesburg. In fact, most walls surrounding homes and buildings were topped with either rolls of barbed wire or an electric fence. The TechnoServe office wall did not have this, and maybe that’s why it had experienced four break-ins within the last month. The office was moving to a different location in the near future.

Both Johannesburg and Nairobi were known for their crime, and it continues today. It is usually in the background as an offset to the attraction of living in a large city with all of its excitement and amenities. Only occasionally, when a friend gets robbed or carjacked, does it reach top of mind. Usually, it just stays in the subconscious as you remember to lock your car doors, hide your computer, and keep cash separate from the credit cards and passport that you really don’t want to give away if robbed. However, I thought this tension seemed to wear on people. Maybe some people got used to the fear or ignored it, but I thought for most people, it just created a higher baseline of stress as they went about their normal activities. They also seemed to frequently question whether this was really how and where they wanted to live. It was funny how fans of both Nairobi and Johannesburg thought that their city was only somewhat dangerous but were afraid to venture out in the counterpart. Fans of each side insisted that the other city was much more dangerous. In fact, one young woman told me how civilized robberies were in Nairobi. If you cooperated and handed over your money, you had nothing to fear. However, she didn’t trust that a robbery would go so smoothly in Johannesburg.

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.