Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett and humanitarian Paul Farmer have been having a fascinating discussion in Foreign Affairs magazine. Laurie mentions Acumen Fund’s work with A to Z as one example of how to create sustainability in development. Check it out!

This article paints a fairly disconcerting picture about the future of water issues around the world and the implications on local politics, health, food supplies, economic development and the environment – all issues that tend to have a disproportionate effect on those at the Bottom of the Pyramid. The World Bank, in an attempt to prevent some of these issues before they arise, is trying to use its grant funding more effectively, introducing the concept of Output Based Aid, and leveraging private financial resources. As this article makes clear, the current availability of funds will not be able to solve this problem alone and so governments, aid agencies and others working in this space will need to be creative in addressing the water issue. Among individuals from all disciplines at the World Bank’s Water Week from February 27-March 2, there was widespread agreement on this.

In Uganda, Acumen Fund is in conversations with the World Bank to help support an Output Based Aid pilot that will help bring water supply to ten rural growth centers and small joint effort between forward-thinking departments within the Ugandan government and the World Bank, to support private operators in the water space and to bring local financial institutions into financing the water sector. Acumen is hoping to help facilitate the appropriate sharing of risk between all parties by offering a loan guarantee product to participating financial institutions. We believe that the success of this project has implications for water provision in both Uganda and East Africa more broadly, and has great potential for replication. And we believe that approaches like this and collaboration between many non-traditional players will be needed to stem the broader water crisis.

I’m currently in Nairobi, Kenya, trying to accelerate our opening a new country operation and streamline our management support of new and existing investments, around technology and strategy. I received an interesting SMS the other day from Maggy, the woman who cleans my apartment and washes my clothes here. The message, asking me what time she should come, wasn’t as interesting as the fact that she sent it at all. Here’s someone living on probably less than $1,000 of annual income, and she’s well-versed in a technology that more than a few of my friends at home are not.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the mobile phone and its relevance to our work trying to improve services to the world’s billions of poor consumers. And relevance it has. Mobiles will be the PC for the people who don’ t have the resources or time to get computers and connect to the Net. Some 70-80% of Kenyans are still without mobile phones, but millions of subscribers are added each year as the price of handsets drops and coverage expands. Companies like Safaricom, the dominant provider here, dominate African stock markets and societies. The companies make a tremendous profit on their pre-paid airtime schemes, but at the same time give a critical service to many of Africa’s lowest-income residents.
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I’m happy to share with you the good news that Acumen Fund investee Kashf was awarded Merit Recognition in CGAP’s 2006 Financial Transparency Awards. This means a lot for the microfinance organization as well as for Pakistan. We are proud to be working with Roshaneh, Sadaffe and their team. This award is also a step forward in the important move toward benchmarks for a sector balancing social returns with financial sustainability.

Acumen Fund investee Advanced Bio-Extracts Limited (ABE) is working hard to fight malaria by producing low-cost artemisinin in East Africa. Artemisinin is a key ingredient in the new malaria treatments (artemisinin-based combination therapies or ACTs) recommended by the World Health Organization to fight the increase in cases of drug-resistant malaria.

As this recent article in The New York Times explains, until recently, the high cost of ACTs significantly limited the drugs’ availability to the people most in need. The high cost was a result of many things, including limited availability of the raw material used to produce artemisinin. In the past few years, ABE has played a key role in scaling-up raw material production and pushing the cost of artemisinin down. Whereas ACTs used to be sold in Africa for $3 - $4 per adult treatment, they now cost approximately $1 per adult treatment.

In January 2007, ABE commissioned the first factory in Africa to produce artemisinin and has delivered enough artemisinin to treat 3 million cases of malaria in only two months. ABE expects to manufacture 50 million ACTs (malaria treatments) by the end of the year. In addition to supplying artemisinin to the leading producer of ACTs for the World Health Organization, ABE is affiliated with the pharmaceutical company that will manufacture ASAQ, the anti-malaria medicine mentioned in the NYT article. ABE is excited about the introduction of ASAQ and believes that the fewer pills required will significantly improve the effectiveness of the medication. Many people discontinue treatment mid-dosage with other ACTs because of the high number of pills required. It is exciting to support a company that is making such an enormous impact on the fight against malaria.