Have you ever thought of a woman as an investment? Well, Goldman Sachs certainly does. Goldman Sachs has just launched its “10,000 Women” initiative, which will provide business and management education to 10,000 disadvantaged women, and will help build capacity for improved business education in emerging and developing parts of the world.

Like Acumen Fund, Goldman believes in the power of markets to transform lives and economies. The initiative’s focus on women’s business education addresses an unmet need with tremendous potential: More economic opportunity for women translates into healthier, better educated families that can benefit generations to come. (more…)

Because I am often asked for book suggestions, this is a good review of a terrific book that I’m reading and am really enjoying. The economist Paul Collier looks at the poorest billion in the world and offers suggestions about how to extend economic opportunity to them. I highly recommend it.

On the upper east side of Manhattan, in a place where an espresso cup costs $79, you will find a courtyard full of inventions designed not for the fabulously rich, but for people who do not have access to basic goods and services. This courtyard is in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and the exhibit is called “Design for the Other 90%.”

The particular day I visited happened to be at the end of my first week at Acumen Fund as a Summer Associate. Keeping in mind Acumen’s mission and the various backgrounds of Acumen’s investees, I wanted to see how these ideas to provide goods and services to the poor through design innovations and market approaches become reality. Among the inventions were devices such as the One-Laptop-per-Child project, StarSight solar-powered street lamp and wireless communications device, and the MoneyMaker Block press. When I came across the drip irrigation system from IDE India, one of Acumen’s investees, a smile came across my face. After learning about it this past week, here it was in “practice”! (more…)

I’m just back from India with the board, jet-lagged but excited by the trip and the commitment of so many stakeholders –  our board, our India team, our investees, our advisors. We are building a real community, and it is this group of people in India and elsewhere who are responsible for the powerful changes we are seeing. Cate Muther gave me Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss to read on the plane, and I completed it just as the plane was arriving at JFK. I couldn’t recommend it more highly - it is a book about India and the scars of colonialization, of the diaspora and of humans of different classes and types trying to make sense out of an increasingly complex world. It should be required reading for people interested in our issues of building viable solutions to poverty through market-driven approaches.

Ms. Desai begins the book with a poem by Jorge Luis Borges:

Boast of Quietness

Writings of light assault the darkness, more prodigious than meteors.
The tall unknowable city takes over the countryside.
Sure of my life and my death, I observe the ambitious and would like to understand them.
Their day is greedy as a lariat in the air.
Their night is a rest from the rage within steel, quick to attack.
They speak of humanity.
My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.
They speak of homeland.
My homeland is the rhythm of a guitar, a few portraits, an old sword, the willow grove’s visible prayer as evening falls.
Time is living me.
More silent than my shadow, I pass through the loftily covetous multitude.
They are indispensable, singular worthy of tomorrow.
My name is someone and anyone.
I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn’t
expect to arrive

My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. Until we can really see ourselves in each other, we are not going to create the future we imagine based on the fundamental principle of human equality. It will require a reimagining of how we organize ourselves and our resources to best serve the most people possible so that everyone of us can hope to live lives with the dignity of choice. Desai brilliantly reminds us of how easily people are stripped of that choice in most every society on earth, so it is our work to see where even the most basic human dignities are unavailable and to do what we can to build those systems that best release human energies on a widescale basis.

Reflecting on the recently held World Economic Forum in Cape Town, Jacqueline hinted at the evolution taking place in respect of capital inflows - partnership not aid. Acumen Fund’s timing is spot on, as this Business Day article confirms.

Al Gore’s terrific new film, An Inconvenient Truth, is the most important movie you can see right now. It is also very engaging and I can’t recommend it more highly. The film is really a dynamic presentation that Vice President Gore has made thousands of times over the past years. Not only will you see a man of true conviction and passion speaking, you will also learn a lot about one of the most (if not the most) critical issues of our time. The scientists agree that climate change is real (at the TED Conference, individuals suggested the name be changed to climate crisis) and that it is occurring even more rapidly than scientists had originally thought. The link between climate change and poverty is also strong. It is not inconceivable that we’ll see Bangladesh under water in the next 40 years, displacing over 150 million people who will search for new homes and countries, adding greater instability to the region.

So run, don’t walk. Go and see the movie, and commit to do something. If there is one thing that might unite our planet, I would hope it might be the threat that all of us may lose the very earth that sustains us, if we are not more thoughtful - and proactive.

This looks like an interesting documentary. It sends home the message that there are many good opportunities for investment in Africa, highlighting the following industries:

• Housing finance bank in Ghana
• Agricultural exports (produce and flowers) in Kenya
• Manufacturing children’s clothing in Nigeria
• Textile factory in Lesotho
• Animation design studio in Senegal
• Diamond production in Botswana
• Coffee house in Kampala
• Adventure activities
• Airline in Somalia
• Cell phone company in the Congo

It is time that we stop looking at Africa only as a basket case and find opportunities for investment- and change!

I came across this piece in Granta. It is right to the point and says as much about the current debate on Africa as it does on writing….a must read. Enjoy!

The recent book The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable, edited by our good friend Seth Godin, includes essays from 33 top thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell, Tom Peters and Acumen Fund’s own Jacqueline Novogratz. “The Group of 33” is collectively donating 100% of author royalties from The Big Moo to three charities. Acumen Fund is delighted to be one of them, along with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and Room to Read. On April 1-2, MSN kindly donated its home page to run two innovative ads for The Big Moo, spreading the word to its vast audience. Our thanks to Seth, MSN, the authors and all those who have bought the book.

Check out Hans Rosling’s gapminder.org. Hans’ mission is to unlock the data held up in the halls of the UN and make it available and accessible. The technology is incredible - it allows for a more nuanced approach to seeing and understanding problems so that we move away from regionalizing problems (”Africa is starving”) and toward contextualization (part of Africa are starving and parts are wealthy). The software enables a visualization of changes among countries and groups over time. To watch countries move along a graph over thirty years (health on the x axis, income on the y axis) is to watch choices in public policy and the effect of AIDS and disease over time. Connecting gapminder.org to a major search engine could revolutionize the way we access, present and understand data. Acumen Fund needs to leverage the platform to better present stories and to make better decisions around how and why we build different business models for varying groups of individuals.

I just wanted to recommend “Paradise Now,” a thoughtful, human and riveting Palestinian film about two suicide bombers. It lifts the importance of Acumen Fund’s message in many ways, underscoring how critical it is to understand issues of identify, of otherness in our work and that key to change really is providing opportunity, hope and a sense of dignity to individuals who can then solve their own problems. One of the best movies I’ve seen.