Barack Obama

I’m so excited to share the news that Maria Eitel, president of the Nike Foundation and an Acumen Fund advisor, has been asked by President Obama to become the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service. Maria’s nomination was announced yesterday during an event with President Obama, the First Lady, Vice President Biden, Sen. Kennedy and others, as the President signed the Serve America Act.

We are so proud to work with Maria and have learned a great deal from her. The work at Nike, focused on girls, is important for the world – and The Girl Effect is one of the best examples I’ve seen of social marketing. If you’ve not seen it, watch it now! I know the Foundation will miss Maria, and at the same time, I believe Maria is uniquely positioned to lead this important work for the US and the world. This next generation of young people is an extraordinary one – finding opportunities to link them to real public service opportunities, not only in the US, but hopefully globally as well, could really change the world.

I know you all join me in wishing Maria our warmest congratulations and support. Hooray Maria!

Acumen Fund’s friend Iqbal Quadir - director of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship and founder of GrameenPhone - wrote an op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) entitled Foreign Aid, Bad Governments: Why helping entrepreneurs is the right approach. In it, he pushes the Obama Administration to ditch the Cold War aid regime and instead focus on helping entrepreneurs:

Tragically, the Cold War aid approach actually preserves suffering in poor countries. Aid empowers bureaucracies, promotes statism, and weakens government incentives to boost tax revenues through growth. Economic assets are often kept in the hands of the state, leading to monopolies, stagnation and extortion. All of this hurts entrepreneurs, who have the potential to create wealth and promote governmental accountability.

He goes on to call for the removal of trade barriers, an enhanced role for the International Finance Corporation (if it’s reformed) and for a matching grant program geared towards building health clinics in underserved communities. Iqbal concludes,

In short, America should stop pouring billions into bureaucracies to buy short-term alliances and focus its efforts on bottom-up entrepreneurship. This would increase America’s popularity, alleviate poverty, and promote real democratic change in these developing countries.

We at Acumen Fund agree with Iqbal that we need to focus on entrepreneurs, not aid. There is a role for aid to play, of course. But we know - through our investments, and our conversations with hundreds, thousands of customers - that everyone in the world deserves the dignity that comes from a day’s work, that comes from the choice to buy clean water or healthcare. We hope the readers of the Wall Street Journal will agree with Iqbal and join us in our quest to build a world in which everyone has access to the resources to help them shape their own lives - one entrepreneur at a time.

I write from Nairobi, where people have been dancing in the streets on this historic day of America’s inauguration of its first African-American president, Barack Obama. The Kenyans we’ve met have called him their brother, their son, and even the Second Coming. “He will bring the fighting countries close and end the wars,” a man told me while we were in Kibera, one of this city’s largest slums.

Though expectations of President Obama may be impossibly high, this inauguration has brought the entire world together for a brief moment of unity, hope and inspiration. I couldn’t have felt prouder to be an American, to feel so connected to Kenya, to believe more strongly today than ever that we can all become global citizens in the truest sense of the word. 

President Obama’s speech carried so many themes that lie at the core of Acumen Fund’s mission.  He promised more compassion for those who are suffering in the developing world, and recognized the power - and limitations - of markets, urging a new level of innovation and creativity as we solve the problems ahead. 

Barack Obama’s vision is soaring and powerful, and he will need each and everyone of us, regardless in which country we live, to succeed.  We at Acumen Fund will do all that we can to help and will do so with determined optimism and renewed effort. 

Yes. We. Can…..