20 Ideas for Social Entrepreneurs [Part 2]

In the first half of this article I shared a few ideas for social ventures in emerging economies. Some of them I’m working on, some of them I’m not but regardless I don’t think it should stop others from trying. You’ll notice that some of these ideas don’t have examples because I’m not currently aware of any but as I find them in practice I’ll revise both posts. Here’s ten more ideas for responsible fortune hunting in developing countries…

11. Micro-Angel Investor/VC

As an African Angel investor your job would be to scour the continent vetting the early stage business ideas of entrepreneurs. It wouldn’t be an easy job, but it could be incredibly lucrative. Essentially you’d be acting like a one person Kiva focusing on small markets and managing them with your staff. Kiva exists because groups like these don’t.

Example – to an extent Martin Fisher’s Kickstart

12. Virtual World for Educating People About Foreign Cultures

I recently wrote an article about Second Life that explained how much money is cycled through the virtual world’s economy every day. Platforms like Second Life, Keneva and MWorld are wonderful tools that offer the promise of doing so much more than they are. What I’d like to see is someone set-up an in-game community that operates with the same rules, troubles and nuances of real cultures. Thus people who want to learn what Africa is really like could just log-on and experience life in a place like Kampala, Uganda. It wouldn’t be perfect, but at-least people may end up with a better idea of what a place is like then the stereotypical view they had in their heads. It also might prompt them to actually go visit the real place.

Example – Uthango

13. Local Procurement Services

In Uganda, my biggest frustration has been seeing the government and local institutions give software development contracts to foreign groups, when there are plenty capable, skilled workers right here. I work with a group of very talented local developers as part of Appfrica Labs. There should be a group on the ground in countries like this that works with the government to find local vendors, hold them accountable and to make sure the system works for all parties involved. The amount of money Governments would save by hiring local would be enough to fund a group like this for the next three decades.

Example – SamaSource

14. Communal Computers

Give micro-loans to rural villages so that they can afford a computer. Place the computer in a communal space (well secured and protected from the elements) and spend a few weeks training someone in the village to do revenue generating tasks (not spam). The community gets a computer, a handful of people generate revenue that both pays back the loan and improves their income. When demand is high enough from people who also want to make money, go back and add more machines. Train a local person to repair the machine, and have him charge his peers for his services. In a year everyone in that village will be a employed, the village will be paying down the loans and there will be incentive for others in the village to become better skilled. See the difference between this model and just giving people things?

15. Local Language Bloggers

Understanding linguistics is a tricky thing, especially when the speakers of a language are few and far between. If someone were to pay a number of bloggers to write in their local language, it would give researchers a great deal of insight into these languages (things like slang, colloquialisms, implicit meaning etc.) The added benefit is that you’re preserving how those languages are spoken and written by the people who use them on a daily basis. As these languages die out (because of people adopting more widely spoken languages) their importance (and value) to future researchers will only increase.

Example – Maneno

16. Statistic Analysis and API’s

Connecting the dots. When researchers slave for years over reports, collecting data and conjuring up complex algorithms to forecast human behavior they want people to read over those reports as intently as they do. Unfortunately, most people would rather watch banana trees grow. Making that data ‘more digestible’ for the layman is increasingly needed. Even more necessary, API’s that allow software rendering solutions be adapted to work with any data set with little heavy-lifting (programming).

Example – Gapminder, IBM’s ManyEyes

17. Infrastructure (Plumbing, Electricity, Roads)

African governments have their work cut out for them when it comes to serving the public with roads, power and water. As has been the case for many years, capacity building projects are always very much in need. Instead of government aid money being allocated to these projects, it would be interesting to see a social venture working with local private utility groups to do things like bringing plumbing to rural villages or power to under-served urban slums. And unlike most NGO’s your goal would be to find ways to make the projects low-cost enough to make them one day be profitable.

18. Delivery/Courier Services
Unfortunately, location is everything in Africa. Because of the lack of credit systems, to purchase things or get tasks done 98% of the continent has to physically go do it themselves. The easier alternative is to send someone else to do it for you. An most developing countries people rely on public transportation…primarily taxi’s or motorbikes anyway. This business model would require hiring a few drivers to run errands for people. It could be going to the grocery store, standing in line to pay bills, picking up take out, delivering documents etc.

Example – Zifty.com

19. Human Offsets

Instead of purchasing ‘carbon offsets’ to offset how much carbon dioxide you generate, how about a ‘human offset’ to displace your impact on ‘people at the bottom of the period’. Most people would call this idea ‘developmental aid’ paid for by their tax dollars, but just like carbon offsetting is a personal decision, so would this. There would be a calculation to determine how many people didn’t eat today, what it would cost to feed them and then what percentage your personal expenses on were in comparison. For instance: that $10 meal at Steak and Shake used X gallons of gas to get there, X watts of electricity to prepare, would have fed X people all over the world and contributes to X% inflation in X countries. There’d be an ‘offset’ that negates the effect of your meal on the country of your choice. This could be applied to anything from watching TV to taking a roadtrip across the country.

Someone tell the World Bank to seriously consider this one.

20. Green Conversion

There’s a lot of talk in Western nations about clean tech doing things like converting server farms to be more energy efficient. Why not start at the ‘bottom of the period’ by only introducing low-cost, clean tech to emerging economies. In other words, for people in developing countries most of the technology being introduced to their countries is new to begin with, why not help them become ‘greener’ quicker by only introducing products that are ‘clean’. As long as the products are cost effective, things like low-energy consumption computers and servers would be perfect in countries where stable electricity is already scarce and unreliable. This idea would involve offering to retrofit corporate groups, governments and schools with low-energy, clean tech which would at the end of the day save them money on energy bills.

This is article is syndicated from Appfrica.org. Appfrica.org facilitates, mentors and incubates entrepreneurs in software in East Africa and Uganda. Their goal is to offer a physical space with a solid internet connection, servers, software and computers that will allow students and recent graduates a place to develop their ideas in a constructive environment with industry professionals outside of school. For more great articles from Appfrica please visit Appfrica.net.