Wow, we just found out our country assignments for our Innovation for Humanity trip.

We had to rank where we wanted to go.  The choices were Rwanda, India, Kenya and Peru.  Rwanda was the most popular location.  What an incredible opportunity:

Rwanda. Despite its tragic history, Rwanda is emerging as one of the most hopeful countries in Sub-Saharan Africa.  As Rwanda moves forward on fulfilling its mandates for Vision 2020, many reforms in government, business, education, and communications are opening many opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Project 1: Health clinic – Business expansion.

The leadership of a small health clinic, providing general healthcare services to local population, aspires to expand operations, engaging more full time doctors and broadening the line of services offered in the clinic. An MBA team will help to explore opportunities to leverage current resources to finance expansion in the most sustainable and impactful manner.

Project 2: Solar energy products – Distribution Strategy.

A Kigali-based enterprise distributes small, low-cost renewable energy devices designed to meet the needs of the rural population. Considering the terrain and developing infrastructure in Rwanda, the company needs to develop a cost-effective distribution systems.  Students will analyze different models to distribute the products to remote parts of the country effectively.

Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

So for clarification, here’s how the Innovation for Humanity project works.  Our class of 88 was broken up into four groups: India, Rwanda, Kenya, and Peru.  Within the chosen country, there are groups of 4-5 students working on individual projects.  They range from solar projects to agricultural, medicine to micro-finance.  All of the projects are built to concentrate on the underlying business concepts of socially beneficial products serving the bottom of the pyramid consumer.  Our main textbook is accordingly:

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid

The author explains the significance of the market for the 4 Billion poor who live on just two dollars a day.  Through interacting with these consumers, a socially conscious business can have tremendous impact, and better the lives of millions who exist on the fringes of our society.  Serving the BOP customer requires innovation in technology and totally new ways of thinking.  An exciting place to be an entrepreneur.

In addition to the case studies featured in the above book, we are also dissecting the following companies’ case studies published by Harvard Business School:

• ApproTEC
• BASIX
• The Acumen Fund

The last was of particular interest to me as I’m also reading The Blue Sweater by Jacqueline Novogratz.  Mrs. Novogratz spent some time in Rwanda working on micro finance projects and went on to found the Acumen fund, which seeks to make socially sustainable contributions in companies in developing areas.  Pretty amazing stuff.

So we just landed in Kigali, Rwanda. Glad to be here. The trip was excruciatingly long, probably due to it being my first time across the Atlantic.

We began by meeting at 7:00am in downtown Baltimore. We took a bus to Dulles in Washington, DC and boarded our first flight at 12:00 noon. This was to be a 12 hour flight to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a middle seat without too much leg room. I think I got about an hour of sleep. The flight was long, long, long.

We arrived in Addis Ababa at around 10:30 am on Tuesday due to the long flight and time difference. After a bit of delay, we took a two hour flight right into Kigali. It seemed very short after the previous. We were greeted by our group organizers at the airport and were whisked away to our hotel. We relaxed for a few, but were cautioned to stay awake in order to more properly adapt to the time difference.

After a couple of Rwandan beers we felt much better. We ate dinner at a funky restaurant, the Republika Café. It was an open air restaurant and featured many Rwandan staples: potatoes, bananas, veggies and rice. Some not so staples included fried anchovies, goat and beef. The former are considered luxuries as we were told the majority of Rwandans only eat meat once a year. I hope to post more pictures soon. Internet access is spotty, but I’ll give it my best shot to update regularly.

So we settled in to our new home and began our ground work with a visit to the United States embassy in Kigali.  The embassy itself is a large compound which was built in 2008.  The size and location of the building was built in response to the recent attacks on US Embassies in other countries.  The embassy was impressive, yet also intimidating.

The visit was good.  We met with Dennis Weller, the mission director of USAID.  Joining Dennis was an economist, a public relations representative, a local cultural expert, and some healthcare workers.  These experts gave us a good glimpse of the reality of aid programs going on in the country as well as clarifying our pre-trip research.

USAID is highly involved in farming projects.  Here, they work with farmers to increase yields and prevent spoilage of harvested crops through storage and transportation initiatives.  The health care workers reaffirmed the idea of Rwanda’s excitement in pursuing new projects.  There are no pilot programs in Rwanda.  There is just do.  This was highlighted by the recent switch to English as the national language.  The switch from French came almost overnight.  It reflects Rwanda’s confidence in trying new things.  The cultural expert discussed some of the history of the country.  I was impressed by the strength of the oral tradition – he could recite the names of his ancestors stretching back 43 generations.  He also described Rwandan’s love of poetry – poems written for the King and the cow (two highly revered components of Rwandan culture).

We were fortunate to have the Ambassador stop by to say hello.  It was a great patriotic experience.  The man bled red, white, and blue.  He discussed everything from the birthplace of man (not far from Rwanda), Abraham Lincoln, genocide reconciliation, to quotes from our currency.

So today we got to visit our project site. We are working at a private medical facility located in Kigali, not far from our hotel. We spent the morning meeting the staff and touring the facility.

The Polyfam clinic is a well established private clinic. They employ 4-5 doctors, 30 nurses and a handful of administrative employees. They are popular because service at the public hospital is inefficient and it takes a long time for service. For a few extra dollars, patients can be quickly seen and serviced at Polyfam.

Based on discussions before we arrived, we knew that we would be working on their medical records. The main problem they were having was in regards to duplicate records and difficulties with the amount of information provided to the doctors. We researched a couple of solutions for electronic records and came equipped to work on this component. However, it quickly became clear there were many other areas in which we could assist operations.

Through our Business Processes class this past semester, we learned much about analyzing systems and determining where improvements can be made. We realized quickly that the billing system was causing most of the problems they have with medical records.

We are basically working as consultants. We are viewing our project as an opportunity to make suggestions and provide ideas for longer term solutions. Based on this first day, we have many ideas on where the clinic can improve.