South Africa
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Managing Organization:
Net1
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Activity Description:
Net1 is a provider of smart card technologies and systems that create a secure and affordable transacting channel between formal businesses and the “un-banked” and “under-banked” populations of developing countries who have no or limited access to traditional banking facilities.
Net1 has developed the UEPS (Universal Electronic Payment System) that makes use of their patented FTS (Funds Transfer System) methodology to provide a fully integrated payment, switching and settlement system suitable for multiple applications and services, meeting the requirements of the un-banked and under-banked populations.
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Managing Organization:
Men on the Side of the Road
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Activity Description:
Men on the Side of the Road (MSR) is giving thousands of unemployed men in South Africa the vital skills, tools, and social infrastructure to improve their lives. Extremely high unemployment rates in South Africa have forced men to stand on the side of the road, looking for temporary work and accepting low wages and abuse. MSR founder Charles Maisel saw the potential for these day laborers to recognize and utilize their own strength to create change from the bottom up.
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Managing Organization:
Streetwires
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Activity Description:
 Started in 2000 with two artists and three founders, Streetwires is a business with a social mission that is tackling the problems of unemployment and poverty in South Africa head on. Focusing on the unique and dynamic genre of wire art, the project is providing the skills training, support and raw materials necessary to enable over 100 formerly unemployed men and women to channel their natural creative energies into this vibrant art form. Using the core tenets of upliftment, sustainability and innovation as their guide, Streetwires is seeking to create a microcosm of what they are striving for in South Africa - individuals, taking responsibility for their destiny, bringing their diverse skills together and working to build their future and the future of the country they love.
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Managing Organization:
Solardome SA
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Activity Description:
Solardome SA cc is an independent solar hot water system manufacturer, also specializing in solar energy systems. Its products include solar powered cookers, fridges, lights, water pumps, and batteries. Although the company is located in South Africa, many of its products are exported to surrounding countries, including Mozambique.
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Managing Organization:
Cape Information Technology Initiative
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Activity Description:
Bandwidth Barn is an IT-start-up incubator that provides bandwidth as well as office space, equipment, and in-house tech support to help IT SMEs succeed in South Africa. Because its services and bandwidth are shared collectively among clients, bandwidth costs are low.
Additionally, Bandwidth Barn promotes a "culture of entrepreneurship" by facilitating a networked environment, particularly with the Cape IT Initiative; clients, staff, and outside entrepreneurs in the Cape IT network can thereby share advice and expertise.
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Managing Organization:
Working for Water
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Activity Description:
Since 1995, the South African based Working for Water (WFW) Programme has worked to clear invading alien plants (IAPs) from the country, and continues its efforts with over 350 projects currently in operation.
According to WFW, IAPs, "waste 7% of [South Africa's] water resources; reduce [SA's] ability to farm; intensify flooding and fires; cause erosion, destruction of rivers, siltation of dams and estuaries, and poor water quality and can cause a mass extinction of indigenous plants and animals."
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Managing Organization:
Roundabout Outdoor
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Activity Description:
Roundabout Outdoor's Playpump is a water pump that provides free fresh water to rural communities. The Playpump is practical, economic, sustainable, and fun!
The Playpump's storage tank is erected on a 7m high stand and is fitted with billboards on all sides; these are rented out as advertising space for private companies and government public health messages. Revenue from this source pays for the ongoing maintenance and the sustainability of each installation.
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Managing Organization:
Thando Papers
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Activity Description:
South Africa's Thando Papers harvests alien, environmetally degrading reeds from the wetlands and rivers on the outskirts of Cape Town for use in its papermaking enterprise.
Additional environmentally friendly sources include sisal, tree bark and soft wood fibre. Horse, rhino, and elephant dung are even used to make paper in one of the company's novelty items.
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Managing Organization:
Chilli Pepper Company
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Activity Description:
The Chilli Pepper Company is a for-profit enterprise that helps sustenance farmers in rural Zimbabwe to grow and market chillis.
The company was created in 2000 by the Elephant Protection Development Trust (EPDT) as a way to resolve conflict between farmers in the Zambezi River valley and elephants. Both compete for resources and water, but farmers face additional hardship because they must protect their crops from being eaten or damaged at night. The farmers selected by EPDT are also among the most disadvantaged people in Zimbabwe, have little access to draught power and only grow small plots of cotton for cash. The yields for food crops such as sorghum, maize and millet are highly variable.
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Managing Organization:
N'Kozi Developments
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Activity Description:
N'Kozi Developments (Pty) Ltd dba n'Kozi Homes is a start-up innovative company led by Joseph Feigelson and has been registered as private company in Cape Town.
N'Kozi provides an integrated product and mechanism for delivery of "Smart Sustainable Modern African Digital Eco-Villages (SMADEV)" to low-income communities.
Poorer citizens will benefit from upgrading to energy efficient structures while obtaining free solar heated water, free solar lighting, and waterless toilets, while at the same time benefiting from education, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities.
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Managing Organization:
South African Bank of Athens, Ltd.
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Activity Description:
WIZZIT is a cellphone-based banking facility whose target market is the estimated 16 million unbanked or underbanked South Africans - about 60 percent of the country's population. Unlike its competitors (FNB and MTN), WIZZIT does not require users to have a bank account and is compatible with early generation cell phones popular in low-income communities. The facility even works with customers who use pay-as-you-go cellphones - another distinction.
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Managing Organization:
Wizzy Digital Courier
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Activity Description:
A system that involves physically transporting data saved on a USB memory stick back and forth between one central computer -- at, say, a school with a fast connection -- and unconnected machines in outlying areas, replacing a phone line. The school can compose e-mail messages and specify topics for an Internet search. Then it can send a teacher or gardener off -- by bicycle, perhaps -- to plug the memory stick into a central computer miles away, upload the current batch of communiqués, and retrieve the results of yesterday's requests.
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Managing Organization:
Anglo American
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Activity Description:
Zimele invests equity in small and medium enterprises in South Africa, promoting black economic empowerment, entrepreneurship, and the transfer of managerial and business skills. With Zimele, mining conglomerate Anglo American hopes to outsource the non-core activities of its business model by developing small and medium enterprises who can supply Anglo American with these services. In addition to
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Managing Organization:
SharedPhone
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Activity Description:
SharedPhone offers a SIM based GSM Public Payphone for local entrepreneurs who would use it to provide phone services. SharedPhone claims a competitve advantage with a model based on a software license agreement that allows entrepreneurs to buy sims and entry level handsets at cost. The company also claims superior ability to enable entrepreneurs to manage the airtime of their clients.
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Managing Organization:
Vodaphone
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Activity Description:
Vodacom Community Services, a program of Vodacom, South Africa's largest cellular phone company, is a successful example of how business and government can work together to achieve significant social and economic goals. Community Services began under a 1994 government mandate to provide telecommunications services in under-serviced, disadvantaged communities. Vodacom's development of an innovative way to meet this mandate, via entrepreneur-owned and operated phone shops, has both provided affordable communication services to millions of South Africans and empowered thousands of previously disadvantaged individuals with income-generating opportunities and lasting business skills.
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