NextBillion.net - Development Through Enterprise - Sub-Saharan Africa

ManoCap

Ana Escalante — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 12:31:16 -0500

Managing Organization: ManoCap

Activity URL:

http://www.manocap.com/

Activity Description: ManoCap is a private equity fund manager that makes equity investments in post-conflict and other emerging African economies. ManoCap's aim is to create wealth and jobs for people in the countries in which we work, while delivering outstanding returns to our investors.

They take a proactive approach to generating investment opportunities. By conducting in-depth market research and developing deep local networks, they create visibility on opportunities in countries where significant skills and information gaps exist.

Africinvest

Ana Escalante — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 11:05:51 -0500

Managing Organization: Tuninvest Finance Group

Activity URL:

http://www.africinvest.com/index.html

Activity Description: AfricInvest focuses on investments in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with a turnover below € 15 million at investment stage, but not excluding companies of larger size with significant growth potential.

Africinvest's main targets are growth investments, buy-outs, privatization, seed and restructuring investments. The fund seeks to acquire significant minority stake in portfolio companies through equity and quasi-equity instruments which provide the appropriate degree of control or influence. AfricInvest also seeks to acquire majority positions or to have the ability to take controlling positions in portfolio companies, based on its ability to attract and retain strong and talented management teams.

Wulff Capital

Ana Escalante — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 13:05:22 -0500

Managing Organization: Wulff Capital

Activity URL:

http://www.wulffcapital.com

Activity Description:

Wulff Capital assists African entrepreneurs in commercializing their health innovations. These innovative products can improve wellbeing and lower health costs on a global scale. Product commercialization can create new jobs and protect botanic diversity.

Due Diligence
Their extensive network of business incubation professionals recruit the best innovations and entrepreneurs to participate in Wulff's program. They screen these entrepreneurs for passion, expertise, and ethics. Then they screen their products for market demand, competitive environment and profit potential.

The Streetwires Project

Seema Patel — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 11:24:31 -0500

Managing Organization: Streetwires

Activity URL:

http://www.streetwires.co.za

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.

Coffee Coops in Rwanda

Seema Patel — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 11:23:47 -0500

Managing Organization: The Maraba Coffee Coop

Activity URL:

http://www.nextbillion.net/blogs/2006/08/07/part-i-rwanda-finds-hope-in-premium-coffee

Activity Description:

Rwanda, a tiny East African country recently rent by a famously savage civil war, has found hope in that most colonial of crops: coffee. By riding booming demand in the developed world for specialty brews — and, to a certain extent, by turning its own challenges to its advantage — Rwanda has made premium coffee-growing a national priority. That has not only brought in a trickle of money to a country with little else to trade, but provided a stage on which one-time blood enemies can reconcile their terrible history.

Vegetable Oil as Car Fuel

Seema Patel — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 11:32:28 -0500

Managing Organization: Roy Dibley

Activity URL:

http://www.int.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=14&click_id=116&art_id=vn20060613105934225C865200

Activity Description:

Capetonian Roy Dibley runs his 1980s diesel Mercedes on used vegetable oil, collecting it from restaurants in and around Cape Town. Sometimes he pays for it (R1.50 a litre, which is its price as an additive to animal feed). Sometimes he gets it for nothing.

Dibley reckons it costs him about 50c a litre to filter it before he can put it in his tank - which explains the sticker on the rear of his Merc which announcess that he is running his car on fuel that costs R2 a litre, and that anyone interested in doing the same should ring his cellphone number.

Dibley is a qualified mechanical engineer who designs, builds and sells conversion kits for diesel engines to run on vegetable oil (after filtering) - used, or neat, straight out of the bottle.

The kits, which have been extensively tested in South Africa, are now available from Dibley, and he hopes they will prove a boon to farmers large and small, to operators of hotel courtesy buses and, as he puts it, small operators like plumbers and electricians.

One of his first kits, which he fitted to an electrician's 280KB diesel bakkie, is performing well. The success of these prototypes led to the formation of a business partnership between Dibley, Stuart Freedman (based in Britain) and Valentine Lefrère, an entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Dibley's vision of the product's potential is broader than the luxury market of campers, converted buses or diesel Winnebagos, if there are such things.

ZENUFA Laboratories - Tanzania

Seema Patel — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 09:50:26 -0500

Managing Organization: Zenufa - Tanzania

Activity URL:

http://www.b-i-o.be/showpage.asp?iPageID=178

Activity Description:

Belgian Investment Company for Developing Countries (BIO) is supporting the development of high-quality pharmaceutical manufacturing in Tanzania by providing a US$2.5 million long-term financing to Zenufa, a company that is setting-up one of the first Tanzanian pharmaceutical plant complying with the WHO Current Good Manufacturing Standards.

This investment will allow to renovate unoccupied former premises, to equip the plant and bring the site to CGMP-standards (Current Good Manufacturing Practice). The Sponsors are experienced in manufacturing and distributing pharmaceutical products in Africa and will provide half of the financing needed for the project. The plant will manufacture generic drugs including antibiotics, anti-malaria- and anti-parasite drugs, drugs against pain and fever, etc.

Although the economic growth in Tanzania is very encouraging, aid epidemics are a constant threat to the country. Thanks to the government and international donors support access to health care has been improved. Zenufa has a long-range plan to produce more innovative drugs, not yet manufactured in Tanzania, such as ARV drugs for aids patients. Zenufa will sell most of its products in Tanzania but will also target other neighbourhood countries.

The creation of this pharmaceutical plant in Tanzania will improve the access to essential drugs, will help reduce prices and will offer opportunities to launch more sophisticated drugs. Moreover Zenufa will create about 150 new jobs, most of them for women. Zenufa also pays much attention to environmental aspects and the project has been designed to mitigate major environmental impacts. Zenufa will also have an important development impact by professionalizing the supply chain, stimulating the demand and raising the quality standards.

The Full Belly Project

Seema Patel — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:54:28 -0500

Managing Organization: The Full Belly Project

Activity URL:

http://www.fullbellyproject.org

Activity Description:

The Full Belly Project, spearheaded by Jock Brondis, an ex-Peace Corps volunteer and light and sounds engineer, is a non-profit organization that designs and delivers simple agricultural machines to people in developing countries around the world. This project teaches people how to build hand-operated machines with common materials.

The peanut industry is not only huge in the Philippines but the reach goes as far as the different corners of the hemisphere, to almost 100 countries, feeding 500 million people and making it a great source of protein. It is also a cash crop which provides livelihood for poor people of developing countries.

But for such a big industry, the agricultural technology of peanuts is still trailing behind. People are still shelling peanuts by hand, painfully one by one. In Africa, most of those who do the work are women. (To save on fuel, peanuts are left dried under the sun which makes their shell hard to open.)

Jock Brandis, on his way to visit a friend in Mali, saw the heart of the problem and decided to use his technical skills to provide an agricultural solution. Thus the Universal Nut Sheller was born.

Invented by Brandis, the nut sheller can work 40 times faster than by hand. This coincided with the establishment of The Full Belly project spearheaded by Brondis which aims to “to relieve hunger through appropriate agricultural technology.” The goal of the organization is to distribute these machines around the world and make peanut a number one source of protein of third world countries. Brandis, out of his generous heart, didn´t patent his invention because he believes that it is “a gift to those in need.”

Not only can peanut provide livelihood but it contains highly nutritious properties which could solve worldwide hunger and eventually poverty-this time on a full stomach.

The machine is made of concrete and simple metal parts which only cost 50 dollars to make. It can shell “50 kilograms of peanuts per hour, and one machine can serve the needs of a village of 2,000. Its life expectancy is 25 years.” The Full Belly Project is now working in Uganda, Senegal, Zambia and Ghana. Filipino MIT graduate and Centromigrante head Illac Diaz has also collaborated with Full Belly Project with the help of a local cement company to teach locals how to build the machines.

Solardome SA

Ethan Arpi — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 10:39:38 -0500

Managing Organization: Solardome SA

Activity URL:

http://www.solardome.co.za/index.php

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.

Mwanza Rural Housing Programme

Ethan Arpi — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 09:28:05 -0500

Managing Organization: Mwanza Rural Housing Programme

Activity URL:

http://www.ashdenawards.org/technical_summary06_tanzania

Activity Description:

Mwanza Rural Housing Programme (MRHP) has trained villagers in northern Tanzania to set up enterprises making high-quality bricks from local clay fired with agricultural residues. These enterprises have made sufficient bricks to construct over 100,000 homes with greatly improved comfort and durability in 70 villages.

MRHP has also developed more efficient cooking stoves which are made and sold by local entrepreneurs.