Tanzanian entrepreneur Askwar Hilonga has invented a solution to a crisis that plagues his hometown in Tanzania, as well as the greater sub-Saharan Africa region, the lack of pure drinking water. Hilonga has created a water filter, the Nanofilter, that uses nanotechnology for water purification.
Hilonga was born and raised in an impoverished rural region of Tanzania. In his youth, he and his family had no access to clean water. He decided to devote his life to ending this atrocity, aiming to provide millions of people with this basic human right.
Hilonga’s water filter is sand-based — it uses sand to trap bacteria. The nanotechnology eliminates smaller particles like fluoride, heavy metals and chemical contaminants. It purifies water by 99.9 percent.
In Tanzania alone, 70 percent of the population does not have access to clean water or any type of water purification system. 88 percent of infant mortality is caused by waterborne diseases.
Hilonga is motivated to bring change to the country because of these statistics, but also because of his own experience growing up without clean water.
“I was born in rural Tanzania and raised by a poor family in which most of the times we were suffering from waterborne diseases because we could not afford the luxury of expensive bottled water,” explained Hilonga to How we Made it in Africa.
Hilonga, who received his PhD in Nanotechnology from a university in South Korea, won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation this June, a $38,390 check to help get his company started. The money has enabled him to build his company. “It’s time to save more lives. And grow my business,” said Hilonga.
The Royal Academy of Engineering, which distributes the African Prize for Engineering Innovation, said that the Nanofilter is a transformative invention with the potential to save lives of innumerable Africans, as well as the lives of people across the world.
The Nanofilter is slowly becoming available across Tanzania. Ten entrepreneurs in the country operate water stations that utilize the Nanofilter at the center of their business model.
“We rent the filter to them and they sell drinking water at an affordable price – five times cheaper than the bottled water,” explained Hilonga. The entrepreneurs who run the stations then pay Hilonga’s company around fifty cents per day.
The Nanofilter is cost-effective, with a market price of only $130 per unit. Hilonga believes that the price will continue to drop because, due to his prize money, he can buy materials in bulk and save money.
Nine households have already purchased units. Hilonga has also sold nine filters to local schools, the price subsidized by a Canadian charity.
“We have orders now from various places in Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. At present the demand for our filter is higher than our ability to supply…Now we are able to increase our production capacity and we will also strengthen our team by employing more people for sales and marketing,” said Hilonga.
Before Hilonga won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, he feared that the Nanofilter would never make it due to financial constraint. “I was always looking for external sources of support at least for seed capital,” he said.
The Prize, he explained, not only gave him financial confidence, but also business training. Additionally, due to the prize the Nanofilter was publicized and gained credibility.
Hilonga’s plans for the future are ambitious — he wants to provide the 70 percent of nine million in Tanzania who currently do not have access to water treatment with access to the Nanofilter. After that, he hopes to reach the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.
– Aaron Andree
Sources: How We Made It In Africa, BBC
Photo: QuartzAfrica
Talking to a Member of Engineers Without Borders
A year after the project is complete, volunteers evaluate the impact of the project on the community. Years after that, a final team travels to the community to learn from their successes and see how they can improve.
The members of EWB are varied, and their volunteers include everyone from first-year engineering students to professionals. In order to learn more about EWB, I interviewed Anushka Rau, the President Elect of the EWB chapter at the California Institute of Technology:
1. What is Engineers Without Borders?
“As the EWB mission statement says, Engineers without Borders USA is an organization whose main goal is to partner with communities around the world and enable them to meet their basic human needs, as well as equipping project leaders to solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”
2. What is the impact of Engineers Without Borders?
“They build sustainable projects in developing communities. Right now, there are about 600 Engineers Without Borders projects around the world.”
3. Where does Engineers Without Borders work?
“We work in more than 40 countries. Some of the countries where EWB is working include Peru, Moldova, Macedonia, India, Nepal, Senegal and Rwanda.”
4. What is your chapter of Engineers Without Borders currently working on?
“My chapter of Engineers Without Borders is about to go to Ilam, Nepal to implement our design for a spring source protection system. Infant mortality is a huge problem in the region, and it’s often due to diarrheal diseases caused by poor water quality and sanitation. We surveyed the region and took water quality samples to determine which spring to protect, then made a design and a set of governing principles for it, working closely with the community on the latter. All EWB chapters partner with an NGO in the area, which lets them complete projects that actually fulfill a community’s most pressing needs.”
5. Why do you think Engineers Without Borders is not as well-known as its counterpart, Doctors Without Borders?
“Medicine has a more obvious impact for humanitarian organizations—many people wouldn’t consider engineering to directly help communities, but it’s actually very important.”
6. What do the global poor need the most in terms of engineering?
“I think the global poor need to be listened to by the engineers helping them and they need a sustainable solution to problems associated with their most basic needs. One of the best things about EWB is the partnership with local NGOs—this ensures that chapters can communicate with the community and build a project that matters to them and will have impact for years after the engineers leave.”
7. How can we help with Engineers Without Borders?
“You can donate to the organization EWB on their website. Most chapters also take donations on their personal websites. If you’re a professional engineer, you could look for a college chapter in your area to mentor, or a professional one to join.”
– Ashrita Rau
Sources: Engineers without Borders, CalTech
Photo: Elsevier
The Sebastian Foundation Fights Poverty in Australia and Globally
Guy Sebastian and his wife Jules have started a foundation to directly combat poverty in their native Australia as well as branch out and help others living in poverty abroad.
In the United States, Guy Sebastian is best known for the song “Battle Scars,” released in 2012 with Lupe Fiasco, but his musical career began when he won the first Australian Idol title in 2003. His wife Jules is a celebrity stylist and a copartner in The Sebastian Foundation.
Sebastian’s humanitarian work started very early in his musical career when he took a tour of Africa, specifically Uganda, as an ambassador for World Vision. During his time there, he saw the debilitating effects that poverty can have on a person, and he has worked for awareness surrounding poverty from that time on.
When the Sebastian’s family started to grow, they became even more involved with helping children and families in Australia and the world. Through this desire, The Sebastian Foundation was formed.
The Sebastian Foundation states, “Our focus is people. Our love is people. We want to see the need and meet the need. We want to help in any way we can and we hope you join us in our mission.” With this thought in mind, they form collaborations with like-minded organizations to work with as partners.
Recently, much of their work has centered on local initiatives such as Big Brothers and Big Sisters, dance programs for youth with Downs Syndrome and children’s hospitals. They have also partnered with Sam Moran, the Yellow Wiggle as of 2006 and a UNICEF Goodwill ambassador; Sam works to help “Australian children who are sick, disadvantaged or have special needs.”
The foundation has global poverty in mind as well. Especially because of Sebastian’s time as a World Vision ambassador, The Sebastian Foundation focuses on families in regards of “poverty, poor health and disease, empowering women, educating children and giving them a chance at a better future [and] community.”
One way to be involved with this great foundation is to donate and, in return, one can receive a gift heart bracelet with the word “joy” on it. Or they have a shop where one can purchase a beautiful print of a photo taken by Sebastian, and all proceeds are a donation for the foundation.
Overall, the Sebastian family has used their celebrity status in Australia to help those who need it most in their home country. But through their global work, and Sebastian’s breakthrough on the U.S. music market, their reach can spread even farther than before, helping so many people in need around the world.
– Megan Ivy
Sources: Guy Sebastian, The Sebastian Foundation, The Sebastian Foundation Facebook Page, The World Bank, YouTube
Photo: Jules Sebastian
Study Finds Inhalation of New Ebola Vaccine Kills Virus in Monkeys
The study, led by Dr. Michelle Myer and conducted collaboratively by the National Institutes of Health and the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, determined that the experimental vaccine activated immune cells within the respiratory system that subsequently provided full protection against the virus. The study also notes that this is the first time researchers have attempted to use an aerosol vaccine within monkeys to fight a hemorrhagic viral fever such as Ebola.
Co-author of the study Dr. Alexander Bukreyev, a medical virologist from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, recently stated, “This is one of the few vaccines that works. The initial several decades of attempts to develop a vaccine against the Ebola virus were unsuccessful.”
Vaccination researchers within the medical community have become familiar with the notion of failure, as an experimental drug designed to treat Ebola patients proved ineffective in fighting the virus. The experimental drug, known as TKM-Ebola-Guinea, was designed by Tekmira Pharmaceuticals and reportedly was, “Not likely to demonstrate an overall therapeutic benefit,” for patients infected with Ebola.
The drug was designed to utilize RNA interference, a process in which the functions of certain genes within the Ebola virus are disrupted and subsequently renders the virus incapable of attacking human cells. Prior to the failure of the trials within human subjects, many researchers considered the experiment the single most promising lead in the race to stop Ebola, as the drug had proved effective in stopping the virus in monkeys during clinical test trials
Since the unprecedented outbreak of the disease in West Africa last year, the virus is estimated to have killed over 11,000 people and infected an additional 27,000 people in the nations of Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, according to the World Health Organization.
As the aerosol vaccine does not require the assistance of trained medical professionals, the distribution of the vaccine within developing regions that lack adequate health infrastructures and large personnel staffing will prove to be notably less challenging. Dr. Igor Lukashevich, a medical virologist from the University of Louisville, recently argued that “This aerosolized form of the vaccine is really what the field needs right now. The discussion […] right now is if this Ebola outbreak will be some kind of game-changer for vaccine development, or will it only be one more scare that will be forgotten.”
Dr. Meyer explained in a recent interview that human cells “in the lungs are acting as the first barrier for protection. That’s ideal to combat the virus at the site of the infection.”
Four of the monkeys used for the study were given a single dose of the vaccine, while an additional four were given two doses of the vaccine. Two other monkeys were given a liquid form of the vaccine, while two more monkeys were not vaccinated in order to serve as controlled variables for the study. Four weeks after the administration of the vaccines, all 12 of the monkeys were administered 1,000 times the fatal dose of the Ebola virus.
Two weeks after the injection of the Ebola virus into the test monkeys, all of the vaccinated monkeys had remained healthy while the two unvaccinated monkeys became infected with the disease and were euthanized.
Dr. Daniel Bausch, a medical virologist of Tulane University, noted that the study was “a positive step forward,” but cautioned that “it’s not a breakthrough or ‘Eureka!’”
The success of the aerosol vaccine during the clinical trials on the monkeys indicates the next step will now be for testing to begin on humans in the coming months.
– James Thornton
Sources: New York Times 1, New York Times 2, MB
Photo: Red Orbit
The Tent Cities of Haiti
These tent cities are made up primarily of extremely poor individuals, many of whom were deported from countries in which they sought refuge. Many individuals returned from the Dominican Republic — the neighboring nation that Haiti has had tensions with for years, especially with regards to immigration. To make matters worse, the handful of tent cities that have emerged, seemingly overnight, are located along regions of the country that have been suffering drastic droughts. In just about a month’s time, from the end of June to the end of July, the number of tent homes and cities increased in the Southern region of the country three times over. This means limited water and crops, further limiting the resources many of the Haitian individuals are already missing.
As mentioned previously, many Haitians living in the tent cities have returned from migrating to the Dominican Republic. This is because of the strict immigration and deportation policies being enforced by the country. These laws make legal status mandatory for any immigrants entering the country, and make the process rather difficult. Thus, poor Haitians without the means to gain citizenship are sent back to poverty within the tent cities of Haiti.
This rise in refugees and poverty-stricken makeshift cities has drawn in the attention of many humanitarian relief organizations. Despite the unfortunate living conditions, many groups are now working hard to help people living in the cities. Haitian immigrants have made efforts to follow through with the required process for citizenship in the Dominican Republic, but many are unable to. Moreover, with all the concern for the dangerous conditions of the thousands being sent back to the tent cities of Haiti, the Dominican Republic refuses to hold any talks or discussions on the matter.
In order for the problems to be resolved, there needs to be more discussion between the governments of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
– Alexandrea Jacinto
Sources: CNN, Tele Sur
Photo: Tele Sur
Cleaner Water for Sub-Saharan Africa?
Hilonga was born and raised in an impoverished rural region of Tanzania. In his youth, he and his family had no access to clean water. He decided to devote his life to ending this atrocity, aiming to provide millions of people with this basic human right.
Hilonga’s water filter is sand-based — it uses sand to trap bacteria. The nanotechnology eliminates smaller particles like fluoride, heavy metals and chemical contaminants. It purifies water by 99.9 percent.
In Tanzania alone, 70 percent of the population does not have access to clean water or any type of water purification system. 88 percent of infant mortality is caused by waterborne diseases.
Hilonga is motivated to bring change to the country because of these statistics, but also because of his own experience growing up without clean water.
“I was born in rural Tanzania and raised by a poor family in which most of the times we were suffering from waterborne diseases because we could not afford the luxury of expensive bottled water,” explained Hilonga to How we Made it in Africa.
Hilonga, who received his PhD in Nanotechnology from a university in South Korea, won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation this June, a $38,390 check to help get his company started. The money has enabled him to build his company. “It’s time to save more lives. And grow my business,” said Hilonga.
The Royal Academy of Engineering, which distributes the African Prize for Engineering Innovation, said that the Nanofilter is a transformative invention with the potential to save lives of innumerable Africans, as well as the lives of people across the world.
The Nanofilter is slowly becoming available across Tanzania. Ten entrepreneurs in the country operate water stations that utilize the Nanofilter at the center of their business model.
“We rent the filter to them and they sell drinking water at an affordable price – five times cheaper than the bottled water,” explained Hilonga. The entrepreneurs who run the stations then pay Hilonga’s company around fifty cents per day.
The Nanofilter is cost-effective, with a market price of only $130 per unit. Hilonga believes that the price will continue to drop because, due to his prize money, he can buy materials in bulk and save money.
Nine households have already purchased units. Hilonga has also sold nine filters to local schools, the price subsidized by a Canadian charity.
“We have orders now from various places in Tanzania, Uganda, and Ethiopia. At present the demand for our filter is higher than our ability to supply…Now we are able to increase our production capacity and we will also strengthen our team by employing more people for sales and marketing,” said Hilonga.
Before Hilonga won the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, he feared that the Nanofilter would never make it due to financial constraint. “I was always looking for external sources of support at least for seed capital,” he said.
The Prize, he explained, not only gave him financial confidence, but also business training. Additionally, due to the prize the Nanofilter was publicized and gained credibility.
Hilonga’s plans for the future are ambitious — he wants to provide the 70 percent of nine million in Tanzania who currently do not have access to water treatment with access to the Nanofilter. After that, he hopes to reach the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa.
– Aaron Andree
Sources: How We Made It In Africa, BBC
Photo: QuartzAfrica
Child Empowerment International Provides Education in Sri Lanka
Children living in areas in Sri Lanka affected by war commonly do not have access to the resources and funds needed to receive an education. Many of these children suffer from posttraumatic stress disorder and issues due to their harsh living conditions. Child Empowerment International works to help children who have been negatively affected by war and other violent experiences overcome difficulties, cope with reality and receive an education.
Child Empowerment International establishes day schools in the refugee centers and communities these children live in. Over the past 17 years, the organization helped increase an individual’s future earnings by ten percent through education and training. Their staff of over 200 teachers prepares students for testing in Sri Lanka, which is based on the British education system. Studies conducted by Child Empowerment International have shown students graduating from their program score in the top five percentile on these standardized exams.
Students are taught basic school subjects like grammar and biology and receive career training to become carpenters, seamstresses, chefs, mechanics and hotel managers. Many students are also taught English and computer skills.
Child Empowerment International was started in 1998 to provide children living in war ridden zones holistic care. The organization started with 17 schools, but by the following year they were up to 29 schools. Child Empowerment International began by training teachers and counselors to mentor children who had suffered from sexual abuse and other traumatic experiences.
Founder Adam Salmon worked to establish a textbook-exporting company in Sri Lanka in 1994, but decided to change his line of work when he realized there were large numbers of abandoned children not receiving aid from other organizations. As the founder, he manages the hundreds of teachers working for Child Empowerment International and dedicates his time to improving the lives of the 6,800 children impacted by the organization.
The organization also dedicated themselves to helping the survivors of the tsunami that struck Sri Lanka in 2004. Several hundred students were orphaned by catastrophe and Child Empowerment International lost 126 of their students. The organization worked to find homes for children, provide resources and rebuild the schools lost to the storm.
Today, Child Empowerment International has over 80 schools established in Sri Lanka and other impoverished communities. Their newest project enacted in 2010 is working to provide education and healthcare to children in Uganda.
Students at their schools have successfully graduated from university and gained professional experience in the profession of their choice, with many of them becoming teachers or health professionals. Child Empowerment International is gathering quantitative data of the impact of their work on an individual’s success. Publication of this is set for 2017.
– Julia Hettiger
Sources: Child Empowerment, Global Giving, Matador Network
Photo: Porticus
Global Health Investments Save 34 Million Children
New data has been able to reveal that global health investments have been able to save 34 million children since 2000. Several of these international collaborations have decreased child mortality rates in half for those under the age of 5 in several countries.
The United Nations’ Millennium Declaration was created on September 2000 as a list of goals that would help reduce global poverty in half by 2015. One of the goals in the Millennium Declaration included providing better health access and lowering children mortality rates throughout the world.
Countries within the United Nations pledged to provide aid in order to reduce mortality rates in children under the age of 5. The goal was to have a two-thirds reduction by 2015.
In June 2015, the United Nations declared that its goal had been reached in several countries but much could still be done to improve child mortality rates in other regions.
A major concern from governments with the Millennium Development Goals was how to account for accountability. The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington and the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Financing the Health Millennium Development Goals and for malaria were able to create a solution.
The IHME at the University of Washington and the U.N. reached out to medicinal agencies and non-governmental organizations that were given the child mortality reduction task. International collaborations with scientists allowed both organizations to create a scorecard that kept track of foreign aid and the progress made in different regions of the world.
This scorecard will continue to be used to further promote investments in children’s global health and as a way for people around the world to hold the regions receiving the aid accountable.
For now, the scorecard is being used to reveal how much direct impact foreign aid can have on global health for children. The statistics showed that only US$4,205 is needed to keep a child healthy from birth until 5 years of age.
Low and middle income countries helped turn low child mortality rates into a reality by providing US$133 billion in children’s global health investments. The international aid that was invested helped saved 20 million children.
Meanwhile, private and public donors contributed US$73.6 billion and saved 14 million young lives. The majority of the donors were from low- and middle-income countries according to the data.
In comparison, the United States was able to save 3.3 million children by using only one-third of its less than 1 percent foreign aid budget plan.
Much of the aid went to providing vaccines, HIV/AIDs testing, sanitation and nutrition. Although much has been accomplished, the United States Agency for International Aid (USAID) has stated that the United States has the ability to do much more for young children.
According to the USAID’s 5th Birthday Campaign, 6.6 million children will die this year before their fifth birthday. The campaign states that that is nearly 18,000 children dying per day – most of them dying from preventable causes.
Through the 5th Birthday Campaign the U.S. will continue investing in family parenting, vaccines, sanitation and nutrition to help more children live beyond their fifth birthday.
Internationally, the United States has agreed to work with other countries in funding the Global Financing Facility. A post-2015 organization that will work toward further reaching the United Nations Secretary-General’s Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health and the Sustainable Development Goals.
International governments and public and private donates have agreed on a US$12 billion budget for the Global Financing Facility. While the U.N. Millennium Development Goals sought to lower child mortality rates by two-thirds, the Global Financing Facility aims to completely lower maternity and child mortality rates by 2030.
With 2030 only a few years away the Global Financing Facility has a ticking clock. However, seeing how the U.N. Millennium Development Goals were able to succeed, the Global Financing Facility is having a positive start with much international support.
– Erendira Jimenez
Sources: USAID, WHO, Un Millenium Project, Scaling Up Nutrition, Washington
Photo: Universityofwashington
Why Clean Energy Development and Poverty Reduction Are Related
Clean energy, or green energy, is providing populations with energy for heating, cooking, electronics and everything else that requires energy, but without polluting the atmosphere to aggravate more climate change or destroy environmental resources. Its importance will become increasingly more significant in the future as more environmental challenges arise. However, human foresight is often not the strength of political institutions, and there will likely be an abbreviated rush towards clean energy that ramps up exponentially in the future. In order to build up clean energy infrastructure and a clean energy supply, which most countries lack, a “new deal” will have to be enacted. Countries will need to invest heavily in the research and development of clean energy technologies while also putting into place clean energy infrastructure and facilities that will decrease dependence on oil.
The process of having many nations attempting switches to clean energy technologies in an effort to ease off of oil will have structural effects on the local and global economies. Currently, on the global scene, developed nations are responsible for about 80 percent of the world’s total energy usage. As developed nations begin to lean toward clean or green energies, they are focusing on strategies that could hurt developing nations. For example, carbon emission caps and some clean energy technologies that take up large patches of land have both been introduced by developed nations and criticized by developing nations. Many argue that large land grabs could have potentially poor consequences for agricultural workers pushed off the land and that carbon emission caps could stunt economic growth. But is there a silver lining to these possible downsides?
If developing nations are forced to confront the issue of green energy sooner rather than later, they may end up saving an incalculable sum of money by directly adopting cleaner energies instead of transitioning to oil and coal to meet growing energy demands, and then making another eventual switch to clean energies. Also, forcing developing nations to use clean energy could spur innovative manufacturing sectors. The switch to clean energies across the globe will prompt massive amounts of funding in new areas that will be able to revitalize economies across the world and create jobs for millions through construction, research and ripple effects.
Energy poverty is also an issue. The UN has goals of getting electricity to everyone by 2030. Right now, hundreds of millions of people go without energy like electricity, and a disproportionate number of them are women. Energy poverty is a problem that contributes to the vicious cycle of poverty because of the amount of labor and time that must go into collecting wood or other sources of energy for the family. Decreasing dependence on sources like oil and coal and adopting cleaner sources such as solar energy will help mitigate pressures on poor families that keep them poor, like energy poverty.
The impending growth of clean energies will be most beneficial to those in need possibly more than anyone else. There is enormous potential for leveraging the urgency and priority that both of these issues will take on in the future to create economic prosperity for many more countries and to slow down the catastrophic implications of climate change.
– Martin Yim
Sources: European Commission, Forbes, National Geographic
Photo: Needpix.com
US to Increase Funding for Global Health Security Agenda
The U.S. developed the Global Health Security Agenda to prevent, detect and respond to disease threats. The goal is to stop outbreaks from ever becoming epidemics. Today’s biological threats include the emergence of new microbes, spread through globalization, drug resistance diseases, accidental release and illicit usage of disease. The latest challenges with Ebola prompted the U.S. to increase funding and aid for the Global Health Security Agenda.
One billion dollars have been donated to expand resources to allow countries to deal with biological threats on their own. Investment is desperately needed in the areas of infrastructure, equipment and skilled personnel. The radar includes 17 countries, bringing the total amount of countries to receive aid to at least 60. Countries in Asia and the Middle East to receive the money include Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Vietnam.
Africa will be the main source of attention, with about half of the money being invested there. The money will contribute to improving or creating systems that prevent and mitigate outbreaks–whether they be intentional or natural–that report outbreaks, and that can respond to outbreaks. To accomplish these goals, the U.S. works directly with partner countries’ governments to create a five year plan.
Another part of the Security Agenda is to build African Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The African Union stands behind these projects to help promote disease science and research in Africa. There will also be country specific Public Health Initiatives to boost specific countries health agendas and departments.
The one billion dollar investment will aid reaching the health targets set by the World Health Organization and the UN. The Security Agenda works within the global health frameworks to ensure that there is understanding across sectors and countries.
– Katherine Hewitt
Sources: GlobalHealth.gov, The White House 1, The White House 2
Photo: GEN
DHL to Invest Millions in Sub-Saharan Africa
Logistics leader DHL has joined the ranks of companies taking advantage of Sub-Saharan Africa’s potential for economic growth, which experts anticipate will coincide with continued improvements in infrastructure.
While the number of foreign direct investments (FDI) has decreased in recent years, capital investment in Africa has largely increased. Today’s average investment is US$174.5 million per project, up from US$67.8 million in 2013.
“The perception of investing in Africa has traditionally been rather negative, coupled with the fear of the unknown,” said Managing Director of DHL’s Sub-Saharan Africa region, Charles Brewer. “However, in 2014, traditional investors refocused their attention on the continent, attracted by its strong macroeconomic growth and outlook, improving business environment, a rising consumer class, abundant natural resources and infrastructure development.”
Improvements in infrastructure can be extremely cost-effective in developing regions, where underdeveloped infrastructure tends to increase costs for people and companies like DHL. According to African Business Review, supply chain costs are up to nine times more expensive in Africa than other regions around the world. Investments in infrastructure projects help streamline the supply chain and thus create more favorable economic environments for foreign and domestic companies alike.
According to economist and director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs, Africa will need to adopt an infrastructure-heavy plan to achieve double-digit economic growth in the coming years. According to him, that program ought to include large-scale investments in trans-national infrastructure projects in the way of power, roads, broadband and other basic infrastructural needs.
“There is no choice; Africa needs 10 percent per year of economic growth over the next 15 years,” Sachs said.
One institution working to increase investment in these infrastructure projects is the European Investment Bank (EIB), which plans to open offices in Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Zambia and Mozambique within the next year. Investments like the EIB’s US$43.8 million water and sanitation project in Ethiopia will help narrow what The World Bank estimates to be a US$93 million funding gap for African infrastructure development.
“Growth will remain strong in most low-income countries, owing to infrastructure investment and agriculture expansion,” wrote The World Bank in its outlook for Africa earlier this year. “However, extreme poverty remains high across the region. Foreign Direct Investments fell in 2014, reflecting slower growth in emerging markets and declining commodity prices. Several countries including Cote d’Ivoire, Kenya and Senegal, were able to tap international bond markets to finance infrastructure projects.”
As companies like DHL continue to invest in infrastructural improvements across the African continent, businesses will become better able to minimize the challenges resulting from a lack of reliable power and other supply-side obstacles. Streamlining the supply chain in developing countries can also save massive amounts of money for American companies hoping to tap into new and emerging markets. If such investment continues, Africa might well meet its goal of double-digit economic growth within the next 10 years, and regional markets could become the forces for poverty reduction that economists like Jeffrey Sachs believe they can be.
– Zach VeShancey
Sources: Daily Independent, African Business Review, MG Africa, The World Bank
Photo: AfricanBrains/span>