Rideshare in Africa May Be the Future of Transportation

Many African countries are moving toward urbanization. Residents are discovering that mobility is being limited by the overcrowding of roads and the lack of public transit. However, rideshare in Africa has quickly gained footing, bringing with it a new set of possibilities for the economies of the cities they serve.

Benefits For the People

Despite many countries in Africa boasting some of the fastest growing economies in the world, it is still home to 11 of the 20 countries with the highest unemployment rates. With the rapid growth of rideshare, there is an equally rapid need for drivers, providing jobs to tens of thousands of Africans in many of the continent’s major cities. Uber, an American-based company that has been servicing Africa since 2013, providing hundreds of thousands of people with rides.

Rideshare in Africa also alleviates some of the biggest transportation hindrances people in dense cities face. While Africa has quickly seen a surge of residents owning and regularly using technology such as smartphones, many still do not own personal vehicles. For those who do, the underdeveloped infrastructures of many African cities, most of which were not designed to hold the numbers they now contain, make driving difficult and impractical. Companies like SafeBoda, which started in Uganda but hopes to service various regions throughout Africa, are deploying “boda-bodas” (motorcycle taxies) instead of cars, allowing citizens to move about the city centers more easily and work in places previously out of reach.

Benefits For the Economy

Currently, almost 40 percent of Africans live in cities, and this number is expected to grow to 50 percent by 2030 and 60 percent by 2050. With this increase in population, there is a corresponding increase in demand for transportation that does not require a personal vehicle. Rideshare companies have set out to fill this demand, bringing with them foreign and domestic investors who see rideshare as growing in popularity among the people, bringing economic potential.

While Uber remains the top rideshare service throughout Africa due to its worldwide brand recognition and its ability to keep rates low, many African-based companies have been able to use their local knowledge to compete with the larger foreign companies. Kenyan-based rideshare company Mondo Ride, for example, understands that overcrowding in the city streets means that passengers taking rideshare cars would only add to the problem. Therefore, they offer the option for boda-bodas or tuk-tuks (three-wheeled motorbikes) in many of the cities they serve. This allows them to compete with giants like Uber, thereby bringing more investment into their city as they grow in popularity.

The Future of Rideshare in Africa

As rideshare in Africa takes off, it faces two battles that will shape the futures of both rideshare itself and the cities in which they operate: market competition and government regulation.

While local rideshare companies have the advantage of regional familiarity over the giants like Uber, the larger companies’ ability to lower prices threatens to make smaller African-based companies obsolete. In many African cities, there have been protests by these smaller companies, claiming that Uber is creating a monopoly over the industry, mitigating the positive economic effects of healthy competition.

 As rideshare continues to grow in Africa, local governments are struggling to regulate the industry. Ghana became the first to create formal documentation detailing Uber’s presence in its cities, but other countries have not been able to keep up with the high rate of growth this industry has seen.

Regardless of any frustrations with market competition or difficulties in regulation, rideshare in Africa is quickly becoming the norm. It is a sign not only that Africa is embracing technology but also that it is excelling in doing so. As rideshare companies and local governments begin to understand their local markets, residents will be better able to enjoy the benefits and the economic opportunities will continue to grow.

– Rob Lee
Photo: The Africa Report

Cutting Hair Is Helping to End Poverty in Cambodia

According to the World Bank, although the poverty rate in Cambodia dropped from 47.8 percent in 2007 to 13.5 percent in 2014, 4.5 million people are dangerously close to falling back into poverty. Luckily, Hair Aid, an Australian humanitarian group, is working to help decrease and end poverty in Cambodia.

Hair Aid sends teams of volunteer hairdressers to places like Cambodia in order to teach many of people living in poverty how to cut hair, giving them an opportunity to learn a skill and reduce poverty in that area. Not only does Hair Aid recruit volunteer hairdressers and send them to locations all over the world but they have also been recruiting volunteer hairdressers to work with other local community organizations that help those in need.

Hair Aid’s Currently Changing Cambodia with Hair Cuts

In August 2018, Hair Aid partnered with Cambodian Children’s Fund (CCF) to teach a course in Steung Meanchey for five days. Hair Aid volunteers describe one function of this humanitarian group as a way to empower the Cambodian people, teaching them skills as a way to start micro businesses in order to support themselves and feed their families. It’s a way to end poverty in Cambodia by providing opportunities to help fight against this epidemic.

Hair Aid also provided essential tools for a popular CCF hairdresser, Granny Thim. This 73-year-old hairdresser used only a pair of kitchen scissors to cut hair within the community. Impressed by Thim, Hair Aid provided the correct and needed tools for her so she can continue her passion, work and skill for cutting hair.

A Hair Aid hairdresser from Brisbane, Bronwyn Ball, also volunteered in Cambodia to help fight against poverty, after seeing the impact hairdressing can have in creating new opportunities for many women and children who are in the sex trade industry.

According to the Australian Broadcast Corporation or ABC News, Ball states that it’s not just about teaching them how to cut hair for the purpose of creating a sustainable income, but it also “gives them hope.” Hair Aid not only gives these women and young girls a certificate and graduation ceremony but they also give them hope for the future.

She also praised Australian celebrity and hair salon owner Tabatha Coffey, star of her own American TV series called Tabatha Takes Over. Coffey has joined and supported Hair Aid, and since Coffey’s series is about helping reinvent failing hair salon businesses, she was able to put to use other skills than just hair cutting tips. She was able to provide business advice for the trainees, helping rid poverty in Cambodia by teaching the Cambodian people a trade and a way to sustain it.

Other Organizations Continue to Help Fight Poverty in Cambodia

While CCF and Hair Aid continue to offer support and training to the Cambodian people, other organizations are doing the same. Helping Hands, for example, aims to provide training opportunities for the people in the country,  building pride and dignity for many families and communities to end poverty in Cambodia.

Helping Hands works with village chiefs, community elders, parents and teachers with the purpose of changing priorities in the Cambodian people. This includes operating schools, providing breakfast, running agriculture training and educational programs and teaching mothers and caretakers about nutrition as well as household hygiene issues.

The Group for Research and Technology Exchanges (GRET) works to provide access to services and water systems, including access to piped water and sanitation, by creating programs to help improve conditions in the area. They also increase small-scale farmers’ income and protect the environment as well as indigenous communities, not only helping to find solutions to land conflicts but also improve crop yield and give access to agricultural water.

Hairdressing is an opportunity for the people of Cambodia to not only feed their families and themselves but also help end poverty in Cambodia. Hair Aid, CCF and other organizations are continuing to support and assist the Cambodian people, hoping to end the poverty epidemic and to improve conditions throughout the country.

– Charlene Frett
Photo: Flickr

Empowered and Efficient: Working Women in India

Women in India are most often confined to social norms that affect their participation in the workforce. Marriage, motherhood, vexed gender relations and patriarchy are the most prevalent norms confining women to the domestic sphere. Working women in India — especially working mothers — subsequently suffer from guilt and social stigma in this restrictive isolation.

Working Women in India

Working women in India are made to feel guilty for choosing work as a priority predominantly by patriarchal prejudice. Even though women make up nearly half of India’s population, their economic potential has been put on the backburner. If women were to join the workforce, India could hold the key to the future growth of Asia’s third-largest economy.

According to the 2015 McKinsey Global Institute Report, Indian women can add $2.9 trillion, or 60 percent, to annual GDP by as early as 2025 if they are allowed to participate in the workforce on an equal basis as men. Another study indicates that 48 percent of women drop out of the workforce before they reach middle management positions due to marriage or motherhood.

Per the 2017 World Bank report, female labor force participation in India fell from 34.8 percent to 27 percent. At present, women contribute a mere 17 percent to the country’s GDP, well below the global average of 37 percent.

Distribution of Value and Gender Equality

Women in power have proved time and again that they make good leaders and put up a tough fight for men in every field. However, only 27 percent of Indian women are currently in the labor force. According to a report, women perform 9.8 times the amount of unpaid work than men in India.

If unpaid work were to be measured similarly to paid work, it would contribute almost $300 billion to India’s economic output; “but the current measure of GDP does not assign a value to housework, therefore it becomes imperative to bring women to the workforce to accelerate economic growth,” say experts to a website called The Wire.

It seems certain that bringing women into the workforce helps in the growth of GDP. Women in the 95 countries analyzed in this research generate 37 percent of global GDP today, despite accounting for 50 percent of the global working-age population. This global average contribution to GDP masks large variations among regions.

Gender parity in India plays a huge role in bringing women back to work. India’s record on the gender parity is so bad that it is even below that of sub-Saharan Africa, one of the poorest regions of the globe. Working women in India have to break away from the social and gender barriers to create a new wave of empowerment.

Only if the gender parity reduces can India be a potential country for economic growth. A study suggests four areas that help reduce gender gaps: education level, financial and digital inclusion, legal production and unpaid care work.

Hurdles Faced When Women Return to Work

Social norms and a patriarchal society hinder women from workforce participation. Women face social taboos and guilt, and mothers are made to feel guilty if they prioritize a career. The society considers that a woman’s first priority is to take care of her child, husband and the house.

Due to such beliefs, women have less confidence and self-doubt to step up into the workforce. Break for their marriage or motherhood leads to less pay, and maternity leave hinders their ability to move up the corporate ladder.

Company and Government Initiatives

Several workforces have women-friendly offices which enable mothers to work while they have children. Several workforces have crèche facility within office premises and work-from-home policies.

India paves the way in maternity leave, though, with its Maternity Benefit Amendment Act which grants paid leave time to 26 weeks.

Organizations Helping Women Rejoin the Workforce

• JobsForHer: A job portal for women who are on break and want to rejoin the workforce. Top companies from tech to industries to media houses offer job opportunities specifically for women. This organization helps in mentoring women to return to work and provide skills and confidence training.
• SHEROES: An organization which provides corporate and flexible job opportunities for women. SHEROES has built a community of working women and works to help them come into contact with their own mentors and resources. The organization focuses on helping women seeking a career along with maintaining a work-life balance. The community gets access to career resources while SHEROES Mentors engage actively to help women attain career success on their own terms.
• HerSecondInnings: Helping women find a job is not enough; female professionals have to be empowered at all levels. Or at least that’s what HerSecondInnings believe. Over 2,000 women have been accessing this portal for job options as well as for coaching to help develop skills as well as better understand labor options. There are e-coaching sessions as well, which women can attend online. HerSecondInnings also helps organizations improve their diversity and inclusion programs. These improvements include diversity and inclusion assessment surveys and women leadership programs.

With steps and organizations like these, the future of female empowerment and getting women in the workforce in India is bright indeed. Time and effort will demonstrate how one of the largest nations in the world will work to enter into a new wave of gender equality.

– Preethi Ravi
Photo: Flickr

More High-Paying Jobs to Reduce Poverty in the Philippines

Poverty in the Philippines has declined from 26.6 percent in 2006 to 21.6 percent in 2015. A report released by the World Bank on May 30, 2018 titled ‘Making Growth Work for the Poor: A Poverty Assessment of the Philippines’ reveals the major factors that contributed to this decrease.

Factors for Poverty Decline in Philippines

• A rise in income and introduction of new job opportunities beyond the agricultural sector led to about two-third of decline in poverty.
• The Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, a cash transfer program of the Philippine government, enhanced the living conditions of 1.5 million people thereby reducing national poverty by 1.5 percent. The program works towards alleviating poverty by providing financial assistance to 77 percent of poor households.
• Houses that received foreign or domestic remittances experienced significant changes in their living conditions. Around 15 million households in the Philippines receive money through domestic or foreign employment sources; this helped reduce poverty by up to 4 percent.

However, though these positive developments helped reduce poverty in the Philippines, the rate of decline has been very slow compared to East Asian countries. Between 2006 and 2015, there has only been a 0.9 percent decline in poverty as per the international poverty line ($1.90/day), while the East Asian countries — including China, Indonesia and Vietnam — have shown 2-2.5 percent in poverty reduction.

Education, Employment and Disaster Relief

Lack of education is one of the main reasons for this slow decline. Since a majority of the poor lack an education, they lack access to better employment opportunities; this trend thus keeps the majority of citizens trapped in the poverty cycle.

Many poor households also have only one earning member in the family, who is generally employed as a laborer in the agricultural sector. Such households are often the poorest and remain extremely vulnerable to the frequent changes in production rates.

Another reason for poverty in the Philippines is the deterioration of the quality of employment over the years. A report reveals that although the Philippines has experienced economic growth, it has failed to maintain consistently high standards in various sectors. In addition, poor disaster management skills have often lead to failure of timely protection and evacuation of people.

The Need for Productive Employment

The U.N. clearly highlights the link between economic growth, high-paying jobs and poverty eradication. The group states that economic growth of the country as a whole on its own will not help in reducing poverty; rather, economic growth has to be combined with an increase in the number of “productive employment” made accessible to the poor.

As mentioned in the report, “The vicious cycle of inequitable investment in human capital and lack of well-paying job opportunities traps the poor in poverty generation after generation.” What is needed then is to transform the pattern of growth to make it more inclusive, and to provide better jobs to achieve higher and more stable incomes. The vice chairman of the labor committee, Senator Juan Edgaro Angara states that “jobs remain the key to poverty. If there is enough income, a permanent and decent job, the lives of Filipinos would be surely uplifted.”

The Public Employment Service Office of Philippines (PESO) held a job expo on June 2, 2018, at which around 103 people were hired on the spot. This gathering is considered to be one of the biggest job fairs in Visayas, Philippines and this year it presented people with around 33,000 positions. Sen. Juan Angara commended the expo and said that every province, city and municipality in the Philippines has its own PESO — this prevalence should ensure that every Filipino gets a job to help them rise out of poverty.

Just days after this job expo, another job fair was organized at Rizal Park, Manila on June 12, 2018, to mark the 102nd anniversary of Philippine Independence. According to the Department of Labor and Employment, around 30,000 jobs were offered which included 45 local, 25 overseas and eight government agency positions. Generally, though, it was the transportation and domestic construction sectors that offered a majority of the vacant positions.

New Initiatives to Alleviate Poverty in the Philippines

The Philippines has around 22 million people — or around one-fifth of its population — still living below the poverty line. The launch of AmBisyon 2040 by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) is a long-term commitment to uplift the underprivileged sections of the society.

Functioning parallel to such an effort is also the Philippines Development Plan 2017-2022. Both these initiatives have set out ambitious goals to eradicate poverty in the Philippines by transforming the country into a prosperous middle-class society where “people will live long and healthy lives, be smart and innovative and will live in a high-trust society.”

To make this a reality, the government has taken up the task of reducing poverty by one percent every year to see a reduction of 13-15 percent by 2022. In addition to these two initiatives, the poverty assessment stresses the following to catalyze the rate of poverty decline:

• Focusing on creating a greater number of high-paying jobs
• Improving the business environment to attract more investment
• Making means to improve productivity in all sectors, mainly agriculture
• Ensuring skill development to make the Filipino population highly capable for the 21^st century economy
• Improving health and nutrition
• Placing special emphasis on initiatives to reduce poverty in Mindanao
• Making better provisions to manage disasters and protect the vulnerable sections of the society

Thus, with new initiatives and a greater focus on creating more well-paying jobs, the government hopes to reduce poverty in the Philippines and bring about a permanent change in the lives of the Filipino people.

– Shruthi Nair
Photo: Flickr

Trades of Hope Addresses Haiti’s Orphan Crisis Sustainably

Haiti currently ranks as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. With a population of 10 million, almost 60 percent of Haitians live under the national poverty line, which acts as a huge contributor to Haiti’s orphan crisis.

Conditions on Haiti

The country’s location on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean has also served as a large contributor to the nation’s extreme poverty. Hurricanes regularly blaze through this portion of the Atlantic Ocean, and the subsequent hurricanes that hit Haiti in August and September 2008, Gustav and Ike, killed nearly 800 Haitians and destroyed crops, making Haiti dependent on international relief efforts.

Only a year and a half later, another natural disaster struck the country. The January 2010 earthquake destroyed more infrastructure, ravaging the capital city, Port-au-Prince, and its surroundings, further harming Haiti’s functionality and increasing foreign aid dependence.

Hurricane Matthew struck Haiti in October 2016. This time the south was particularly ravaged, as the natural disaster damaged homes, infrastructure, more crops and livestock.

Orphans and Natural Disaster

The devastating consequences of natural disasters on the country’s resources and economy led to Haiti’s orphan crisis — currently, about 500,000 children are considered orphans. Interestingly, the Haitian government estimates that about 80 percent of these children have at least one living parent.

This confusing discrepancy seems directly linked to the series of natural disasters. For instance, the 2010 earthquake left more than two million Haitians — a fifth of the country’s population — homeless and caused many Haitian parents to believe their children would be better off in orphanages that would at least provide shelter.

Orphanages appear to have the resources to feed, educate and care for children whose parents struggle to combat the effects of natural disasters. This is an idealized view exacerbated by many orphanages who send employees into the community to encourage parents to send their children into the “shelters” for care.

Orphanages perform this reconnaissance as many shelters are not regulated and do not actually adopt children and instead exploit them as laborers. About 300,000 children work as servants in private residences in Haiti, and according to UNICEF, many children are also sold into the sex trade.

The Dominican Republic, which shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti, has become a major market for Haitian child trafficking, with an estimated 2,000 children sold there each year. This abusiveness and corruption by some orphanages have created Haiti’s orphan crisis.

Combatting Corruption

Trades of Hope, an ethical jewelry company, seeks to treat Haiti’s orphan crisis at its root of poverty, instead of treating the symptoms. Co-founder Gretchen Huijskens already had a nonprofit in Haiti, with an orphanage, school and medical clinic, but while providing safe places for the orphans generated by natural disasters was important to her, Huijskens saw a need to help children by keeping them with family members. Such a goal requires parents being able to afford their children.

At the same time, co-founder Holly Wehde realized the effectiveness of the home-party method for sales, and Trades of Hope was founded in June 2010. These two influential individuals believe sustainable business provides a long-term solution to poverty. Therefore, Trades of Hope provides a platform for local artisans to sell their products.

Trades of Hope finds these artisans through nonprofits and co-ops in Haiti, that they verify through English speaking Americans in Haiti and with a Fair Trade Principles Agreement. Through these means, Trades of Hope helps artisans earn $15 a day, when the minimum wage in Haiti is about $5 a day. By their estimates, this money can provide adequate resources for two and a half children, enabling families to keep their children instead of fueling Haiti’s orphan crisis.

Fostering Global Involvement

The founders invite American women to partner in creating this sustainable business, through selling products as Compassionate Entrepreneurs and buying their goods through home parties and their website. Trades of Hope also eases the way for American women to make a difference in Haiti.

While assisting in alleviating the orphan crisis by adopting a child costs around $25,000, buying jewelry and other products from Haiti provides a cheaper alternative. One of the more expensive products is still only $80, and consumers receive a chocolate goat leather and cream canvas crossbody bag, called the Chandler Bag.

Sustainable Solutions

Even less expensive and more sustainable options exist such as the Revive Necklace, a long silver pendant with pink tassels priced at $33. The steel for the pendant comes from recycled steel oil drums, a source that allows more money to go directly to the artisans instead of materials.

This model of selling beautiful products to American consumers who want to support local artisans and their children has proved extremely lucrative and effective. Trades of Hope claims that 1,183 Haitians have been positively impacted.

The company has expanded to 17 countries since 2010 and has 9,440 full-time employees. This substantial group fosters the environment and provides the solutions to combat Haitian poverty at the root, and thereby reduce corruption and struggle as in Haiti’s orphan crisis.

– Charlotte Preston
Photo: Flickr