The Marketplace Magazine January/February 2023

Where Christian faith gets down to business

A new mindset for Africa

Regional business leader sees one million entrepreneurs selling African food internationally

MEDA to head $200 million initiative to create jobs in sub-Saharan Africa Food security in a volatile world

Elevating women in manufacturing matters

Everence head reflects on pandemic experience

Investment funds project amplifies MEDA’s impact, re-affirms its earliest mission

Heading up a $200 million economic development initiative in sub-Saharan Africa (see story, page 7) is the largest, most complex project MEDA has ever undertaken.

It will likely also be the most significant in enabling lasting change and job creation.

And it mirrors the vision of the people who gathered to found what became MEDA 70 years ago this December.

MEDA’s inception is well described in J. Winfield Fretz’s book The MEDA experiment (available at https://www.meda.org/document/ the-meda-experiment).

A group of businessmen visited dairy farmers in Paraguay and saw their need for investment capital. They risked $50,000 to help South American farmers improve their lives.

The money they risked equals about $558,000 in today’s dollars. It was repaid and re-used to assist many others in the following decades.

The same pattern will likely recur with the MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund. There is considerable risk involved, and it is an experiment.

As with many things MEDA has done over its history, backers hope success will lead to others copying the concept. And building upon efforts to finance the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Business from the heart MEDA’s 2022 annual convention heard one of the most powerful testimonies on its first evening.

Tanzanian entrepreneur Hadija

Jabiri (see page 6) set aside her prepared notes and spoke from the heart.

Her audience was captivated by what followed.

For Jabiri, entrepreneurship means creating employment opportunities and elevating people from extreme poverty. Her company, GBRI Business Solutions, has 42 full-time and 105 part-time employees.

Jabiri has seen the positive impact employment has had on the lives of her female workers. While many were once struggling with violence in their homes, “now most of those challenges are not there,” she said.

“I have seen how working with this company, which I started seven years ago, has really supported them.”

Greening to cut poverty Addressing climate change can also help to reduce extreme poverty in the Global South.

So says Pennsylvania entrepreneur Brent Alderfer. Action on both problems is urgent and compelling, he said in a seminar at MEDA’s annual convention.

Climate change will increase the water stress felt by vulnerable agricultural systems in the Global South, he said. Development in the ag sector is two to four times more effective at raising incomes than any other sector. So, supporting that sector is the best way to lift people out of poverty.

Solar energy systems are costeffective ways of lessening the water stress brought on by climate change, he said. Solar-powered boreholes supply water to market gardens on a small scale.

In Madagascar, a solar-powered water desalination (removal of salt from seawater) plant has a largerscale impact.

Alderfer has developed commercial-scale wind and solar power projects. He also operates a 100-acre farm that produces organic vegetables, eggs, and beef cattle.

Regenerative agriculture can reduce greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change and food insecurity, Alderfer said. He said regen agriculture could create a $70 billion opportunity for the African farm sector by increasing yields.

Large US farms are already adopting regenerative agriculture, he noted.

Major food processors pay 10,000-acre farms in the Midwest to sow cover crops and take other measures to prevent soil erosion.

Apologies to J.B. Miller

J.B. Miller’s byline was inadvertently omitted from his profile of Eunice Culp in the November issue. The Marketplace magazine regrets the error. .

Brent Alderfer

Carissa Rempel explains how Manitoba’s Vidir is leading the way

Manitoba

firm addresses labor shortage by making manufacturing more female-friendly.

Business as ministry

Entrepreneurs can help people grow closer to God by how they run their firms

Christian entrepreneurs should consider their work to be ministry, JoAnne Flett says.

Businesspeople have the privilege and responsibility of embodying godly attributes of justice, kindness and humility to everyone they meet, she explained in a speech at MEDA’s annual convention.

Ministry is best defined as “anything that I do that draws people into a relationship with God,” said Flett, the executive director of Seattle Pacific University’s Centre for Faithful Business.

She asked people to consider themselves to be priests in the marketplace, citing the New Testament book of 1 Peter, chapter 2 verse 9: “But you are the ones chosen by God, chosen for the high calling of priestly work.”

Priests are chosen to be holy people, chosen to be God’s special possession and to declare God’s praises.

Christian entrepreneurs are priests in the marketplace because they’ve chosen the high calling of mediating God’s presence, she said. “They are his special possession.”

“Friends, there is no secularsacred divide as we go out into the world, because of who we are,” she said.

Flett has spent most of her professional life trying to close the secular-sacred gap.

“When you walk into certain boardrooms, there’s a suspicion about this idea that you’re a Christian… And when you walk into the church, there are suspicions about who you are, because you’re involved in the enterprise of business.”

“There is no sacred-secular divide, and yet we are still trying to live beyond that.”

MEDA supporters, on the other hand, know that business is a high and holy calling, she said, celebrating the fact that MEDA “has known this for many, many decades.”

“The work you do in business represents who God is in the world, and you are taking that ministry up, you are living into that place, you are building relationships.”

During her years as a seminary student and office worker, Flett thought a lot about who is doing ministry and what that means.

She came to realize the importance of modelling God’s love in the workplace. That led her to believe that any interaction with others in her workplace that drew them closer to God was an act of ministry.

God’s presence is relational, so Christians in the marketplace can mediate God’s presence, she said.

Business is also inherently relational. “The co-worker who joins you, who supports you, who prays for you, who takes your hand when you’re having a bad day, who helps you, and for whom you help, for whom you pray, that’s a really powerful testimony about how relational business is, and how relational Christian business ought to be.

A recent study suggested that people who have a friend where they work are much less likely to quit their jobs, she said. “Think about that.”

Flett is intrigued by the Hebrew concept of Shalom. Shalom is a state of flourishing in all dimensions of one’s existence. That includes one’s relationship with God, fellow

PhotOlé

JoAnn Flett studies the concept of Shalom.

humans, nature and oneself.

“We as priests in the marketplace, are to work for Shalom,” she said. “We are to work in the economic system, in the social system, in the political system — Shalom looks like a structural change for the new thing that God is doing in the world. He is at work in our world to transform our world, and he is inviting us to step there.”

There is not one square inch in our human domain over which the sovereign Lord Christ does not cry “mine, and that includes the medium of business,” she said.

Priests in the marketplace are to embody justice, kindness and humility, she said, quoting from the Old Testament book of Micah chapter 6, verse 8.

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with your God.”

Priests in the marketplace embody these traits to their employees, their co-workers, their suppliers, their customers, and everyone they interact with, she said. “This is the high calling of God.”

A friend who teaches in Europe told her that to be humble means to live in truth. “Humility isn’t just

Worth pondering

taking the posture of the servant, it is being the servant, and living into that truth of service to others.”

Amy Sherman, a colleague at the centre where Flett works, has coined the term “businesstry,” bringing business and ministry together.

That means businesspeople and businesses mediate the presence of God. Business also can mediate the presence of God for Shalom in society, Flett said.

That requires orienting a business towards God, promoting rightness of relations with God, as well as self, others and creation, she said.

A 2013 study by Michael Porter underlines the importance of people of faith in business leading efforts for justice, she said. At the time, governments had revenues of $3.1 trillion, non-profits had revenue of $1.2 trillion. Both were dwarfed by the $20.1 trillion of

corporate revenues.

“When we are thinking about talking about businesstry, we are thinking about going into the sector that has the most amount of revenue and orienting it towards good.”

B corporations — a private certification of for-profit companies of their social and environmental performance — are using business as a force for good, she said. When the founders of that movement said good, they introduced a moral category.

“They are morally introducing concepts that we can take up and use.” .

Volume 53, Issue 1 January February 2023

The Marketplace (ISSN 0199-7130) is published bi-monthly by Mennonite Economic Development Associates at 532 North Oliver Road, Newton, KS 67114. Periodicals postage paid at Newton, KS 67114. Lithographed in U.S.A. Copyright 2021 by MEDA.

Editor: Mike Strathdee Design: Ray Dirks

“Instead of using money to help people, many of us have chosen to use people to make money, without consideration for what God has to say about this in his written word, the Bible.” — Obie McKenzie, former managing director, BlackRock Financial.

“If you are truly a Faith-Driven Investor and you’re going to step out in faith, seeking first the Kingdom of God with all that he’s entrusted to you, you’d better get ready, because you’re in for a fight.” — Casey Crawford

Postmaster: Send address changes to The Marketplace 33 N Market St., Suite 400, Lancaster, PA 17603-3805

Change of address should be sent to Mennonite Economic Development Associates, 33 N Market St., Suite 400, Lancaster, PA 17603-3805.

To e-mail an address change, subscription request or anything else relating to delivery of the magazine, please contact subscription@meda.org

For story ideas, comments or other editorial matters, email mstrathdee@meda.org or call (800) 665-7026, ext. 705

Subscriptions: $35/year; $55/two years. Published by Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA). MEDA’s economic development work in the Global South creates business solutions to poverty. MEDA also facilitates the connection of faith and work through discussions, publications and conventions for participants.

For more information about MEDA call 1-800-665-7026. Web site www.meda.org

Want to see back issues or reread older articles? Visit https://www.meda.org/download-issues/

The Marketplace is printed on Rolland Enviro® Satin and is made with 100% post-consumer sustainable fiber content, FSC® Certified to help meet client sustainability requirements, Acid Free, Elemental Chlorine Free

Cover photo of Ndidi Nwuneli by PhotoOlé

“We as priests in the marketplace, are to work for Shalom…” — JoAnn Flett

Pointing the way

Tanzanian entrepreneur shows how agriculture can be a viable career for young people

Hadija Jabiri never wanted a career in agriculture.

“I actually grew up seeing farmers around me struggling with markets for their produce, using hand hoes, not having access to finance, and I really never want to be one of them,” she told MEDA’s annual convention.

Encouragement from a friend and a visit from a leading politician has taken the Tanzanian entrepreneur on a seven-year business journey. That journey is improving the lives of many of her fellow citizens.

Jabiri is the founder and managing director of GBRI Business Solutions. The company exports fruits and vegetables to several European nations and India.

Many young people in subSaharan Africa are not interested in agriculture. They have seen smallscale farmers struggling to scratch out a bare living, she said.

After she graduated from university, “I met a person, and he actually convinced me that I could make money out of farming.”

She had little savings and no opportunity to get financing. But she decided to move to southern Tanzania and start with what she had. She rented a two-acre farm and started growing vegetables, supplying the local market.

Her interest in helping others attracted attention. A turning point came when Tanzania’s vice

president, Samia Suluhu Hassan (now the country’s president) heard about the young woman. “She decided to visit me.”

“When she came, she could see how the little business that I was running was supporting the community around me. I had people working for me, but I really had a big vision.”

One of MEDA’s employees saw a video of the visit on TV. “They gave me a call, they said — we have seen the vice-president visiting you, and we really want to support you because you are also supporting people around you.”

Jabiri thought the call was a scam. Then MEDA’s Tanzanian country director visited and asked how MEDA could be of assistance.

She replied that if she could get funding, she knew she could support small-scale farmers around her. After a due diligence process, MEDA began working with Jabiri’s firm.

“I’m really indebted to all the

people who have been funding this great organization, which made my dream come true.”

Donor contributions to MEDA have had a greater effect than just growing her business, she said. Jabiri is pointed to by the Tanzanian government to demonstrate that agriculture is a viable career path for young people.

“MEDA trust to me has brought the trust of many other organizations to what I am doing.”

Her business has grown to a medium-sized firm, with 42 employees. GBRI also works with 5,000 small-scale farmers. It helps the farmers grow vegetables and fruits which it then purchases.

Jabiri has had to navigate significant setbacks along the way. During the pandemic, she woke up one morning to the news that international borders had been closed. She could no longer export vegetables.

She went to her packing house, looked at 100 women who were packing vegetables there, and said: “It was not because of me I started this business — God had a great plan for me, and maybe God was using me for all those people.”

“When I had all the reasons to stop, I decided to persist.”

Instead of closing the business, she changed the business model and looked at other markets.

She decided to focus on the domestic market, distributing bananas to 800 women vendors. .

Krista O’Brien photo

Hadija Jabiri uses her business to help others.

Investing to boost decent jobs for women and youth

$200 million MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund aims to transform the sub-Saharan business landscape

A $200 million US project funded by MasterCard Foundation will create 15,000 decent jobs in subSaharan Africa over the next five years.

The MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund is a finance tool to encourage gender-lens investment vehicles in Africa. This will support women and youth-led small and medium-sized businesses.

MEDA will lead a consortium of partners that will oversee this first-of-its-kind initiative.

The Fund is founded on the principles of Gender Lens Investing and is the largest project of its kind on the African continent.

Gender lens investing (GLI) assesses companies on how they deal with gender balance.

With GLI, investors don’t just look at a company’s financial performance. They evaluate how a company strikes a balance between female and male employees.

This groundbreaking initiative is aligned with MasterCard Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy (see sidebar). That strategy complements MEDA’s core strategic goal of creating decent work for 500,000 people by 2030.

“We need to do everything it takes now to build a continent with shared prosperity and sustainable, inclusive growth,” said MEDA President and CEO Dr.

Dorothy Nyambi.

The fund of funds will strengthen and empower a new crop of investment vehicles. She said that will drive job creation for women and youth through investments in small and mediumsized businesses.

“More than 75 percent of ventures funded will be led by women creating jobs.”

An investment vehicle selected for this project could include a group setting up debt or venture capital structures to invest in agri-businesses. It would not be

banks, hedge funds, or traditional investment managers.

This initiative is a gamechanging venture for the continent, said Huges Vincent-Genod. He is the investment director for Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P). I&P is an investment group that finances and supports African entrepreneurs.

I&P will work with MEDA to identify the investment vehicles that will lend to target businesses.

The fund of funds focuses on the long-term growth of African impact investing. The emergence

MasterCard Foundation has ambitious goals for African job creation

The MasterCard Foundation is among the top five largest private charitable foundations in the world. It has assets of more than $40 billion.

The foundation was set up in 2006 by MasterCard, a multinational financial services corporation. MasterCard funded the foundation after becoming a public company.

MasterCard Foundation is a separate, independent entity with its own board of directors and management.

The Foundation’s charitable work promotes financial inclusion for disadvantaged persons and communities. It focuses on Africa and Indigenous communities in Canada.

Young Africa Works is the Foundation’s 10-year strategy to enable 30 million young people to access dignified

and fulfilling work by 2030. Young women make up 70 percent of this target.

That plan is consistent with MEDA’s efforts to create decent work for 500,000 people by 2030.

But the MasterCard Foundation’s Young Africa Works strategy takes a broader, three-pronged approach. This includes:

1. Improving the quality of education and vocational training so young people are equipped with skills employers need.

2. Leveraging technology to connect employers and job seekers; and

3. Enabling entrepreneurs and small businesses to expand through access to financial services, mentoring, and leadership development skills.

The MasterCard Foundation operates in 39 countries outside of Canada. .

of African investment teams will power this growth.

It will invest $150m in investment vehicles that fund small and medium-sized enterprises in sub-Saharan Africa.

Another $50 million will fund critical support services. These include business development training to de-risk portfolio companies, support for gender lens investing, results measurement, and other costs.

Business development services can remove barriers preventing women-led firms from growing and creating jobs.

Many small businesses and women-led enterprises struggle

to get financing, says MEDA staffer Samuel Akyianu. He heads the MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund project based in Accra, Ghana.

He said that these businesses often lack a clear marketing plan, accounting for revenues, and making a profit. They also may be inefficient or uncompetitive in the goods and services they intend to sell.

Akyianu

They frequently are not compliant with legal and other relevant regulatory issues.

Business development services to address these issues can take several forms. They may include oneto-one mentorship. This could focus on operational expertise and governance, including financial management. They might include training on developing business plans or loan applications to increase investment readiness.

First investment partner makes history on several fronts

Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes is a pioneer.

The former investment banker founded and heads Aruwa Capital Management, the first investment vehicle partner of the MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund.

She is also the first woman to raise an institutional fund investment of more than $10 million in Nigeria. Aruwa recently announced the closing of a fund valued at more than $20 million.

“Aruwa has come a long way since our launch in October 2019, a little over three years ago,” Rhodes said in a LinkedIn post. “I was 29 years old, heavily pregnant with my son, but with a clear vision and idea of how I was going to change the funding landscape in Nigeria.”

Aruwa is an early-stage growth equity fund. It invests in women-focused small and growing businesses in Nigeria and Ghana.

Almost a third of Aruwa’s capital has been raised from local private and institutional investors. “These investors have a first-hand understanding of the terrain and opportunity and can provide valuable access to their networks and relationships for our portfolio companies,” she said.

Rhodes is quick to credit her team for the company’s achievements.

The Marketplace January February 2023

“It’s been three years of setbacks, disappointments, re-strategizing, praying, fasting, late nights, multiple follow-ups, emails, and zoom calls,” she said. “Without them and my faith in God, I wouldn’t have been able to push through and tough it out.”

“Thank you, Lord, for your faithfulness. Thank you, Lord, for your favor that opened doors I never knew existed… All Glory be to Almighty God!” .

The need for this sort of approach is enormous. The World Bank puts the finance gap facing women-led firms in the Global South at $5 trillion.

The consortium of partners makes this investment fund unique. (See details about partners in page 9 story.) The fund will focus its investments on Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. MEDA has offices and programs in each of these countries.

Opportunities in nearby countries or linked to programs in the target nations will also be considered, Akyianu said. “We’ve always known that we will spill out beyond those seven countries.”

The fund has built up a pipeline of 180 diverse investment vehicles. That list was then narrowed to 50 promising firms and a short list of 22.

So far, the Fund-of-Funds has recruited two investment vehicles supporting entrepreneurial growth. Akyianu hopes to release details about a second investment vehicle soon.

Over time, funding will flow to about 20 investment vehicles and 200 small and medium-sized

Samuel

Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes

businesses, said MEDA International board chair Greg Gaeddert.

Investments take a variety of forms. They could be a combination of equity, quasiequity (a form of debt that includes flexible repayment terms), and debt financing, depending on the situation.

This will be patient capital, deployed for between 10 and 15 years in some cases, Akyianu said.

Ninety percent of the investment pool will be deployed with youth-led businesses. At least 70 percent of these are to be women-led firms.

The MasterCard Foundation

Africa Growth Fund supports eight of the United Nations’ sustainable development goals.

These goals flow from the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. All United Nations

Member states adopted the agenda in 2015. It provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future.

Susan Phillips sees the fund-offunds initiative as a positive step in international development. Phillips is a Carleton University professor who studies nonprofits. “The trend has been to take systems change much more seriously, which requires patient, long-term capital.”

She said achieving those goals requires long-term commitment and taking impact measurement seriously. .

Partners bring a wide range of skills to the Africa Growth Fund

Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P)

I&P is an impact investment group that finances and supports African entrepreneurs. I&P has funded more than 200 African startups and small and medium-sized enterprises. It now provides financing from $10,000 to $4.9 million and support from seed to growth stage.

Role in the Africa Growth Fund project: • I&P will identify the investment vehicles that will lend to small and medium-sized businesses.

Entrepreneurial Solutions Partners (ESP)

ESP is a pan-African firm that fosters entrepreneurial solutions for prosperity. It provides consulting services to governments, businesses, and development partners. It has worked with more than 1,000 entrepreneurs across seven African countries. Its

entrepreneurial support programs include business incubators and accelerators.

Role in the Africa Growth Fund project: • ESP will work on capacity building among various partners, including technical assistance. It will help develop the skills of small and medium-sized operations. This will ensure that the firms that receive investments improve their operations and value and that they will reach job creation targets.

Criterion Institute

Criterion is a Connecticut-based activist think tank specializing in gender lens investing.

Role in the Africa Growth Fund project: • Criterion Institute will work with ESP, I&P, and MEDA. It will ensure the project investments are achieving their gender diversity, equity, and inclusion goals

and related targets.

Genesis Analytics

Genesis Analytics is a global African advisory firm that has worked in 92 countries.

Role in the Africa Growth Fund project: • Genesis will measure and report on the project’s impact in terms of jobs. It will also make suggestions on what the consortium can and should do better in order to help make the project a model that can be repeated.

Africa Communications Media Group

ACG is a South Africa-based pan-African agency handling communication for global clients in the African context

Role in the Africa Growth Fund Project: ACG is the project's communications and public engagement partner. .

“We need to do everything it takes now to build a continent with shared prosperity and sustainable, inclusive growth.” — MEDA president and CEO Dr. Dorothy Nyambi (not pictured here)

A new corporate structure shows the evolution of MEDA’s mission of creating business solutions to poverty, Bert Friesen says.

“It’s an evolution of innovation and keeping the core message,” says Friesen, a former MEDA board chair who now heads its Mauritius Foundation council. “We’re still evolving and growing from the core message. It’s not that we’re changing.”

MEDA set up a subsidiary in Mauritius for several reasons. Mauritius’s legal, banking, and government systems mirror those of the African countries where the MasterCard Africa Growth Fund will invest, he said. Having a Mauritian subsidiary simplifies business interactions and related financial transactions.

Mauritius is an island nation about 500 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean.

The MEDA Mauritius Foundation (see graphic, left) includes four MEDA board members, MEDA CFO/CIO Wendy Clayson, and two Mauritian business experts.

One of the Mauritian representatives, Thierry Koenig, heads ENSafrica, the country’s oldest and largest law firm. The other, Caroline Leclézio, is CEO of Asterism Limited (previously ENSafrica Fiduciary).

The Foundation council plays an important role in funding applicants to the MasterCard Foundation Africa Growth Fund. An investment committee receives funding applications and does extensive due diligence.

After that research is done, applications are forwarded to the foundation council for final review and sign-off. “This is the funding approval vehicle on behalf of MEDA,” he said. “It very strongly represents MEDA’s review and approval of these program funds.”

Progress to date on the Africa Growth Fund shows that MEDA has been able to attract some of the world’s most qualified people, not only in Mauritius but in sub-Saharan Africa, he said.

Capital markets provide core services in the Global North. Countries in the Global South need those core services as well, he said.

Friesen is thrilled that MEDA is playing a part in helping to build those services.

“That’s one of the great things about MEDA; they’ve always been able to adapt and grow.” .

Bert Friesen

New Mauritius Foundation represents evolution, is part of MEDA’s growth

MEDA to focus exclusively on agri-food as it scales for job creation

MEDA is entering a period of proving that its work can have a broad impact, the organization’s senior vice president of programs says.

“MEDA’s an organization that’s on the move,” Derek Cameron said in a year-in-review report to supporters.

Landing a $200 million fund to create new jobs in sub-Saharan Africa was a major highlight of the past year, Cameron said.

MEDA also signed $40 million in new contracts for projects in Tanzania, Kenya, Guatemala & Nicaragua, and Ghana.

Derek Cameron

During its fiscal 2022 year, which ended June 30, MEDA supported more than 700,000 clients.

It helped to create 43,000 decent work opportunities. Nine thousand of these were salaried jobs, and 34,000 were selfemployed.

Individual supporters provided $9.2 million in donations in support of MEDA’s efforts.

In the past, 80 percent of MEDA’s efforts were related to agriculture. Going forward the organization will focus exclusively on agri-food market systems, said Dr. Dorothy Nyambi, MEDA’s president and CEO.

“It is so important that all our supporters understand the reasons that we want to work in a different way and why it will achieve results,” she said.

Focus is a key trait of entrepreneurs, said Lindsay Wallace, MEDA’s senior vice president of strategy and impact. That principle will guide

MEDA’s efforts to create or sustain 500,000 decent work opportunities by 2030, she said. “The best way out of poverty is through decent work.”

“We have a robust system for putting the strategy into effect.”

Even if institutional funders of MEDA’s projects do not ask for job numbers, they will still be tracked. Reaching new supporters will be an important thrust of MEDA’s efforts in coming years, said chief marketing and development officer Michael White. Efforts are underway to broaden MEDA’s champions demographically, geographically, and ethnically, both in North America and the Global South.

“We need to be more inclusive while staying anchored to our values,” he said. .

MEDA welcomes new board members

MEDA welcomed five new members to its international board at its annual convention.

They are:

• Janet Andres of Delta, British Columbia. Janet and her husband, Ted, established Andres Homes in 1987. Since that time, she has provided design services to Andres Homes development projects and clients. Recently retired from working directly with clients, she is still engaged in business development projects. Janet currently runs an active Airbnb business engaging with international and local guests.

• Patricia Erb of Toronto, Ontario. Erb is a partner at Erb & Associates, which she launched in 2018 following a career of over 40 years working in international development. The work culminated in her

leadership of Save the Children Canada as president and CEO.

• Andrea Kuhl of Winkler, Manitoba. Kuhl is the director of philanthropy at Southern Manitoba Potato Co. Ltd, a family farm business located in southern Manitoba. She also teaches early years music at La Salle School, specializing in musical theatre, choir, and Orff instruction.

• Chad Horning of Goshen, Indiana. Horning is the SVP/CIO of Indiana-based Everence Financial. He is also president of Praxis Mutual Funds and leads Everence’s health insurance division.

• Brent Gingerich of Waterloo, Ontario. Gingerich is chairman and CEO of the peopleCare Group, which operates senior living communities in southwestern Ontario .

Lindsay Wallace

A new mindset on Africa

Nigerian entrepreneur promotes the continent’s role in the global food system

When Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli thinks about Africa’s potential, she wants to see a mindset change, beginning in the supermarket.

“We have to recognize Africa’s place in the global food system,” the Nigerian entrepreneur said in a speech at MEDA’s annual convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Nwuneli has over 25 years of international development experience. She is a recognized author, public speaker, philanthropist, and consultant.

Nwuneli worked as a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in the US and South Africa.

She returned to Nigeria in 2000 to become executive director of a foundation that supports young entrepreneurs to start and grow their businesses. For the past 14 years, she has focused on transforming the African agriculture and nutrition landscape.

“God has given Africa a natural endowment in agriculture,” she said. “Most things that you throw on the ground grow.”

But she believes the contribution Africa has made to global diets, and its future potential, often goes unrecognized.

People are unaware that okra is derived from a Nigerian Igbo word. They don’t know that 70 percent of the world’s chocolate comes from Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, she said. “We’re more connected to Africa than we know.”

Understanding Louisianan gumbo’s Nigerian roots and coffee’s Ethiopian roots are important steps in shifting how the world views

Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli wants to raise the profile of African food.

Photo credits to PhotOlé

Africa. “My friend says that if you had a Coke or a coffee today, you have Africa to thank for it.”

She dreams that international products will end up on grocery shelves in Lancaster and across North America. She also wants to see products promoted as Nigerian, South African or Tanzanian rather than just being called African.

“We’ve seen how sushi in 20 years transformed the way the world views Japan. It can (also) happen in Africa.”

Nwuneli has curated an African food preparation event with philanthropist Bill Gates, and an African food festival at Harvard University to raise awareness.

She encouraged the audience to participate in her dream of getting more African food on global shelves.

Nwuneli has an ambitious vision of how this will come about: through the efforts of one million entrepreneurs. “It’s not about alleviating poverty — it’s about creating wealth.”

Life experience has taught her that altering the narrative about Africa is an important goal. “Changing the narrative of Africa changes how you view the people.”

Raised in Enugu, Nigeria, she moved to the US at age 16. She was constantly confronted with a single, outdated story about Africa.

Nwuneli was born eight years after the Biafran conflict of the late 1960s resulted in millions of deaths in Nigeria. But in the US, she still saw images of a needy child presented as the face of the continent.

The face of poverty was consistently shown to be a female farmer from Africa. “This is a stubborn image that has stayed in my mind.”

She doesn’t downplay the challenges facing a continent whose population will nearly double to 2.4 billion by 2050.

People need to understand that

we are facing a global food crisis, she said. Massive floods in Nigeria in October killed hundreds of people, displaced over 1.5 million, and led to crop failures.

War in Ukraine has worsened fertilizer shortages and increased food inflation.

For some of her Nigerian teammates, the daily diet is zeroone-zero: “skip breakfast, have lunch, skip dinner.”

African entrepreneurs face critical realities every day, she said. Climate change, high post-harvest losses, limited processing, a hostile regulatory environment, and gender inequality all pose barriers to success.

Female farmers produce 30 percent less than their male counterparts, as they lack access to fertilizer and other inputs.

Extreme weather connected

to climate change could set back progress by three decades, she said.

Furthermore, many people think African farmers are not entrepreneurs. “That mindset has to shift.”

Still, she sees signs of promise ahead. “What gives me hope as an entrepreneur in Africa is technology.”

Digital innovations can allow firms to leapfrog throughout the agricultural value chain, she said. Tools allow entrepreneurs to gather data in unprecedented ways.

Over the years she has come to recognize that financing is key for small-scale farmers to get ahead.

But she isn’t thinking primarily about charity. She recognized that private sector initiatives need to drive growth. Ensuring that models are cost-effective and that innovations are demand-driven, needs to happen when companies

are founded, she said.

“Microfinance wasn’t helping women entrepreneurs, because their business models were faulty.”

Providing money for ventures that were losing money was unsustainable, so Nwuneli had to shift her mindset.

Twenty years ago, she started a non-profit called LEAP Africa. The LEAP acronym stands for leadership, effectiveness, accountability, and professionalism.

This youth-led organization works to inspire, empower and equip dynamic, principled, and innovative African leaders. It now operates in eight African nations.

In 2010, she established Sahel Consulting Agriculture & Nutrition. Sahel is a management consulting firm committed to transforming Africa’s agriculture and nutrition landscape. It has worked with MEDA in Tanzania.

Nwuneli has considerable experience in the food processing business as well. She and her husband founded AACE Foods, which sources from over 10,000 farmers. It produces a range of spices and other packaged food products for local and international markets.

The company has 150 fulltime staff, 90 percent of whom are women. It also works with 2,000 distributors.

Another of her ventures, Africa Food Changemakers, supports entrepreneurs in 37 countries to start and grow resilient and sustainable agri-businesses. “Our vision is a million entrepreneurs transforming the continent and ensuring we feed ourselves and the world.”

Over the course of her entrepreneurial journey, she has learned a lot about the challenges of scaling social innovation. “Pilot programs are nice, but we need scale.”

Her mission is to help entrepreneurs scale their businesses and transform the landscape.

Getting there will require prioritizing and investing in local organizations, she said. Of $9 billion of US foundation funding in sub-Saharan Africa from 2011 to 2015, only 5.9 percent went to local organizations. “We need to build the capacity of local organizations and partner with them. This is critical.”

In 2018, local and national non-governmental organizations received only .4 percent of international humanitarian aid directly.

“We must shift funding to local organizations and avoid the temptation to crowd them out. Interventions can be dangerous to the local markets.”

More investment is crucial, but that funding must focus on medium and long-term needs, she said. “Food aid can be damaging for small businesses in Africa because it distorts the market.”

She told a story of looking for whole grain rice in a Senegalese market, and the only rice she could find was from the US. “Instead of working through local farmers, who already grow the rice, and ensuring that it can get to the most vulnerable, we are bringing in rice and displacing the farmers.”

Changing narratives about Africa is critically important, she said. “All of us must become mindset champions.”

She hopes that when people think about the region, they will

think of innovation driven by Africa’s vibrant entrepreneurs. She pointed to several MEDA clients who spoke at the convention as examples of this change.

“You’ve seen entrepreneurs who are creating jobs, who are creating wealth, who are fixing the ecosystem, who are driving change — but they need your support to scale. They’re not just going to scale in Africa, they are going to scale globally.”

“When you invest in entrepreneurs, you invest in nations.”

Disasters help to sift out the resilient, the resourceful, and the brave, she said.

Nwuneli speaks frankly of her Christian beliefs. She was introduced to the Christian faith by university students who came to her home. That message became “the driving force in my life.”

“I believe people of faith are special. I believe that God has called us for such a time like this. The inequities in our continent, Africa, and across the world, are only growing.”

She urged people to invest in keeping with the legacy they want to leave. A legacy of service and impact for future generations.

She quoted a young African speaking to a president. The youth said his generation is no longer asking God to grant them the serenity to accept the things that they cannot change. Instead, they are asking the Almighty to give them wisdom and courage to change the things they cannot accept.

“There are things we cannot accept and values that we share around poverty, around inequity,” she said. “We need the courage and wisdom to change them. And we can change them, in our lifetime.”

“I look forward to celebrating more successes with MEDA, as we transform our continent, and God gives us the courage to do so.” .

“Our vision is a million entrepreneurs transforming the continent and ensuring we feed ourselves and the world.”

— Ndidi Okonkwo Nwuneli

Hiring the best people for the job

Manitoba manufacturer makes changes to attract women to the plant floor

A Manitoba manufacturer has successfully tackled a labor shortage by paying greater attention to an overlooked talent pool — women.

Vidir vertical storage solutions plants are located outside of major urban centers. That means it has a smaller available workforce, Carissa Rempel said in a presentation at MEDA’s annual convention.

“Add to that the labor shortage

that we are experiencing globally and you have a significant challenge.”

Vidir, founded in 1977, began as a small machine shop on a rural farmyard. It has more than 250 employees at two locations in Manitoba and one in Lebanon, Pennsylvania.

Its automated material handling systems are used in over 45 countries.

These products are used in

the construction, retail, medical, warehouse, government, automotive, printing, and manufacturing sectors.

Vidir’s customers include many of the world’s largest firms — Walmart, Tesla, Amazon, Disney, Home Depot, Menards, and Vale. A Vidir system is even used in the White House in the United States.

The company was honored as one of Manitoba’s 30 top employers in 2022. Many reasons were given

Krista O’Brien

photo

Carissa Rempel handles talent acquisition and public relations for Vidir vertical storage solutions.

for the firm’s inclusion in the list. Vidir’s emphasis on diversity and women in manufacturing, its charitable giving, and its commitment to ongoing education and development were all highlighted.

Rempel, Vidir’s talent acquisition and public relations specialist, is a third-generation shareholder in the family-owned firm.

While women make up nearly half of the overall Canadian labor force, they are only 28 percent of the manufacturing workforce.

“A few years ago, we were only receiving a handful of applications for open positions, and almost none of those were female, except for administrative levels,” Rempel said.

Before 2021, only one in 10 of Vidir’s employees were female.

That realization led Vidir to make an intentional effort to make itself more attractive to women.

Vidir decided that showcasing women in manufacturing would increase the job applications they would get from female candidates.

Manufacturers must address barriers to attract more women

A significant number of blind spots and barriers prevent manufacturers from attracting more women to industry, Carissa Rempel says.

Work-related clothing is a factor, says Rempel, who handles talent acquisition for Manitoba-based Vidir.

Almost three-quarters of all personal protective equipment, including dust and hazard masks and safety boots, is designed for men. That means it is often ill-suited to women’s different faces or other body sizes and shapes.

“It’s not just about comfort,” she said. Ill-fitting PPE hampers women’s work and can sometimes itself be a safety hazard.”

Getting to work can be more of a barrier for women than it is for men, she said. Women are more likely to walk or take public transportation. In Philadelphia, 64 percent of public transport passengers are women.

“If you want your company to be most accessible to women, you need access to public transportation.”

Women, who do 75 percent of the world’s unpaid care work, have more complex daily travel patterns than men, she said.

Men often commute directly to and from their homes to their workplaces. Women often have complex “trip chains” that include making stops for errands, buying groceries, and drop-off or pickups of family members, she said.

Working women with children under the age of five increase their trip chain by 54 percent. A working man in the same position will increase his by only 19 percent.

Women with children also find it more difficult to accommodate overtime hours. There is a greater incidence of mental health issues among women due to the extra unpaid work that they do as primary caregivers.

Companies can help women by focusing less on hours worked and more on productivity and performance, Rempel said.

Something as simple as providing pregnancy parking spots closest to the building can make a company more attractive for women, she said. Google had never considered the issue until Sheryl Sandberg raised a concern.

Sandberg, who at the time was a vice president at the tech giant, became pregnant. She found it difficult to navigate large parking lots at the beginning and end of each workday.

Providing pregnancy parking spaces close to the building helped to make Google one of the most desired places to work, Rempel said.

Ensuring that parking lots are smoothly paved, properly cleared in inclement weather and well-lit are also important for women, she noted.

Washroom access is also an issue. Having equal numbers of male and female washrooms, with similar floor space, is a problem for women. Women need more trips to the washroom and spend more time in them, due to bladder and urinary tract infection issues.

“It’s actually a health issue not to have adequate and accessible floor space for women’s washrooms.” .

They launched a “See them, be them” series of videos featuring women at Vidir. You can see those videos at https://vidirsolutions. com/women-at-vidir

They also added a maternity leave top-up and $1,000 referral bonuses.

The efforts have had an immediate impact, as applications from women increased. In 2019, the company had only two females in production roles. By the end of 2021 that had grown to 15.

That year, all of its welding applicants were female.

“If you can show that you are welcoming of women, you are more likely to have women apply, and if they find that, when they begin to work for you, you genuinely value and take seriously their diverse perspective, you are also more likely to retain them,” she said.

Of 85 new employees hired by Vidir in 2022, 24 have been women. That reflects the national average of women in manufacturing. Its overall workforce is now 26 percent female.

Studies show that societal attitudes work against making certain careers seem welcoming for women.

When asked to think of a scientist, people default to men.

Even gender-neutral images are marked as male unless explicitly named as being female, she said. “As a human race, when we are speaking about a person and there is no gender assigned, we default to male.”

This bias even extends to the online world. Until 2016, the world of emojis — small digital images or icons used to express ideas and emotions — was mostly male. That year, creators began developing both male and female emojis.

Providing opportunities for women matters for many reasons, Rempel said. “You won’t know what you are missing in your

business until you have the perspectives of diversity.”

Diverse perspectives provide an increased workforce and new solutions to problems, she said. Daine Taimina, a female mathematician who liked to crochet, made a remarkable discovery at a geometry workshop at Cornell University.

Within two hours, her thoughts on modeling a hyperbolic plane by crocheting a model allowed her to solve a problem that had eluded mathematicians for over a century. She solved the problem within two hours. Her creations are now the standard model for explaining hyperbolic planes, which are the opposite of spheres.

These planes exist in nature in ruffled lettuce leaves, coral, sea slugs, and most importantly, cancer

Carissa Rempel, Vidir

have to an understanding of the shape of the universe,” Rempel said.

“What this story illustrates is that when we close the gender gap, it can impact literally every sphere of work.”

In relation to MEDA’s work, elevating women is “better for their families and therefore better for the future,” she said.

Studies show that money controlled by women is more likely to be spent on children than money that men control.

cells. They form the foundation of the theory of relativity and are considered “the closest thing we

Supporting women in the workforce could also help a company’s ability to compete, she said. “Policies such as paid family and medical leave could help companies get a start on a workforce that’s more welcoming to mothers and is more internationally competitive.” .

Pitch contest awards $10,000 to two innovative Tanzanian firms

Two Tanzanian agribusinesses have won $10,000 in the 2022 MEDA pitch competition.

Diana Orembe from NovFeed & Jolenta Joseph from Sanavita tied for first place in the annual competition. The event was held at MEDA’s convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania on November 5.

The competition is held to encourage and foster innovation in the spirit of MEDA’s mission. It is funded by MEDA supporters, the Ron & Barb Schlegel family.

NovFeed produces a biotech solution that uses bacteria to create a protein-rich fish feed from organic waste.

Tanzanian fish farmers currently spend

70% of their production costs on pricey feeds like soy and fishmeal.

The Novfeed process delivers feed at a lower cost that is affordable for farmers. Its product reduces waste and cuts carbon dioxide emissions.

NovFeed will use its prize money to buy equipment and inputs and equip a pilot facility to meet current and projected demand for its product.

Sanavita addresses malnutrition through fortified staple products. It uses biofortified sweet potatoes and maize. These foods help children and women receive needed amounts of vitamin A, zinc, and iron.

Eating these crops can reduce vitamin A deficiency and anemia.

Sanavita will use its prize money on several educational and capacity-building projects:

• Training 30 smallscale farmers on good (cont. on page 18)

“If you can show that you are welcoming of women, you are more likely to have women apply, and if they find that, when they begin to work for you, you genuinely value and take seriously their diverse perspective, you are also more likely to retain them.”

Diana Orembe's firm develops fish feed from organic waste.

Doubling down on generosity and innovative ways to serve

Everence stays true to faith values, grows during pandemic

Everence enjoyed “remarkable growth” during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, the company’s CEO says.

Everence had a plan for a pandemic emergency to pull off the shelf, Ken Hochstetler said.

Fortunately for the Indianabased financial institution, a consultant had led it through a disaster recovery exercise in 2019.

agricultural practices of biofortified crops.

• Educating food vendors on how to integrate biofortified products in their menus.

• Creating awareness of the health benefits of biofortified crops through health centers, schools, daycare centers, and local media.

• Increasing the capacity of a bakery to produce more products containing biofortified ingredients.

The event was held in front of an appreciative audience for the first time in three years. But only two of the five finalists delivered five-minute pitches in person. Three other finalists, including Joseph, connected and interacted with a judging panel online.

Normally, the contest awards

Still, “the real-world case had a lot of real wrinkles that went beyond the exercise,” he said.

Hochstetler made the comments at MEDA’s annual convention in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Hochstetler, who has led Everence since 2014, has a long history with MEDA. He credits it with helping him to “better understand my work (in the banking

industry) as faithful and purposeful.”

Hochstetler was involved in the Delaware Valley (Souderton, Pennsylvania) MEDA chapter board for 19 years. He served on MEDA’s international board of directors for nine years, several as treasurer.

“MEDA helped me to both invest in what lasts and to seek growth, to make an impact on the lives of others … and to grow as a

in their evaluations of the top two presenters, both will receive $10,000.

NovFeed was voted fan favorite by conference attendees who were invited to pick their favorite pitch.

Other finalists included:

• Coffee for Peace, a Philippines-based social enterprise that works to reduce conflict by producing quality coffee from peaceful sources.

• Pumapa Capital, a Kenyan-based global impact investment firm.

• AFCO Investment Co., a Tanzanian firm that is processing porridge and flour using crops enriched with vitamin A to fight malnutrition.

a $10,000 first prize and $5,000 to the runner-up. Since the judging panel of three MEDA staff was tied

You can read more about the contest winners at https:// novfeed.com/ and https://sanavita. co.tz/ .

Jolenta Joseph works to reduce malnutrition.

business professional and a person of faith.”

He considered becoming an entrepreneur and starting a business after college. Instead, he chose a career of “helping entrepreneurs and business owners in a variety of ways.”

His skills were tested over the past 32 months. He described it as “filled with extraordinary challenges that have been both disrupting and uprooting” for many leaders.

Everence has a practice of selecting a Bible verse every year to help focus its organizational efforts.

Proverbs 16, verse three reads: “Commit your work to the Lord, and your plans will be established.”

That verse’s reminder, that God is a guide through times of upheaval if we commit our concerns and matters over to God, was helpful to Everence through two pandemic years, he said.

Everence responded to the pandemic by “doubling down on time-tested principles and making some adaptations in some practices with twists due to the new realities,” he said.

Everence is committed to a mission of “helping organizations, churches, and individuals integrate their faith values with their financial decisions,” he said.

But the organization also uses the word faith as an acronym that describes its service values. Everence seeks to be focused and accountable, trustworthy, and helpful in serving members in 50 US states, he said.

When the pandemic struck, Everence doubled down on finding innovative solutions to serve.

Its credit union quickly applied for and received US small business

administration status as a Paycheck Protection Provider. Almost one-third of its pandemic loan production was made to churches and faith-based nonprofits.

Realizing that churches would be substantially affected by pandemic lockdowns, Everence doubled its 2020 sharing fund grants to $1.5 million to help pastors and others in need.

It developed financial education and wellness seminars for racially and ethnically underrepresented pastors, and pastors serving small congregations.

Hochstetler praised the efforts of Everence’s staff while noting the challenges that the new normal of remote work poses for many organizations. Forty-four percent of CEOs would like employees back in the office. But companies don’t feel they can mandate it due to tight labor conditions.

As a people business, Everence is somewhere between these two opposing realities, he said. “Face-to-face human interactions create energy, cooperation, trust, and creativity that are difficult to

replicate virtually.”

Everence has done two iterations of flexible and remote work guidelines. “More adjustments may be needed as we continue what was previously a pandemic-forced solution to what is now an ongoing employee expectation and program.”

Hochstetler takes none of Everence’s recent successes, including record charitable giving to its foundation in 2021, for granted. “In a world that is struggling with uncertainty, disturbances, greed, and polarization, our work community is growing together to make a brighter future.”

“Our mission — our calling — is tending to Christ’s ministry of love in very genuine, open and sincere ways.”

While many things will continue to change, he challenged his audience to focus on the positives change can bring.

Disruption can also be a powerful catalyst for innovation, “and an inspiration for growth, as people in community,” he said.

“Entrepreneurship embraces the tests and trials that come our way, and uses them for development, creativity, and innovation.”

Hochstetler encouraged everyone to consider how they have stepped up to fill needs in their communities and worldwide.

“This year will be a time of further mobilizing for all of us, in many ways. But one thing that can remain constant is our commitment to aligning our faith with our work values, so that — together — we are cultivating and growing the resources that enrich our communities and the lives we share.” .

Ken Hochstetler heads Everence.

Krista O’Brien photo

Turmoil roils global food system

Panel discusses unprecedented challenges facing small-scale farmers

A “triple gut punch” of war, the Covid pandemic, and climate change have massively increased extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa, a spokesman for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says.

Extreme poverty in the region has increased from 150 to almost 200 million people. That has reversed years of progress in reducing poverty, Lawrence Kent noted.

He made the comments in a panel on risks to the global food system at MEDA’s annual convention.

Three-quarters of Africa’s population lives in rural areas with livelihoods directly connected to farming, Kent said. He has visited many of these areas in his work as a senior program officer in the Gates Foundation’s agriculture development team.

Ninety-five percent of agricultural production in the region is rain-fed. That means drought and other extreme weather conditions are having an increasing impact on small-scale farmers, he said.

Of the three factors that have hammered farmers in recent years, the “climate change challenge is the one that scares us the most.”

Other panelists agreed. Pilar Martinez is the founder and director of Cosecha Partners. Cosecha supplies fine cocoa, specialty coffee, and other organic ingredients to the food industry.

It connects rural Nicaraguan farmers with high-value, organic food purchasers to improve their livelihoods.

Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the western hemisphere and the fourth-most vulnerable to climate change, Martinez said. Environmental degradation has reduced the productivity and yields of Nicaraguan coffee farmers. That has got to the point where “they can barely make ends meet,” she said.

Hadija Jabiri sees similar trends. Her Tanzanian agribusiness

works with over 5,000 farmers, 80 percent of whom are women.

Jabiri also noted the impact of extreme weather on small-scale farmers. “It’s high time for acting, going to actions (to combat climate change),” she said.

The Ukraine-Russia war has increased fertilizer prices beyond what many farmers can afford, she said. The Tanzanian government has tried to help by subsidizing the cost.

Panelists offered a range of suggestions on how to improve the food system.

Dr. Chime Obodozie, a medical doctor turned food entrepreneur, has focused fully on food processing since 2019. His Chime Foods supplies food to 20 of 36 Nigerian states and works with over 500 small-scale farmers. Eighty percent of those farmers are women.

Chime Foods rebrands and repackages indigenous grains such as fonio, an ancient heritage grain. This helps to uphold the food culture in Nigeria and contribute to a stronger economy.

He called for an increased focus

Lawrence Kent

Hadija Jabiri, center, speaks as Zakaria Issahaku and Lawrence Kent listen

pictures courtesy PhotOlé

on local foods, creating reliable and sustainable demand for farmers’ production. Reducing packaging and logistics costs will improve the sustainability of Chime’s efforts to source and package indigenous grains.

Obodozie praised MEDA’s Nigeria project for providing his firm with matching grants. That program helped him to buy machinery and more than triple processing capacity from 300 kilograms (661 pounds) a day to about a ton. When small and medium-sized enterprises thrive, they provide opportunities along the entire agri-food value chain, he said.

He also mentioned the need to improve rural infrastructure and for public-private partnerships to provide irrigation systems.

Kent pointed to low productivity among African farmers as a major concern. Average yields in the region are 1.5 tonnes per hectare, versus three tonnes per hectare in parts of Asia and 9-10 in North America.

Improved versions of crops will play an important role in increasing yields, he said. Getting there will require providing support to African research organizations and seed production firms as they work to develop heat and droughtresistant crops.

When cassava farmers use new seeds, a project Gates has partnered with MEDA on, their production

increases by 45 percent, he said.

Kent also stressed the importance of technology, including leveraging the use of smartphones. “We can’t solve the problems of this century using the technology of the last century,” he said.

In some areas of Tanzania, between 40 and 70 percent of production is wasted due to postharvest losses, Jabiri said. Her firm works to reduce that problem by providing markets for small-scale farmers.

Her firm is building software to train farmers on production via a mobile app. The app will provide ideas from planting through harvest.

Cosecha, Pilar’s Nicaraguan company, uses blockchain to provide greater transparency throughout the agri-food value system. Blockchain is an advanced database mechanism that allows

Pilar believes the future of agriculture is organic and regenerative. Cosecha provides technical assistance and training on gaining organic and fair-trade certifications. That is the way to teach subsistence farmers how to connect with international markets and get a better price, she said.

Cosecha is also helping coffee farmers to diversify. They are planting macadamia trees that produce nuts and sequester a lot of carbon in the soil. In six years, a macadamia tree will provide two to three times the income of coffee, Pilar said.

MEDA’s Zakaria Issahaku stressed the importance of inclusiveness, helping marginalized farmers to benefit from their labor. “Economic growth alone is not enough,” said Issahaku, an agricultural market systems specialist.

He named several key areas for investment. Agro-processing to add value, improved infrastructure in rural areas and greater use of technology to cut post-harvest crop losses are all important, he said.

Jabiri urged investment to ensure Tanzanian youth enter the agri-food sector and enjoy an environment that sets them up for success. Seventy-five percent of the Tanzanian population are youth, she said. .

“The climate change challenge is the one that scares us the most”

— Lawrence Kent, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

L-R: Dr. Chime Obodozie, Pilar Martinez, Pierre Diegane Kadet, Zakaria Issahaku, Hadija Jabiri and Lawrence Kent information sharing within a business network.

Understanding Africa’s history, present and potential

Africa is Not a Country. Notes on a bright continent

By Dipo

Faloyin (W.W. Norton & Company, 2022, 380 pgs., $30 US)

Not only is Africa not a country, but as Faloyin explains in his important book, many of the 54 nations that make up the world’s secondlargest continent are artificial constructs.

Lines drawn on maps by European colonizers in 1884 ran illogical borders through ancient kingdoms and cultures, lumping together various ethnic groups in the name of making conquest easier.

German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck gathered 14 nations in an exercise that led to decades of repression, pillaging, and massacres of indigenous populations.

Faloyin’s book recounts that tragic history and the persistent, oppressive impact of colonial legacy.

It also tells different stories of a region with two thousand languages and 1.4 billion people. Stories that go beyond Western stereotypes of poverty or safari. Stories of vibrant youth leaders and a handful of the world’s fastestgrowing economies.

Some of the stories are told in the cultural context of Lagos, Nigeria, where Faloyin was raised.

Others outline the failings of White savior charity campaigns, in the heyday of the 1980s megastar telethons and the present day. Faloyin also challenges Hollywood’s simplistic portrayal of complex societies.

He doesn’t gloss over atrocities committed by contemporary

despots, detailing the stories of seven dictatorships. A section on the looting of African cultural legacy — 90 percent of artifacts are housed, often hidden, in museums around the world — is particularly sobering. Worldleading museums have largely ignored widespread efforts to have stolen objects returned.

Well worth reading for anyone with an interest in the region. – MS

Thoughts on humility

Learning Humility: A year of searching for a vanishing virtue Richard Foster, (IVP Press, 192 pages, 2022, $25.00 US)

Reviewed by Jim Loepp Thiessen

I was captivated by Richard Foster’s “Celebration of Discipline” when it was released in 1978. So, I was looking forward to Learning Humility, a series of reflections on readings organized around the Lakota calendar, framed around 12 Lakota virtues. Humility is one of those virtues. Foster wrote the book because “everywhere I looked, I saw narcissism and greed

and selfishness dominating the mood of our culture.”

In my church context, humility is most often described by what it’s not — the absence of pride in oneself, and scant praise for the accomplishments of others. In that light, humility can seem overbearing in its demands, and foster stoicism: Don’t think about yourself, think of others, and don’t push others towards being prideful, either.

Foster counters that notion by pointing out that humble people “have an almost unconscious playfulness about them…because they have no human reputation to protect, and they are free from building a reputation for others to admire.”

Humility leading to playfulness will be freeing for those who see humility as a burden on their character formation. Foster says “Humility is a divine gift that God gives. We don’t seek after it directly, but rather take up those things, that in God’s time, and in God’s way, like the spiritual discipline of service, lead us into the virtue of humility.”

This book didn’t motivate me to work at humility. Perhaps that’s the point: Humility doesn’t naturally draw attention to itself but flows as a work of grace when we focus on those disciplines that draw us into its circle. If you want to read a collection of readings and musings around the theme, get a copy. .

Jim Loepp Thiessen is a pastor at Floradale Mennonite Church. Whether he’s humble or not, well, you be the judge.

Challenges on how to integrate faith on investments

Faith Driven Investing. Every investment has an impact: What’s Yours?

By Henry Kaestner, Tim Keller, Finny Kuruvilla, Andy Crouch, Cathie Wood et. al. (Tyndale Momentum, 2023, 240 pgs., $24.99 US)

This fascinating series of essays was commissioned by the Faith Driven Entrepreneur organization.

Faith Driven Investing brings together the perspectives of pastors, venture capitalists, institutional asset managers, technology firm executives, real estate investors, and think tanks.

The essays range from theological — Tim Keller’s reminder that “all well-done work that serves the good of human beings pleases God” — to discussions of holistic investing practices.

Bryce Butler commends the practice of one-pocket investing, working to invest for profit and social good. That approach moves past the two-pocket approach, one for profits and another for charitable giving.

Cathie Wood, who

founded the ARK Invest tech ETF company at age 57, writes about how her company name came from praying what God wanted her to do next after a long investment career.

Comments

She kept returning to biblical passages about the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant.

MEDA supporters will be particularly interested in the chapter Work locally and globally, by Efosa Ojomo and Richard Okello.

They note that by 2030, there will be more than 1.6 billion potential customers on the African continent, a group larger than the projected combined population of the US and the European Union or China.

While mid-market businesses in the US grow at eight to 12 percent annually, in Africa it is common to see similar firms grow at between 20 and 100 percent per year, they write.

Faith Driven Investing makes a valuable contribution to helping Christian entrepreneurs and investors integrate their beliefs and business practices. - MS