Grant Recipient Seeks Safer Conditions for Women, Children in East Africa

C.K. PRAHALAD INITIATIVE IMPACT STORY Grant Recipient Seeks Safer Conditions for Women, Children in East Africa

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aking sure the health and well-being of vulnerable people is not overlooked is the objective of a Michigan Ross doctoral candidate studying the impact of clean cooking devices in East Africa.

This push for equality is a major goal behind the research of Diana Jue-Rajasingh, a PhD candidate in Business Administration (Strategy focus) at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and U-M’s Department of Sociology (Economic Sociology). Diana is a past recipient of the C.K. Prahalad Research Grant, earning the award in 2019.

The Los Angeles native’s current research centers on finding ways to make environmental health innovations — products such as water filters and clean cookstoves — available to vulnerable populations in the East African nations of Kenya, Uganda, and Rwanda. Her dissertation is titled Developing Markets and Businesses for Environmental Health Innovations. “(These products) protect people against environmental health hazards, which are contaminants in the environment like water contamination and air pollution,” Diana said, noting that while many of these products have been produced, it can be difficult to inform consumers about their benefits and provide easy access to them. “Few people actually know about them, few people can get them, few people can buy them, few people want to buy them, and adopt them. At the same time, with firms, there are so many obstacles to actually providing them.”

According to the Clean Cooking Alliance, “Switching to clean cooking – using modern stoves and fuels – transforms lives by improving health, protecting the climate and the environment, empowering women, and helping consumers save time and money. … Cooking without clean stoves and fuels releases toxic pollutants into the environment and endangers the health and well-being of billions across the globe.”

The alliance claims more than 400 million people have gained access to clean cooking since its establishment in 2010.

The alliance states that clean cooking technologies largely benefit women and children, who spend significant periods of time in the kitchen, as well as time looking for fuel such as wood. According to the alliance, clean cooking can lower blood pressure in pregnant women and increase babies’ birth weight,

Diana Jue-Rajasingh (right) with a resident in rural Rwanda

while reducing the severity and duration of respiratory diseases in children.

Diana has dedicated a large part of her professional career to ensuring that she and other “well-resourced people can and should find financially sustainable ways to work in spaces where public and social sector efforts have failed.”

Her research in East Africa is a continuation of other international work she’s done. Prior to coming to Michigan Ross, Diana was a social entrepreneur in India, co-founding Essmart, a company that distributed life-improving products such as water filters, clean cookstoves, and agricultural products in rural South India.

Her work overseas led her to the work of C.K. Prahalad, reading “The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid,” a book the former Michigan Ross professor co-authored with Stuart Hart. “That’s what inspired me to start the company and also to apply for PhD programs at Ross in particular, because of the legacy of his teachings and work.”

“I came to Ross knowing that I wanted to address how to use markets to benefit more vulnerable and lower-income people around the world,” she said. “I think there is potential for firms to do something if it’s done in the right way. That’s what this research is about, what my dissertation (Developing Markets and Businesses for Environmental Health Innovations) is about and what I hope to do as a scholar.”

A lot of the scholarly work in the clean cooking sector is focused in East Africa, where Diana spent five weeks in 2019 talking to as many people as she could to get a clearer picture on the issue of access to clean cooking. In all, Diana conducted more than 80 interviews and field visits while there, talking with representatives of startups, nonprofit organizations, industry associations, development organizations, and government industries.

“My days consisted of calling up as many people as I could and traveling around the city or rural areas to talk to people,” she said, noting she conducted up to five in-depth interviews a day while there.

Diana said the funds she has received, including the 2019 C.K. Prahalad Research Grant, have been critical to her success in the field. “I have been really fortunate to receive a lot of support for my work,” she said. “This funding has been so important in paying for trips or for my field work itself. Also, it helps me come up with really cool ideas and implement projects that I wouldn’t be able to implement without funding — especially for experiments, which are really expensive to run.”

Diana wrote a book chapter, “Addressing the Market Failures of Environmental Health Products,” set to be released this year in the Handbook on the Business of Sustainability, which looks at the obstacles to widespread access to these products.

Her dissertation identifies these obstacles and introduces interventions that could be used to address these issues, and how they can be tested experimentally.

Diana with residents in Kampala, Uganda

value these products in the long term, and we don’t exactly understand why. … We know that they stop using the products not long after they get them. We’re trying to understand this whole issue.”

Sometimes the numbers don’t tell the whole story, Diana admits. “The easiest way to measure impact is to count the number of products sold,” she said. “But just because a product is sold or purchased by a consumer or a distributor, it doesn’t mean the products are going to be used.

“This funding has been so important in paying for trips or for my field work itself. Also, it helps me come up with really cool ideas and implement projects that I wouldn’t be able to implement without funding — especially for experiments, which are really expensive to run.”

One experiment Diana is conducting online is how a supplier of these products can use the framing of social impact to enter into the supply chain and be more effective in reaching people who need the products. “It’s really hard to attract companies into this space with a product that may not have a high profit margin. … So I’m looking at ‘Can a supplier use the way it talks about social impact to persuade them to enter the value chain?’” In a lab setting, she’s also looking at whether retailers would be more willing to pay more for these products based on the way these products are marketed in terms of social impact.

Consumers’ attitudes and behaviors play a part in the clean cooking equation, as well. Diana is studying whether they are able to see the value and utilize the environmental health innovations over the long term. “A lot of times, they don’t

So what does success look like in this instance?

“I want to make sure that vulnerable people aren’t being overlooked — that these models we’re using are doing good things in a good way,” Diana said. “A lot of times, these efforts tend to prioritize people who, even without the efforts, could have gotten (the clean cook stoves). I just want to make sure that more voices are heard and that the good that they’re doing is done the best way it can be done.”

“Doing good, better.” It’s a phrase that Diana uses in her dissertation, as well as a mantra for her future work.

She ultimately hopes to keep doing good, better, in an academic position in the future — one that allows her to continue doing this research. “I think I have a lot of ideas and a good pipeline of projects that I want to roll out.”

Diana received support for her research through the C.K. Prahalad Research Award, which provides Ross faculty and PhD students with funding for their work on market-based solutions that embolden people at the base of the global economic pyramid. The C.K. Prahalad Initiative honors the legacy of the late Professor C.K. Prahalad, who taught at Ross from 1977 until his death in 2010.