Message-ID: <3784A3EF.9F9A7091@erols.com> Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 09:13:20 -0400 From: Paul Swider <mailto:prideafrica@EROLS.COM> Subject: PRIDE AFRICA network To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
I work with a non-profit development organization serving the poor in Africa.We have an interest in expanding our services to the electronic. I am writing to the list seeking guidance on finding investors and donors.I represent a microfinance organization called PRIDE AFRICA. PRIDE presently operates more than 40 branch offices in Uganda and Tanzania serving more than 45,000 clients. In 10 years of operation we have loaned more than $15 million -- and been fully repaid. Though our clients’ average loan size is only $150, their businesses buy and sell millions of dollars _a month_ in goods so they clearly represent real economic power.
As you know, there are some 700 million people living in sub-Saharan Africa. They represent a huge potential market. For various reasons, historical and political, this potential has remained dormant. As the continent lacks modern physical and economic infrastructure, most of the African market remains beyond the reach of interacting with the more developed world. PRIDE would like to change that.
PRIDE already has a database of information about its borrowers, their businesses, their customers and their communities. We are adding clients constantly. We expect to begin operations soon in Malawi, Zambia and Kenya and have interest from South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe as well as several West African countries. We have and are developing a large business network at the grassroots level.
We would like to make use of our existing network to enhance the economic prospects of our clients. To begin with, we want to connect four of our branches by computer as a pilot project. Our initial intention is to use these connections to enhance the buying and selling power of individual clients by grouping like people together. For example, all of those involved in retail sales could collectively buy common business inputs, thereby saving a great deal of money, which would translate into lower prices for consumers and greater profits for these undeniably impoverished entrepreneurs. Our clients might also be able to group together for collective sales of manufactured merchandise, be it crafts or piecework or whatever. This collective function is a surefire attraction for our clients (though we are testing it in focus groups just to be sure we explore it properly) but the great benefit is the potential spin-offs.
We expect that such a service will be attractive to our clients but will also be sufficiently attractive to marketers of consumer and other goods from the more developed countries. Consequently, once we can use our pilot project to demonstrate the effectiveness of the system, we believe we can entice for-profit businesses to fund the small cost of establishing such a system throughout our branch network. We have already heard some interest along these lines. What this would mean is that then each of these communities (and, we hope, all subsequent locations) would then have a community access point for which they would not have to pay to be connected to the Internet. There are technological concerns but these pale in comparison with the prospect of having the thousands of men, women and children in these communities able to join the 21st century now. And perhaps best, the system does not require anyone’s ongoing charitable interest, which often fades. For-profit business would pay – we believe gladly – for the chance to reach these untapped markets. The people who make up those markets reap the far greater reward of improving their own businesses and joining the digital age. First, though, we need to run our pilot project so we can demonstrate the hard value of our concept.
PRIDE is uniquely positioned to operate a project such as the one I propose. We have the conceptual network. We have the clients and a database of information about them. We have a business and financial services operation in place so we know we are tapped into the marketplace. What we don’t have is the last little piece of funding to walk the last step to a self-sufficient enterprise for economic development and cross-cultural communication.
I would like to briefly take a moment to ask for your suggestions on how we might find funding for our pilot project. We do not seek a great deal of money. We could easily complete our pilot project for less than $100,000. Once we can do that successfully, we believe we will solidify the corporate interest we have already found that will support the remainder of our project for everyone’s benefit. We just need to find a way to make that final leap. Any help you can offer would be much appreciated.
What PRIDE does has humanitarian elements but we do not consider our organization a charity. Ours is a business philosophy. We believe that Africa will reach its proper place in the world economy not through donations but through investment, labor and ingenuity. Our clients are inspiring evidence. All we want to do is bring them into the marketplace so their own skills and energy can take hold. Bringing our clients to the marketplace also means bringing the marketplace to them.
Please feel free to contact me at any time, on or off list, so we might explore joint efforts. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
-- Paul Swider PRIDE Africa mailto:prideafrica@erols.com 703-519-7778 100 N. Pitt St. Suite 202 Alexandria, Va. 22314