Investors and potential investors in Africa gathered in Dar es Salaam in early May for the World Economic Forum on Africa. Joining the forum were African government officials representing nearly every African nation, finance investors from China, India, the US and Europe, as well as non-profits, NGOs, and social entrepreneurs.  In the opening session, Tanzanian President Kikwete expressed his desire to propel agricultural growth, but the hot topics also included multinational investment in Africa, energy infrastructure, women entrepreneurship, and building social leaders.  The rallying cry: let’s stop talking about Africa’s “potential” and start building successful case studies.

The World Economic Forum tagline is “Committed to improving the state of the world.”  To me that requires tackling big issues like poverty and inequality through environmentally sustainable development. The driving factors to achieving environmental sustainability?  The use and design of technology. Empowering women. Supporting local innovation.

I was privileged to speak with a few individuals addressing these issues in Africa as policy makers, entrepreneurs, and non-profit organizations.  I asked each of them, “Tell me about innovation, design, women and/or technology in Africa.”  Here are some of their responses.

Nick Moon

Co-founder and Managing Director of Kickstart, a non-profit organization developing and marketing new technologies that are bought by local entrepreneurs and used to establish new small businesses.

“Very little work, in terms of design, innovation, technology in Africa, is being done for the people at the very bottom of the economic pyramid.  It’s generally assumed that somehow or another miniaturized or minimalized version of high-tech developed for wealthy economies will somehow trickle down to bottom the pyramid.  I think that’s totally the wrong approach.  Because these consumers are in such a different set of social, economic and emotional circumstances that they require technology solutions to be developed specifically to meet those circumstances.  And so it’s a completely different field.  Going further, it’s probably more true that we can upscale small or low-tech solutions we develop for the BOP so that they have the potential for trickling down into wealthy economies.”

Bruce McNamer

CEO of Technoserve, a non-profit providing business advice and access to both markets and capital to businesspeople in developing countries.

“I think increasing opportunity for women in business, intersecting that with technology, as well as increasing possibilities in distribution, and diffusion of innovation, not just for women, but all entrepreneurs, is necessary.  To attempt this years ago – to have the design tools and finance for business – was too costly.  And so the developing world always ended up as a recipient.  But now we’re building a middle class, the most rapidly growing consumer sector, which creates a strong market for products.  This is the best opportunity for development.”

Kevin Martin

Acumen Fund Fellow working with d.Light, a low-cost solar lantern company providing lighting to families in developing countries.

“Africa’s challenges do not exist in silos: the prevalence of HIV/AIDS, for instance, is a function of culture, history, and economy as well as a dozen other factors.  Challenges such as these require holistic solutions which integrate the on-the-ground-reality faced by the continent.  I believe that the confluence of human centered design and modern technology is the most powerful tool the world has for generating the innovative solutions required to overcome these challenges.”

Jason Morenikeji

Project Director of The Clean Energy Company, building sustainable wind power solutions in Mozambique.

“There is this concept of African innovation which you see, especially in Mozambique, every time you go to a garage.  I’ll see a piece of equipment, welding machines, bits of metal and wound wire and it blows me away sometimes.  But innovation always comes from a specific need that’s inherent and if you bring that need from outside then it gets too convoluted in the way it’s translated. It almost has to happen itself over time.  So in terms of bringing innovation and new design concepts, it takes time on the ground to see how things work and you have to adapt what you’re bringing to the African innovation process.”

“How do you know when to pull the plug on your idea?”  That’s the question Kiwanja.net’s Ken Banks posed to me after swapping stories one afternoon about our respective startup organizations. Nurturing and implementing ideas demands a level of physical and emotional investment. Once you’ve put that much into it, it becomes hard to know when it’s appropriate to throw in the towel.

The lack of financial capital isn’t a concession factor for most social ventures. Successful social ventures were born before the availability of seed funding for these ideas, and some of the coolest new organizations out there are funded by friends and family.  For these organizations there is no drain of funds that signifies the death of an idea.  When organizations are fueled by personal capital and sweat equity, the finish line gets hazy.

It’s an increasing dilemma. Consider the growing number of student classes working on social impact design projects. Stanford University’s Design for Extreme Affordability is one of the more renowned programs for graduate students in design, engineering, and business that connects student teams with a non-profit “client” for five months to develop a product solution serving the needs of bottom of the pyramid consumers. The class is responsible for spinning out a variety of social entrepreneurs – Ignite Innovations, d.light, Embrace, Driptech, to name a few.  Each of these organizations came into existence because their “client” was unwilling or unable to take the final idea forward.  Five months of work wasted?  It’s not hard to see why many student teams decide to implement the solutions themselves.

In addition to student teams, there are thousands of individuals and groups out there with ideas, solutions, or prototypes.  Each often building new organizations to support their solutions, some with more concrete plans than others.  The problem arises after these teams/individuals/groups develop a solution, but then become unsure what to do with it. Solutions, after all, still need to be implemented. Roadblocks prohibit these organizations from getting their solutions into the hands of people who need them. The usual culprits: lack of funding, on-the-ground presence or implementation partner, or the time and motivation required to drive activity.

A great case in point is the Pepper Eater, a device produced by Samuel Hamner and Scott Sadlon.  Their aluminum prototype uses a hand crank to crush chili peppers into chili flakes.  The prototype processes one kilogram of dried peppers in about thirty minutes, a fraction of the time required to do it by hand. The women in Ethiopia who’ve field-tested seem to like it, and have even purchased the prototypes.

But the designers behind the project are not ready to quit their day jobs to make pepper grinders.  They’re not interested in the complexities of building a company around this technology – they just want to see it end up in the hands of people that can and will.  But funders don’t give money to ideas without implementers.  Investors don’t fund ideas without a foreseeable return.  As a result, the Pepper Eater sits in development purgatory waiting for something to happen.

How to help them?  The only thing I could think of was to feature them in this blog to let everyone reading it know that they’re looking for partners to manufacture and distribute the design in Ethiopia. (Any takers?)  But it brings back the core issue Ken Banks raised in our conversation:  how do you know if you’re forcing an idea? And is there a place for the solutions that don’t make is past the roadblocks?

The irony is that a lot of people with ideas or interest in this field are asking how to get started. My answer for folks is usually fuzzy and unhelpful, but the most forthright answer I’ve heard came from Sally Osberg of the Skoll Foundation. She said, “If you’re asking that question, then you’re not ready. Get some experience, learn from those who are doing, and put yourself out there.”  It’s true. But now that we have many people getting started, the harder question to answer is: how do you know when to stop?

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This post also appears on NextBillion.net, a community of business leaders, social entrepreneurs, NGOs, policy makers and academics who want to explore the connection between development and enterprise.