As many of you know, I am running the Montreal Oasis Marathon on September 5th, 2010 – in exactly 27 days! Running the marathon was partly inspired by the need to find a way to help pay school fees for the children of the Women of Kireka. These twenty women, who still work part-time in a quarry for a pittance, now have a small start-up jewelry business, which I helped to establish in 2008 in Kampala, Uganda and now assist through Project Diaspora.

As many of you also know, I’m generally no longer a fan of fundraising. After a couple years working on and off in Kenya and Uganda, and further experience in the “wheel of development,” I have learned to deeply appreciate the value of business. By business, I mean a system where a unique high-quality product, made through painstaking attention to detail, is fairly traded for monetary capital. This seems to be the most sustainable and engaging form of economic development.

In line with this, Women of Kireka has transformed itself from a donations-funded model, where international donors help to raise enough capital for the women to start their own business, to a small start-up business built on hard work by the people who make up the Women of Kireka and Project Diaspora.

However, in order to get Women of Kireka to where it is now, it was necessary to help the women spend a few less hours on the quarry. They identified school fees as one of their most expensive and stressful costs. By covering school fees for a year, Project Diaspora – and your first two round of donations – gave the women enough time to see if Women of Kireka was for them and whether we could build a successful business together.

This generous time has proved to be fruitful and we think that, after this final round of school fee donations, Women of Kireka will be entirely run as a business, no longer soliciting donations. In the little time we’ve had this year, we’ve registered Women of Kireka as a business, opened a local bank account for the women to place their savings, developed an emergency health fund scheme, launched one line of jewelry, developed a website and established a series of local and international partnerships with such groups as Solar Sister.

This final round of school fee donations will give the women the free time to perfect their second line of designs. It will also give us the time to focus on opening the online Women of Kireka store. We expect that these activities, particularly the opening of the online store, will ensure that the women can support their children next year in school and work increasingly with Women of Kireka, thus moving off the quarry for good.

Fortunately, the beginning of the children’s semester coincides with the Montreal Oasis Marathon. As I cross the finish line, the children will be getting ready for their final school term this year and we hope your generous contributions will help us pave the way for a successful new school term!

For more information on the Women of Kireka, please visit our website.

In the last 7 days, I have been on three continents and my feet have touched down in four countries. Dopplr says I’ve added in excess of 1,659 kg CO2 to my carbon footprint. My body feels like a stubborn piñata, beaten to a pulp, but hardly broken. My mind has absorbed, contemplated, calculated, commiserated and generally tried to make sense of the world around it. South Africa successfully concluded hosting the world’s biggest sporting competition; BP stopped it’s 3 month effort to fill the Gulf of Mexico with oil; Steve Jobs turned on his reality distortion field to quell “antennaegate,” and Washington, DC was hit with an earthquake.

My heart however, has been stuck in a geosynchronous orbit around Kampala, Uganda.

As of this posting, it has been exactly a week since Spain beat The Netherlands to stand alone atop the World Cup throne. The world watched, in celebration and disappointment as the games crowned their final champion. In Africa, many gathered in make-shift pool halls, barber shops, local beer joints or “locals,” or anywhere where there was a TV or radio tuned to the proper channel broadcasting the game.

In Uganda, 76 people did not get to see the final results of the game. They had began their day in frenzied preparation to finish whatever the day required them to accomplish in time for the match. Some went to pray, others went shopping for sports jerseys emblazoned with the colors of whatever team they were in support of, some had lunch with friends and placed bets with each other. Others made plans to meet at pubs or restaurants to enjoy the final game. None, it would seem, made plans to die that day.

Seven days ago, the Somali Islamic militant group, al Shabab, or “youth” detonated a series of bombs in Uganda’s capital of Kampala which injured hundreds and left the city with 76 less people that I will never get a chance to meet. An outdoor gathering at the Kyadondo rugby club was hit by a suicide bomber, while simultaneously another bomb hidden under a table ripped through Ethiopian Village, a popular restaurant and socializing spot for tourists and expats.

I ran across the news while sifting through the day’s tweets. I’d just returned from a dinner with colleagues I hadn’t seen in a while. One of them, left the dinner early to go watch the start the game with her father. Earlier before the dinner, I’d sped past the rugby club across from Lugogo Mall on Jinja Road, straddling a boda boda taxi. I’d just spent the day sifting and editing images at the Hive Colab offices. The air was crisp and the sky was clear as evening was setting in. The rugby club gates were busy with activity as the early arrivals filtered in to grab the best seat on the field.

The first tweet was from non other than Solomon Benge (@solomonking). Solomon tweeted from the front lines during the Kampala riots a year before.  I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I was curious enough to stay tuned while he confirmed the report. Soon enough there was a flurry of reports coming out. I remember a heavy sense despair descended on me as I sunk into disbelief. The winner of the final had just been announced, and the orange-clad Dutch expats were filtering out of the bar at the hostel, in dejected disbelief. I watched the Twitter stream a few more minutes before it occurred to me that I should start accounting for my team. “We are OK, are you?” “Have you heard from so-and-so? No, have you? Call them and I’ll call you back.” Within minutes everyone was accounted for, on the way or home and safe. A few hours later I was replying to Facebook messages and tweets; “team PD was accounted for and safe.” The news was now international, struggling upstream to break through the tide of World Cup coverage.

What amounted to a cloud of numbness occupied my soul for the two days before I was to board for my flight to Dallas. I took meetings in a daze of disbelief, meetings that were occupied with discussions of who was responsible, digesting the gory images in the tabloids of limbs and blood. The images were arresting and the same time disappointing as it seemed every newspaper was racing to print the most disturbing images from the two bombings. I was keenly paranoid of where I sat and who was around me.

Was this the new state of mind I would have every time I came home? Strangely, everyone seemed to be alone in their thoughts. Around Kampala, life went on as everyone tried to make sense of the events of Sunday night. The overly crowded taxi parks in the informal sector were just as packed, the nightly street vendors still sold you a rolex with a smile. The boda boda drivers still snaked through Kampala’s gridlock like water through a rockslide.

The most heart-wrenching reality of the bombings manifested itself at the airport as I was departing. Lines of expats, and tourists choked the check in lines to a point where the computing system shut down for several hours. It seemed a mass exodus was in play. It became clear that the effects of the bombings would spread beyond the loss of 76 lives. In contrast to South Africa’s .5% bump in GDP brought on by hosting the games, right here at Entebbe, Uganda’s tourism industry was bleeding massively. I immediately understood the somber countenance of John Hunwick, proprietor of Backpackers Kampala hostel, as I waved goodbye.

“We’re finished,” he muttered.

Instability in the city meant no tourists, volunteers, or traveling students – which spelt financial disaster for the hostel. Mr. Hunwick’s hospitality and tourism business depended on the assumption that it was safe to travel to Uganda. Kampala’s once vibrant nightlife won’t be the same for a long time as revelers avoid crowded establishments.

As I touch down in the fifth city this week, I am still haunted by the images of the zombie-like corpses on the front pages. Men and women, soaked in blood and frozen in repose in their plastic chairs on the lawns of the rugby grounds; a woman clutching a soft drink with her head slumped to the side, a man leaning in the chair clutching a cellphone on one ear. The most haunting image that I can’t shake is when I was driving by the rugby grounds days after the bombings and watching the massive prehistoric scavenger birds — famous for feasting on Kampala’s growing garbage dumps — land on the pitch. I couldn’t bare the thought of what they were feeding on in the grass.

So where do we go from here? How do we rebuilt our city? How do we sell stability again and inject customers back into the tourism sector and related businesses? How do we avoid sinking into a relentless cycle of xenophobic violence? President Museveni has vowed not to be intimidated and has called for a state of calm. Uganda’s continued presence in Somalia as part of the African Union’s peace-keeping mission means that we are now on a continued terror alert as al Shabab begins to retaliate beyond its borders. I suppose I have no choice but to resign to the fact that this is our new life now,  “…in blood and color.” Is this the price of progress and freedom? Please stay tuned.

For a long time, Uganda’s value has been associated with its physical, tangible assets. This includes its natural resources, hospitable environment and cash crops such as coffee. In economic terms, the value proposition is shifting all around Uganda and the time is now to realize that the value attached to coffee and fruits is fast shifting to the knowledge possessed on how to grow these same things faster. Intellectual capital and intellectual property laws, the tools of protecting this capital are a key concern for today and the future of Uganda.

Broadly speaking, intellectual property law in Uganda is known to accommodate the laws that protect brands and the identifiers of value in businesses. These could be names, symbols, logos, slogans or a combination of these. It also covers Patent laws. Patents protect technical innovations for things like new methods of making medicine or even apparently simple inventions like modifications to a padlock. The third major area covered by IP law in Uganda is the law of copyright, which provides protection to those whose creative effort is reflected in music, books, artistic works, dramatic works and similar works. There are other less well known but equally important areas such as industrial designs, geographical indications, trade secrets and plant varieties that are included among the important areas of Intellectual property. However, although Uganda acknowledges their importance, some of them have not yet been specifically passed into legislation in this country.

Where do we stand in terms of intellectual property education in this country? IP has traditionally been the preserve of lawyers. As such, the subject was until the late 1990s only taught as part of the Post graduate Bar course at the Law Development Center in Kampala. During the intensive one year course, IP is taught in the course of two days. With the need to modernize legal education, Makerere University introduced the subject in the late 1990s and it was subsequently introduced on the Uganda Christian University Law school program, when that university started in 1997. Currently, the subject is taught as part of the LLB (Bachelor of Laws degree) with varying degrees of content in 6 universities. These are Makerere University, Uganda Matyrs University, UCU Mukono, Kampala International University and the Islamic University of Uganda in Mbale. It is apparent that all of these Universities only teach intellectual property law as a substantive subject to law students, leaving other disciplines with hardly any significant content in this regard.

Leaving the formal educational system, a number of Government institutions have now recognized the need to increase awareness of the value of IP in Uganda beyond the University setting. Key among these are the Uganda Registration Services Bureau (URSB), the Uganda National Council for science and Technology (UNCST), the Ministry of Trade Tourism and Industry and Makerere University.  This realization is critical and timely and I will share a few reasons in support of this position.

First of all, as Uganda becomes more integrated in the Global economy, its economy becomes even more vulnerable unless it becomes more innovative and competitive in its key industries. Many policy makers have recognized the vulnerability of holding on to the past ancient advantages of the cash crop-commodity era. This is because tea, sugar and coffee prices are subject to numerous trade barriers at the best of times, while newer products like vanilla have to compete with artificial flavors, thanks to modern science and technology. For this reason, scientists, artists and business people small and large need to appreciate the notion of intellectual property and what advantage it gives them in this new era of international trade.

The second reason that has compelled some of these organizations to rethink the intellectual property education processes is the intrusiveness of the internet.  The internet is recognized worldwide as being the most disruptive technology of the past century, almost in the same measure that mobile telephony was to Africa in the 1990s. It provides huge opportunities for learning as well as trading and commerce. Small and medium businesses in Uganda have latched on to electronic commerce as a sensible imperative of cutting out middle men in Kampala, and Nairobi, thereby saving themselves a lot of money and making more profits. More importantly in the context of intellectual property, cultural goods such as music now constitute a significant value of Uganda’s invisible exports. The Ministry of trade, tourism and industry, as well as other partner institutions have realized that enhancing artists and other actors in the creative industries sector will in turn lead to an increase in service sector exports.

Thirdly, Uganda as a least developed country that signed up to the World Trade Organization’s TRIPS agreement is bound to implement and enforce IP laws. Whereas Uganda has some flexibilities it enjoys until the year 2016 with respect to Pharmaceutical Patents, there is tremendous pressure from developed countries for it to comply in other areas. One of the key areas of concern in this regard is the area of trademarks and enforcement of stringent anti counterfeit legislation. Whereas most Ugandans appreciate the importance of stringent laws against counterfeit products, which include pharmaceuticals, there is a worry that the scope of the law may be so wide as to prevent generic medicines into the country under the guise that they are counterfeits. This is an area that requires the line ministry of Trade as well as that of Health to deploy significant resources in terms of sensitization and public awareness for the public to appreciate the purpose and imperatives of the law. If this does not happen, Uganda’s Anti counterfeit legislation is likely to face significant implementation challenges.

Lastly, IP education has become more important as learning in the online environment becomes more prominent. In the past, most teaching materials were in the form of physical text books. Due to war and the decline in local publishing, fewer local authors are on the approved list of published works for use in the public education system. Universities have come to appreciate that in order for their students to make use of the wide repertoire of works available on the internet; they have to navigate through the various copyright permissions necessary for them to access online resources. With the availability of better and faster internet access, there is increasingly the view that Universities churning out thousands of IT professionals should also focus on developing local content. This should have the effect of creating a greater appetite for online resources as well as local solutions. The challenge here is that the creators of this content will expect some form of compensation, as availed under copyright regimes that users are not yet aware of, or prepared to pay for. In light of this growing awareness, Makerere University passed its Intellectual Property policy in 2009 to assist its staff and students in determining how to assess, appropriate and distribute benefits from intellectual property.

Beyond the existing plans lie huge institutional minefields to overcome. The basic concepts of intellectual property and its application at an enterprise level and benefits at the macro level are yet to be understood by public officials. This could significantly delay or even derail any efforts in the direction of curriculum review or even public sensitization. It therefore means that all public and private organizations and companies should join hands and work together to enhance understanding on a subject that could potentially lift many from poverty as well as have a positive impact on the country’s export earnings.

On the other hand, it is high time developed countries and their multinationals that reap the most from Uganda’s consumption of their commodities give direct support to Intellectual property education drives, as opposed to crying foul when counterfeit products are found littering the streets of Kampala. This must go beyond workshop style education to practical support on how to use the intellectual property system ie through the transfer of know how to enterprises and supporting the establishment of a national innovation support system. Hopefully this is a formula that will leave everyone in a better position to exploit their creativity and entrepreneurship to the benefit of businesses and the country at large.

Paul Asiimwe, Advocate & IP  Consultant
Chairman, National IP Advisory Group under the UNCST
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Sipi Law Associates
Advocates, Patent & Trademark Agents
Investment & Corporate Legal Advisors

The time has come to raise funds to keep the children of the Women of Kireka in school. We raised enough money in our last fundraiser to keep them in school through the first term of 2010. However now the 2nd and 3rd terms must be addressed as well. There are currently 58 children enrolled in school and we are raising the funds with a combination of sales of the beads made by the women and donations. We have been covering our work with the women here on the blog for quite some time. So if you are a regular reader you know the story, however if you are not here is a quick recap:

One of our projects involves a fantastic group of women who were displaced during the war in Northern Uganda and fled to a town called Kireka outside the capital city of Kampala. They live in what is called an IDP camp (internally displaced persons) and work in the rock quarry there. For the last year or more we have been working with them to transition them out of the quarry an into more profitable and safer work. We currently have a team of interns working with them on job skills training, business training, working to get them counseling and health services and more. Just this week we were able to get them a small two room office, where they can meet and get training. Their ultimate goal is to create beautiful handmade crafts. They are currently making jewelry and will begin their training as seamstresses very soon. So it has been a very exciting time.

However in the midst of all of this it is time again to raise money for the children’s school fees. This year we are looking at a total of $4000 that needs to be raised. This will cover cost of school for 58 children through the end of the year. I will have a small quantity of necklaces made by the women for sale, the proceeds of which will go to the school fees. I expect to receive that shipment any day. Donations are also welcome in any amount via paypal.

Here are a few links that you may find interesting!

Three Days Earnings

Last Year’s Fundraiser, with videos!

A Conversation with Grace Lamono

An Intern’s Story

The EAC is kicking off the 3rd installment of the Investment Conference, to be held in Kampala, Uganda. The last edition, which I had the pleasure to attend in Kigali was quite interesting. This year’s installment is timely, especially as EAC marches towards common markets this July.

We are steadily moving towards a fully integrated economic community where goods, capital, labour and services will move freely without borders, and it is important to highlight to the world the abundant potential that East Africa offers today.

The inaugural East African Community Investment Conference was hosted by Rwanda in 2008 and brought together more than 1,000 participants under the theme, Leveraging the East African Market Through Trade and Investment.

The 2^nd Annual Conference, hosted by Kenya last year, hosted 2,000 participants under the theme, Invest in the EAC; Where Global Challenges Are Opportunities. Both conferences attracted local, regional and global investors and business leaders who rightly identified the vast potential that the East African region provides.

The East African Community is made up of approximately 130 million people. The East African Community has a Gross Domestic Product of more than US$60 billion. With the establishment of a fully-fledged Customs Union, and the July launch of the East African Common Market, we can confidently announce that East Africa has opened up as One Market, One Destination, FOR BUSINESS.

If you are interesting in doing business in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, or Tanzania in the near future and tapping into a collective $60 billion market, I’d highly suggest you make haste and register to attend. Better yet, how about buying up one of those sponsor spots for some serious visibility, you high rollers you!

Lastly, is it just me or is it a little bit creepy and unsettling that the EAC Conference’s bank account information is published on the web. Ignorance or just just begging for trouble?

I think I speak for a majority of Africa’s diaspora when I say that the mobile phone in Africa has made life away from our homes of origin much more bearable. The ability to instantly connect and have a conversation with family members allows us to maintain those family bonds that are so important to many of us. Unless your entire family migrated out of Africa, many of us still have loved ones on the ground that we are now able to connect to with ever increasing immediacy.

In a sense, the world has shrunk for us. It used to be that separation for the African diaspora meant vast distances marked by snail mail and connecting flights. Now that distance is reduced to the time it takes you to dial a number or send a text, or compose an email.

I am very close to my family in Uganda. So close in fact that i rarely make decisions without consulting them and vice versa. We operate like a well-oiled organization. We routinely check on each other’s progress with family meetings. As the older sibling, I am chided (in good fun of course) for still being single. We constantly fuss about the future of our younger siblings and their education, a unified effort to make sure that our family is well-equipped to survive in this world. We take a “no-sibling left behind” policy in our family. I Facebook chat with my sister Pam on a daily basis. It is the new, “after-tea conversation.”

This week, I had a Skype conference call with my brother Isaiah (an administrator at the local college, my sister Pam (general manager of UMPG), and my mother (a pastor and local councilwoman for her village). There wasn’t anything special about the call really, in fact, I had done it several times before. This time though, I had a huge smile on my face. Perhaps in retrospect, I was reliving my talk at SXSW. This is what I was talking about. I was living the future of a connected Africa, in real time. I was having the same out of body experience as one would have walking through a déja vu episode (I am always freaked out by those!).

At the SXSW presentation, I demonstrated the collaborative possibilities of a connected Africa with a live Skype interview with Appfrica Labs in Uganda, iHub in Kenya, and Limbe Labs in Cameroon (I am still saddened that I didn’t get to talk to Banta Labs in Senegal because of time constraints). I had also planned on making a call to my mom in the village so she could tell the audience what a difference having a mobile phone has made in her life. I failed to connect due to a bad network connection. Instead I did the next best thing. I called my mum a few days after the presentation and interviewed her for this post. You can listen to her interview below.

With 450 million mobile subscriptions on the continent, one can’t help but think of the possibilities, and what all this connectivity could mean for us. Milly lists some of the benefits (and challenges) of owning a mobile phone in the village. The greatest of which was the joy that she could talk to her son at any time (provided I called more often of course) without her having to take a 3 hour bus ride to Kampala so I can reach her on a land line. The accelerated penetration of mobiles predicted over the next three year is even more exciting. Stats point to nearly 50% of Africa’s population as under the age of 15; coming of age just as Africa gets ready to tap into over 18 terabytes of designed broadband capacity available to the continent by 2012.

The possibilities for the continent are endless, but to me, they are very real and personal.

NOTE OF CLARIFICATION:
Just to clarify, while Grace gives varying answers on the video on how long it takes to put together that box of jewelry, it actually takes the women about 3 days to produce the pieces in that box. Grace confirmed that it took 3 days to produce Ush 40,000 (~$20.25), the equivalent of three weeks worth of work breaking rocks.

My last photo shoot featuring Women of Kireka jewelry got a lot of positive interest. Within one week the women got orders from London, Vancouver, Nairobi and Kampala. Last week alone, Siena and myself hired a couple of boda bodas and took some interested buyers to visit the women at the quarry where they worked.

The frenzy of sells got me thinking about the income the women were pulling in just from the jewelry. The video above once again stars Lamono Grace, talking about the economic impact of selling just a few pieces of jewelry versus the income from the daily grind of pounding stones.

As always, be part of a solution and encourage these women by buying some jewelry if it appeals to your sense of style. Remember, it’s not charity, so don’t buy anything unless you feel it’s up to your standards. But having seen these pieces with my own eyes, they are worth every dollar.

On a further note, let me task you with this: what do you earn in three days of work? Do you even think twice when you spend the equivalent of a week’s worth of earnings for each woman on a cup of coffee? Again it’s not a request for charity, but a simple reminder of what some people on this planet of ours have to go through just to earn a dollar.

More information on the Women of Kireka, bead purchases, internship opportunities and quarry visits can be found on Siena Anstis’s website. We’re thinking proxy websites spreading like Western Union across Kampala’s downtown core. Ah, if only we were the Starbucks of East Africa.

The original here:

As someone with many un-paid internships under her belt, the word “volunteer” often makes me shudder. But, the facts are, we need your support!

• Programme Assistant Intern (Full-time): This position with the Women of Kireka would involve guiding the women in their current business practices (accounting, savings, establishing micro-loans, etc.), doing marketing & design, escorting visitors to the quarry, and organizing sample shipments/partnerships with local and international organizations.

• Advocacy and Awareness Intern (Full-time): Not long ago, a reader commented that we were not doing enough for the overall Kireka community. Granted, when the women leave the quarry, their jobs will be taken by equally desperate individuals. In order to mitigate this, we would like to run an awareness campaign on the working conditions of the Kireka community among media, community and government. There’s been a trickle of information on the quarry over the years, but we really want to ramp this up and make an impact.

The lovely Hannah Gray will help you organize your internship placements. She has a boat-load of experience in this field and is an expert in all things Kampala (and fun!). If you are interested, please send your CV, cover letter and a short 500-word statement on what you would like to achieve to myself or Project Disapora. Of course, information on the site is limited, but we want to know how creative are!

Note: We’re certainly not as widely known or CV-boosting as UN-name any branch, but we can promise a very engaging experience with the Women of Kireka and Uganda as a whole. We are also expert reference-letter writers. Most importantly, we’ll help you build contacts in the field of international development in East Africa.

This is my quick response to Jimmy Kainja’s thought-provoking post and comments discussion about gay rights in Africa and the role of donor organizations.

The brouhaha over African gay litigation is simply overreaction to the very same events that happened in the US and EU countries. Being gay didn’t all of a sudden become a lifestyle de jour in the West.

Homosexuals there went through the the very same types of persecution and human rights violations as those in Uganda and Malawi. The same fear, uncertainty, and doubt, is behind these “laws of the land” as it was in the US, Canada, and the UK.

It’s a journey. The difference is that the West didn’t have the noose of donor countries launching threats (wether justified or not). As Sally points out, it is their right to cancel their funds if they don’t like the policy. Likewise, if the infringing recipient governments have a problem with donor strings attached to the funds, they have a right to refuse the funds. But we all know that’ll never happen. The politicians are happy to dance to whatever brought them and keeps them in power.

Without donor funds, governments will have to be forced to be accountable to the people and their majority wishes. Issues like this would be debated into law or quashed by the wishes/lobbying of it’s own citizenry. But since the citizenry is used in this stupid aid game we all play as pawns… we get to suffer because govs have no laws to stand on.

Sally, good pointing out intent -vs- neglect. Aid orgs exist to fund ‘neglect’ – pure and simple, driven by the guilt of privilege and the superficial need to be seen as a do-gooder (there’s a certain cache attached to that in international diplomacy).** They cringe, however, when Malawi & Uganda start going through the same cultural growing pains they’ve already learned how to manage and atone for.

Africa won’t have the luxury of figuring out these issues for itself and by itself. We will be scrutinized and discussed, vilified & judged openly. Why? Because no one wants to remember that we are 53 VERY young nations that have to grow up at light speed and accomplish in a miniscule-amount of time–what took the west three-plus centuries! You’ve heard it: why can’t Africa figure out democracy? Why are there blood-thirsty dictators in Africa? Why is there famine? Is “Brangelina” and Madonna and Oprah going to adopt all of Africa’s children? Ok, maybe not that last question. The point is, “democracy” and all it entails is less than 60 years old as a concept in Africa post-colonialism. Yet we are expected to be on par with the West in less than a lifetime. The same goes for the intricacies of legislating in a modern world. We don’t have the luxury of time or the cone of true sovereignty to deal with our issues.

The gay issue isn’t going away anytime soon. Just like the tide of FUD over gay marriages in the States, it’s just going to evolves and become as divisive as it was everywhere else in the world. It is the normal course of attempting to litigate morality. Who hear dares to remember that interracial marriages could get you lynched in the United States. Hell, marriage is going a tad far, just being accused of looking at a white girl wantonly meant the end of your days as a black man.

Uganda will go through the steps and missteps of trying to figure out how homosexuality fits into its moral fabric as a nation. So too will Malawi determine its fate within its sovereignty to do do. Maybe Kenya will follow, or Mozambique and Angola. But as every country proceeds with its growing pains, we will have to do so under the global microscope of myopic and unrealistic expectations.

So what’s the solution then? Allow aid orgs to dictate how we litigate because they provide for budgetary shortfalls? Or simply risk the “perceived” shortfall that would ensue and enact whatever laws of the land” we feel necessary to protect our “moral fabric?”

** This is totally my opinion. I am well aware of the different types of aid, and such a blanket statement erroneously blankets them all into one pile.

With the Women of Kireka slowly gaining international fame in Europe (thanks to the efforts of Ida Horner pushing their wares), I thought a product shoot was in order so we could really show off some of their handicrafts.

Ida will use the images to market the #WoK brand for Ethnic Supplies. I have to say a special thank you to Erinah “Pinkie” Shanahn for agreeing to model for the women at such short notice. The jewelry looks great on her, and I have to say that she makes the jewelry that much more desirable (not that it wasn’t already!)

If you’d like to support the women by purchasing a few items, hit up the Ethnic Supplies website. Ida would be more than happy to sell you a few items from their collection! After all, wouldn’t you rather give work instead of aid? We know we would.

Back in the summer of 2009, (Man! How time flies!) I had a chance to chat with Ida Horner via Skype for the first time after being virtually introduced via Twitter & Facebook. Ida is based in Surrey, England (don’t let the London Eye tag in the video fool you, we waxed poetic on development at a pub under the London Eye on our first face-to-face meeting last October) and is the founder of Ethnic Supplies, an organization that sources handmade jewelry and crafts from several East African countries.

Put succinctly, Ethnic Supplies is an outlet shop for the best that #brandafrica has to offer in terms of handmade crafts ranging from Madagascar wild silk scarfs, to baskets from Rwanda, and jewelry from Uganda.

Ida is quite the vocal proponent of rebranding Africa as we know it, by actively broadcasting the positive side of developments in Africa. For far too long, Western media has branding the golden microphone on the story of Africa. For a time (okay, roughly a century) it seemed that everyone that came up to the microphone was following the same script when it came to news on Africa; Violence, starvation, death, and general anarchy. Without the above as leading material, you might as well change the channel.

But that status quo is changing. Thanks to social media, the intricacies of story-telling have allowed the African diaspora to become armed with the true version of events, or at the very least, the flip side of the “single story” symptom that Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie so eloquently described. It is become easier and easier to discover members of the diaspora coming to the podium to tell the whole story on Africa. A sign that Africa isn’t simply consuming what the web has to offer, but actively contributing to it’s own collective cloud intelligence.

At the recently concluded Ugandan diaspora summit in Kampala, I had the pleasure of watching Ida take Uganda’s government to task on following through with their promises on laying proper infrastructures for more effective diaspora participation in economic development. For Ida, it seems, laying that groundwork starts with the political elite starting to respect the diaspora as a transformational force, not just as a simple constituency easily-satisfied with political propaganda and party bylines.

But it’s not always as simple as taking the microphone, overcoming the dangers of the single story sometimes involves doing, not just talking. Ida has of late become a pusher for integrating social media as a development and communication tool African organizations and governments alike can use to elevate their profiles and attract Western clients. She’s recently advised Rwanda and Ugandan government officials on how to do just that.

Social media truly is playing a critical role in how the African Diaspora connects and communicates across vast distances to collaborate on projects in Africa. 6 months on, I am still amazed at the speed of developments and the continued collaborations with Ida and Ethnic Supplies.

It should be noted that Ethnic Supplies has become a major partner to the Women of Kireka project. Her recent stop at the quarry to visit the women was a welcome highlight and morale booster for the women.

Keep your eye on Ida Horner, she’s primed to do great things in 2010 and beyond.

After a quiet Christmas spent in various mango trees in my mom’s yard, I made my way to Kampala for the 3rd annual Diaspora Home is Best Summit. It was my first time attending the summit and I’ll have to say, I left both satisfied and empty at the same time. There were many presentations on the state of Uganda’s diaspora, most notable of which were Bank of Uganda’s presentation on a recent survey of diaspora remittance activity and Robert Tugume’s presentation on Uganda’s ‘Upstream Petroleum Sector’ (a sure-to-be hot button topic in 2010 and beyond). More on that later. I was happy to have Ida Horner (@ethnicsupplies) as my tweeting partner otherwise, I would have been the only one manning #ugdiapora hashtag party. Internet at Hotel Africana was in and out so the twitter stream updates were quite intermittent.

The first day kicked off as per usual, three hours late with a steady trickle of diaspora joining the proceedings as speakers were rushed through their presentations. The compressed timeframes due to late starts more than irked a few people who would have preferred to have more time to interact with speakers and panelists. Arguably the star presentation was the opening presentation from Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Honorable Okello. He recounted his almost penniless reaspora journey, to his subsequent rise as an entrepreneur and now minister. He cautioned that one shouldn’t come back to Uganda thinking that things are going to happen quickly. In fact, patience needs to be your biggest asset as you consider moving back.

INVESTMENT:
Professor Maggie Kigozi, Executive Director of Uganda Investment Authority gave a rosy picture of all the industries that are sitting idle and waiting for investment capital. She highlighted the efforts the government has put into building an industrial processing park in Namamve as well as an overview of current occupants. There’s a lack of value-add manufacturing, especially in agriculture. A majority of agri exports are unprocessed raw materials; coffee beans, fruits, and seeds which are exported for processing, then re-imported as finished goods. (Value-addition is central to Project Diaspora’s two banner development projects, UMPG and the Women of Kireka, both with export product lines that can be manufactured and processed in-country.)

According to Prof. Kigozi, the value addition manufacturing sector can tap into a cheap labor force and stimulate the economy. It is certainly an area where the diaspora can target their $780 million in remittance dollars. Also waiting to be fully-tapped is the tourism sector, currently bringing in just over a million tourists a year, behind Kenya’s 2 million. In fact just about every sector in Uganda is wide open for business. The energy sector, for those pocketed enough to tackle that industry, are especially positioned to reap both profits and notoriety. Kigozi emphasized that we as a diaspora just need to bring our ideas and capital; to maximize the available investment sectors. Although I am not so sure about the merits of packaging Idi Amin as a tourist attraction, but I get her point.

CITIZENSHIP:
A heated debate over the state of the duel citizenship bill was partially put to rest on the second day with the announcement that members of the diaspora are now freely allowed to hold duel citizenships. This is a great first step but left several questions unanswered and a majority of confused at the implementation of the bill. While you can legally hold two passports, the bill does not fully restore your citizenship. You are for example stripped of the right to hold certain positions in government. The bill does not address absentee voting. You can’t march into the Ugandan consulate in the UK for example and cast your ballot for elections in Uganda.

Let me get this straight, you want us to come home and invest our $780 million annually and participate in knowledge transfer but you can’t be bothered to include us in the conversation on how we should be governed? Reform starts at the grassroots sure, but without a fresh injection of new ideas & methods on governance, then it’s going to be the same stale leadership that will cancel out any progress the diaspora injects into the private sector. Without adherence to rule of law, for example, it doesn’t matter how many laws your enact. Reform most often comes from without, rarely from within. In Uganda’s case, I don’t see reform happening in any of our lifetimes, if the status quo is (lawfully) protected.

So, in order to maximize diaspora participation and effectiveness, it is imperative the duel citizenship bill be amended to address its Swiss cheese offerings to us, and pay us some due respect by restoring our right to participate in how we are led.

GOVERNANCE & POLITICS:
There were a few nuggets of useful ideas presented on the second day of the summit, but not enough to save the forum from a staged satirical comedy of errors. The political party-line grandstanding and microphone hogging gave way to some amusing exchanges, but by and large, it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before at other diaspora gatherings.

Here’s how I think the political forum should have been structured. FIVE-minute introductions aside, the forum should allotted a majority of the time to the diaspora, who clearly wanted to know how the government is going to address their needs. Each politician should have introduced themselves, then asked ‘how can I help you help Uganda?’ Instead we got 15-minute monologues, with everyone taking cat swipes at each other and only a handful of questions allowed for diaspora feedback. Up to today, I can’t figure out what types of solutions they would enact specifically to help the diaspora become a more transformational force!

Finally, the bill criminalizing homosexuality was addressed in brief, it was then I got to see first-hand that Uganda’s leadership has its priorities confused. There were some reasoned calls to stall or scrap the bill for further review, but no one addressed why the bill was introduced in the first place. And why capital punishment for a lifestyle that doesn’t harm anyone! Protecting Uganda’s traditional way of life is a sorry excuse to enact the death penalty at a time when we are fast hurtling toward a globalized HUMAN culture. Why stop there? Why not the death penalty for prostitution? Defilement? Failure to stop at a red light with a matatu full of people? Dare I propose the death penalty for embezzling public funds? How about blatant disregard for the constitution? I see all the above offenses as much more threatening to the way of life for Uganda’s 33 million people than the lifestyle of less than 1% of the population.

THE DIASPORA DESK:
Announcement of the new diaspora desk at the department of internal affairs was an encouragement at least that our importance is recognized and steps are in place to formally start to address our issues. The new office could learn some best practices from Rwanda’s aggressively organized Diaspora network that was launched in mid 2008. Watch this space for updates out of the new office.

If you attended the event or have some ideas on how next year’s Home is Best Summit could be an even bigger success, feel free to share in the comments.

This week finds me in Kampala, Uganda for the 3rd annual Diaspora Home is Best Summit. It’s been a gathering of some of the most visible Ugandan Diaspora in the West. Among them is my favorite UK entrepreneur and resident, Ida Horner, founder of Ethnic Supplies.

I caught up with Ms. Horner earlier this year on Twitter and it’s been evident since our first conversation that we were destined to work together. (I’ll be posting my initial interview I did with Ida earlier this year if I can get some decent wifi to upload it in the next few days.) Ida has been sourcing hand-made crafts from various women’s groups in East Africa including Madagascar, Rwanda, and Kenya. It just made sense after our many discussions and collaborations that she should revisit sourcing crafts in Uganda from the women of Kireka. Ms. Horner has been buying hand-made crafts from the women in collaboration with Project Diaspora, in an all-out effort to help the women build marketable skills beyond crushing stones for less than a dollar a day at the quarry.

It was a welcome nugget of progress to not only have Ms. Horner come to visit, but joining us also was a Backpackers Kampala diaspora run-in of mine, John Kayongo. Mr. Kayongo is in the theater industry and does a lot of theater exchange between Uganda and The Netherlands, where he’s based. Additionally, John is a home-grown tee-shirt designer (and a worthy one too). I’ll get back to John a little latter.

We visited the women at the quarry on a gray and drizzly day for December in Kampala. The women gathered to see the client that, in the last few months, has been the sole source of creative inspiration (and additional income) on their journey out of the quarry.

The first order shipped out to the UK this past fall and PD personally picked up the payment for the women while we were in London for Africa Gathering. Similar orders have been trickling in from Ethnic Supplies that the women have been enthusiastically fulfilling.

Arguably the toughest part had to achieving the quality of finished product one would expect in the UK. Crushing stones isn’t a task that requires finesse per se; on the contrary, brute force is generally the order of the day. Making jewelry, requires a whole new set of talents that the women seem to be adapting to with cat-like flexibility. The process of approaching perfection and fit and polish isn’t instantaneous. If anything, it’s extremely situational and subjective. After all you are making jewelry. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but quality, polish and attention to detail are squarely in the hands of the women. Great quality means continued orders, shabby delivery could very well jeopardize a promising way of life.

Ms. Horner spent a good portion of the meeting with the women looking at new designs the women had come up with. It was strikingly visible that the women were taking quite well to their new promising profession. They presented what seemed like hundreds of new designs. There was a visible improvement in quality, style and inspiration, a clear indication that the women had a drive and initiative to work their way out of a life of crushing stones. Ms. Horner came away from the meeting with a positive outlook. “The work is fantastic. The quality of the necklaces were very good. Above all, I felt incredibly, incredibly privileged. They gave me an audience, and shared their life with me. It’s going to be a lot of work on both our parts.”

The meeting ended with Ms. Horner purchasing an armful of the new designs. “Yeah, there’s a future,” she said, “and if it’s going to be, it’s going to be up to us.”

Mr. Kayongo explored possibilities of having the women produce his shirt designs, with locally sourced materials from start to finish including the shirts, designs, and labor. Mr. Kayongo’s designs, based on traditional mask art and etched graffiti-style in leather sewn on organic cotton shirts immediately drew the attention of the women. Mr. Kayongo said that in-country value addition is something that is important to him because it allows the local individuals to use their ideas, skills and tools as a means to emancipate themselves.

“I think through sharing, we can create something. I see the local individual, how can they emancipate themselves. And I can look at their ideas. For me it’s about, let’s learn and let’s share, and then create something new and put it out there in the market. I can look at it as a European to see how could I put it in the market.”

The addition of Mr. Kayongo to the possible list of clients for the women is one step closer to the women realizing their dream of transitioning from quarry workers to skilled laborers. Project Diaspora will be releasing funds raised during our 2008 fund-raising campaigns earlier this year for the purchase of the first set of sewing machines. We will also be releasing funds to pay for the first 2010 school term for the women’s 45 children.

Ultimately, our goal is to help the women emancipate themselves by succeeding commercially so we don’t have to do any more fund-raisers for them. If you’d like to partner with the women in anyway, please do let us know. They’ll be more than happy to give you an audience.

Background to the Summit
Uganda Government through Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) has been executing several programs that have been essential and critical in National development. These programs have been designed in line with the national strategies like the Competitiveness Investment Climate Strategy (CICS) which has mapped out the main activities and listed the expected outcomes. Under these programs, UIA focused on pro-active investment promotion and facilitation as a core activity. Under the promotion and facilitation part, the Diaspora investment stands out as a main component which needed more attention. UIA has effectively undertaken its pro-active role to inform the Diaspora about investment and trade opportunities that exist at home.

The Ugandan Diaspora, at different levels, occasionally met with UIA and Government officials promoting investment packages at their meetings or conventions on the opportunities that exist in the country and the region as a whole. Issues of the general policy, regulatory frameworks as well initiatives that the Uganda Government has in place to make home the best investment destination are discussed. These issues are manifested by the theme “Home is the Best” for all Diaspora Conferences held in Uganda since 2004. The last Conference was held in Gulu and Kampala. A decision was then made to have a Diaspora Conference in December of every year.

It is a common practice that many Ugandans in the Diaspora trek home to cerebrate the Christmas festivals with the families. Therefore this year’s Conference code named “Home is the Best Summit -3” will be held in Lira on 23rd December 2009, Kampala on 29th to 30th December 2009, and Mbale on 4th January 2010. Home is the Best Summit – 3 because it will be the third Conference to organise under such a theme.

Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) is coordinating Government Departments/Institutions and the Private Sector to realize this Diaspora Investment Summit.

Summit Objectives
The “Home is the Best” Forum which has become an annual event is intended to embrace all Ugandans in the Diaspora .The Summit will also allows the Diaspora to actively express ideas on the development and review processes of policy and regulatory frame work regarding the business environment. Members of the Diaspora also get the opportunity to reflect on their business investment achievements at home.

Summit Structure
The Summit structure will include presentations, discussion panels and may be live broadcasting that will discuss trade & investment opportunities and challenges in different areas of the country. There will be side events that will include Exhibitions and Fashion Shows, Entertainment, Cultural Activities, Youths Activities and Diners, and Cocktails. This years Summit will pay special attention to Agriculture-Agro-possessing especially Value Addition to our abundant natural resources, ICT especially Business Process Outsourcing & Multimedia, Education Finance ,Health care and Tourism and other areas.

The out of Kampala meets (Lira and Mbale) give the Diaspora participants a chance to see the countryside and the numerous latent investment and trading opportunities outside the capital.

Participation in the Summit
Approximately 300 to 450 Diaspora members and their families who make the annual Christmas holiday pilgrimage to Uganda are expected to attend this year’s Summit. Last year’s (2008) events hosted in Gulu and Kampala had more that 250 participants. There will be strong presence of Ugandan Business Community, Government Officials, NGO’S and limited general public.

Summit Outcome
The Forum usually comprises as an exhibition of the solutions to the Diaspora needs, discussions on challenges, and new opportunities. Financial institutions, the construction & building industry, trading houses and the private sector as whole present their branded packages to the Ugandan Diaspora who usually lack information and knowledge about the home economic and investment climate.

Finally the Summit agenda will recommend the practical actions, time lines and tools that will lead to improved measures for better environment and embark on initiatives that will promote more Diaspora-led investments in the country.

Uganda Investment Authority (UIA) and the Private Sector in Uganda is organising yet another Diaspora Investment Summit, under the theme “HOME IS THE BEST 3”. Three business summits are scheduled to take place in Lira, Kampala (Hotel Africana) and Mbale on 23rd December 2009, 29th to 30th December 2009, and 4th January 2010 respectively.

The “Home is the Best” Forum has become an annual event that embraces all Ugandans in the Diaspora into active participation in the development and review processes of policy and regulatory frame work regarding the business environment. Members also get the opportunity to reflect on their business investment achievements at home. .

The Forum usually comprises an exhibition of the solutions to the Diaspora needs, discussions on challenges, and new opportunities. Financial institutions, the construction & building industry, trading houses and the private sector as a whole present their branded packages to the Ugandan Diaspora who usually lack information and knowledge about the home’s economic and investment climate.

Approximately 300 to 450 Diaspora members and their families, who make the annual Christmas holiday pilgrimage to Uganda, attend the Summit. Last year’s (2008) events were hosted in Gulu and Kampala. The out of Kampala meets give the participants a chance to see the countryside and the numerous latent investment and trading opportunities outside the capital.

This year’s summit will pay special attention to Investment and Trade opportunities in ICT especially Business Process Outsourcing and Multimedia, Value Addition to our abundant natural resources (Agriculture-Agro-possessing), Tourism, Health care, Education Bio-Technology etc.

There will be number of side events that will include i) Exhibitions and Fashion Shows where Ugandans at home and in the Diaspora with display their products and services, ii) Entertainment & Cultural Activities where participants will discuss the effects of modernisation on the culture, there will be training sessions on valued cultural norms including gender issues, iii) Youths and Children Activities which will include games and sports iv) Dinners, and Cocktails.

For further Information, please contact:

Mr. John Musajjakawa
Senior Investment Promotion Officer
Uganda Investment Authority
Twed Plaza, 2nd Floor, Plot 22B Lumumba Avenue
Tel: 0414-301161, Fax: 0414-342903
Email: musajja@ugandainvest.com or info@ugandainvest.com

Mrs. Doris Mitti Kimuli
Deputy Director, Communications & Public Relations
Uganda Investment Authority
Twed Plaza, 2nd Floor, Plot 22B Lumumba Avenue
Tel: 0414-301101, Fax: 0414-342903
E-mail: dmitti@ugandainvest.com, info@ugandainvest.com
Website: www.ugandainvest.com

My “Mother” calls to me every waking moment of my life. Living without her is silently killing me. I die a little bit each day that passes by without me in her tender loving arms. Not feeling her, her every scent, the gentle soothing sound she makes on a cold and rainy morning. The beautiful sound of rain drops on courrogated iron sheets is a sound my ears yearn to hear.

My “Mother” feels ‘ALIVE’. The surrogate mother that attempts to do what my “Mother” does so natrually, without much effort feels stiff. I feel no warmth from her cold rigid embrace. My feet do not feel right. This soil is foreign. The air smells wrong. Where are the smooth, gentle rolling clouds that my “Mother” faithfully put out to great me when I woke up each morning? Where are the blades of grass that she gently kissed early each morning and left with a drop of diamond that dangled and gleamed on each blade of grass in the morning sunlight? They said this surrogate mother would make me strong. They said that she would bless me as her breasts were said to flow with milk and honey. Her milk is sour to my taste. O how I long for my “Mothers” milk. It tasted good. It tasted right. The fruit of her land was juicy, succulent and tasted real. Out here, the fruit of this land is dry, tasteless and bland. It’s like it’s essence has been sucked out. I look around me with wonder, sadness and pity. The children of this mother do not know what good fruit really tastes like. So they excitedly eat what their mother feeds them and use words to express how good her food is oblivious of the goodness of the food that my “Mother” feeds her children.

O how I long for you Mama Africa. I can gently heat you cry out to me, come home my son.

Yes, Mama, I say to her. I am coming.

I’m coming home. I’m coming home soon.

1. Protecting Displaced Africa: Selective Rescue, Economist, p. 52

As we are working with internally displaced persons (the Women of Kireka), this article was of interest. On October 23rd, the Africa Union signed a convention stating that “African governments will have to look after their displaced citizens.”

Ironically enough, this happened in Kampala, Uganda, a country with somewhere between 1m and 4m IDPs. In the North, while the IDP camps have mostly shut down, the many who fled the war and ended up poor and marginalized in urban centers like Kampala and Jinja are receiving next to nothing.

Recognizing IDPs is, admittedly, an expensive and messy process. How to differentiate IDPs from the poor? how to determine the best means of relocation, resources or money or both?

Refugee Law Projet is a local organization and a strong advocate for the inclusion of IDP protection in Uganda and elsewhere. For many years, they have been trying to answer these questions and get the government to act. For more information on IDPs, you can consult their website.

2. Migration: A constant Search for Opportunity, The Africa Report, p. 16:

We all know the story of the boat that capsizes killing dozens of refugees on the way to Spain or France. However, a less known story is that of migration within Africa. The Africa Report says that “only a tiny fraction of the 17m African migrants who have chosen to leave their home countries to seek opportunities abroad. The vast majority of them, pershaps, 12 m, have stayed within Africa – often at the same time supporting even larger numbers of people at home.”

The article also highlights new numbers on the Diaspora and their contributions back home.

• African migration has led to more than $23bn in remittances in 2007, approx. $12bn to Sub-Saharan Africa and $11.5bn to North Africa
• The amount of remittances could actually be 50% higher because most migrants send money through informal channels
• In Lesotho, remittances account for 30% of GDP.
• In Cape Verde, Comoros, Lesotho and Uganda, remittances represent over 25% of export earnings

However, as the article also highlights:

[Remittances] do little to change the underlying structures that trap millions in poverty. And some economists believe that beauce remittances are spent on consumption – food, clothing, weddings etc. – they do not encourage development.

In line with this,

Governments need to consider ways to make sending and receiving remittances easier for migrants and their families. Doing so would increase the productivity of the money they send and it may benefit scores more – as well as make additional small but important differences at the household and community level.

Leila C. of Samasource at Facebook Developers Garage in Kampala, Uganda

This morning I had an opportunity to be featured on The Hugh Macken Live radio show. Actually should I say, Leila Charayath Janar—who I interviewed last year at the Facebook Developer’s Garage in Uganda, was the featured guest. Myself, along with one Maria Umar from Pakistan were there for support.

I have to say that Samasource has given me the opportunity to feed my two loves: economic development in Africa and my work as a creative professional. Yes, they may sound completely unrelated fields but that’s the beauty of Samasource. If you have the passion to do something socially responsible, they’ll find a way to accommodate your field of work. From transcription, to business processing, to computer application development, Samasource has the ability to cater to your needs while actively creating employment opportunities in emerging markets.

Samasource enables marginalized people, from refugees in Kenya to women in rural Pakistan, to receive life-changing work opportunities via the Internet. The core of this concept is microwork – little bits of labor that can be performed anytime and anywhere that add up to a real livelihood for our partners. In parallel, we enable socially responsible companies, small businesses, nonprofits, and entrepreneurs in the US to contribute to economic development by buying services from our workforce at fair prices.

As a designer and web developer, it’s fulfilling to have the ability to tap into great developers and put really marginalized individuals to work in Africa, thereby merging my two passions. My work at TMS Ruge Media and Project Diaspora couldn’t be more diametrically opposed, but in a way, they are a means to each others end. Project Diaspora was started on the premise that it’s time Africa’s development emerge at hands of the great work it’s Diaspora is engaging in. In a way, I am fulfilling that mission as a member of that Diaspora.

It’s a far better feeling to me, putting Africa to work than donating money to a hunger cause or joining yet another awareness campaign. To me, this is Africa working, this is Brand Africa rising in the digital age and on par with it’s Western counterparts. I look at the quality of the work under development and I am taken aback a little.  What’s also amazing is that the finished product is indistinguishable from the quality of my American-based programmer, (@DVaint), and he is really, really good. In fact, he was my only coder for over nine years! It’s not because I doubted that his replacement could be found in Africa, but the complete satisfaction with the results as well.

It’s led me to think, imagine if we could multiply that experience across multiple coding teams in Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, even Eritria; all working on game-changing projects and pioneering innovations far greater than Status.ug, MXit or Ushahidi! What happens when all of that collective intelligence and talent starts contributing it’s resources to the global economic landscape? The next 25 years are going to be interesting in the digital landscape over Africa. Already, we are seeing hubs of excellence rising from whence there was nothing to speak of; the rubble of Kenya’s oft-talked about post-election violence, gave rise to Ushahidi; Johannesburg and Cape Town are already well-reknown as hubs for excellent software companies; even Uganda’s recent riots in the capital shed light on Kampala’s underground digirati who used digital tools to provide eye-witness accounts of the violence in the absence of mainstream media. Increasingly, it seems that innovation in Africa is borne out of necessity to respond to injustice. Given the rise of a digital working class, how long before innovation in Africa is driven by the hunger to excel?

So if you are a development-minded or a member of the African Diaspora and would like to give work as your mission to do good or put Africa’s idle talent, please contact Leila at Samasource. If you don’t have a project that Samasource can assist you in staffing, you can also donate to help them continue their work putting emerging markets to work.

I’ll be revealing the two projects under production at Samasource next month. So check back on a full-post on both projects next month.

Well, we have returned from Africa and a wonderful visit with the Women of Kireka. There is much exciting news with regard to the women and their transition to sustainable work that will get them out of the Kireka quarry. We have a firm order for 100 bracelets, both leather beaded ones and ones made out of paper. That is hopefully the first of many orders for hand-crafted items from the women. They have also brainstormed several really unique ideas and we are really looking forward to the prototypes. However in with the good news and the forward momentum there is still some gritty reality that must be addressed.
Before we get into that I thought I would share a bit of the celebration we had with you. They really did make us feel welcome!

A Performance by the Women of Kireka from Project Diaspora on Vimeo.

The Children of Kireka from Project Diaspora on Vimeo.

The children are due to start school and we just discovered that there are no monies at all to send them to school. Actually like Mother’s every where their very first order of business was to talk to us about the children’s schooling. For these ladies keeping their kids in school tops out any interest they had in their own training program! The costs to send a child to school in Uganda are nominal, but when you don’t have it… well you don’t have it. School starts on September 7th and it is our hope that we can raise enough funds to make that happen for all the Kids of Kireka. If you are interested in helping these children get to school this term please donate via the Women if Kireka donation button to the right.

If you are interested in sponsoring a particular child or family please let us know and we will keep you up to date on the child’s progress in school and other details. I know the mother’s and children would love to thank you for your support.

Here is a break down of the families and the needed fees (US Dollars):

Mother:
Alice Ajok
Children:
1. Patrick Ochora, 14 yrs
Sponsored in full by David Sisaki 9/6/09 THANK YOU DAVID!
$27.00/55,000 ug sh

2. Nancy Adongo, (Dreams of being a Nurse) 8 yrs
Sponsored in full by Sandy Wickberg. 9/6/09. THANK YOU SANDY!
$27.00/55,000 ug sh

3. Patricia Achiro
Sponsored in full by Tammy Theis. THANK YOU TAMMY!
$27.00/55,000 ug sh

4. Innocent Odutuka
Sponsored in full by Tammy Theis. THANK YOU TAMMY!
$27.00/55,000 ug sh

Mother:
Sabina Layet
Children:
5. Susan Aceng, 15 yrs
Sponsored in full by Melanie Spiegel. THANK YOU MELANIE!
$103.93/210,000 ug sh

6. Daniel Okema
Sponsored in full by Vickie Barcomb 9/5/09 THANK YOU VICKIE!
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

Mother:
Angella Alwoch
Children:
7. Ocuc Alwoch, 13 yrs
Sponsored in full by Jeff Stephens. THANK YOU JEFF!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

8. Ayaa Alwoch, 8 yrs
Sponsored in full by Jeff Stephens. THANK YOU JEFF!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

9. Aber Alwoch, 16 yrs
Sponsored in fill by Jill Humphries. THANK YOU JILL!
$153.43/310,000 ug sh/font>

10. Ayon Alwoch, 14 yrs
Sponsored in full by Doug Dawson. THANK YOU DOUG!
$44.54/90,000 ug sh

Mother:
Agnes Aneno
Children:
11. Juliana Laker, 4 yrs
Sponsored in full by Judith Cannon. Thank you JUDY!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

12. Samuel Bitek, 8 yrs
Sponsored in full by Judith Cannon. Thank you JUDY!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

13. Amone Aneno, 12 yrs
Sponsored in full by Judith and Lisa Cannon. Thank you JUDY and LISA!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

Mother:
Christina Aloyo
Children:
14. Thomas Aloyo, 12 yrs
Sponsored in full by Robert Jones. THANK YOU ROBERT!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

15. Stella Aloyo, 13 yrs
Sponsored in full by Robert Jones. THANK YOU ROBERT!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

16. Achan Aloyo, 8 yrs
Sponsored in full by Heidi Pickering. THANK YOU HEIDI!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

Mother:
Gloria Achan
Children:
17. Stuart Nsingwire, 16 yrs, S.4
$222.72/450,000 ug sh

18. Stefan Alinda, 11 yrs, P.6
Sponsored in full by Mike Martin. THANK YOU MIKE!
$98.98/200,000

19. Vicky Aol, 12 yrs
Sponsored in full by Mark Fleitman. THANK YOU MARK!
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

20. Prisca Acayo, 5 yrs
$79.19/160,000

21. Michael Ochira, 3yrs
$79.19/160,000

Mother:
Scovia Arach
Children:
22. Junior Okello, 11yrs
$42.07/85,000 ug sh

23. Godfrey Odongo, 9 yrs
Sponsored in full!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

24. Cosmos Otim, 7 yrs
$42.07/85,000

25. Bonny Opinyo, 3 yrs
Sponsored in full!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

26. New Lady Acen, 3yrs
Sponsered in full by Barney and Barbara Boeder. THANK YOU BARNEY AND BARBARA!
$27.70/60,000 ug sh

Mother:
Gertrude Abo
Children:
27. Geoffrey Obo
$44.54/90,000 ug sh

28. Sarah Akot
Sponsored in full by Sarah Meaders 9/6/09. THANK YOU SARAH!
$39.59/80,000

Mother:
Sarah Abonyo
Children:
Awaiting information

Mother:
Santa Akech
Children:
29. Nancy Aneno, (Dreams of being a Nurse) 19 yrs, P6
Sponsored in full by Vickie Barcomb. THANK YOU VICKIE!
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

30. Edward Ojara, (Dreams of being a Doctor) 16 yrs, S1
$227.67/460,000

31. Gerald Pekorom, (Dreams of being a Business Man) 13 yrs, P6
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

32. Barbra Lanyero, (Dreams of being a Teacher) 10 yrs, P4
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

33. Mercy Achiro, (Dreams of being a Police Woman) 8 yrs, P2
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

Mother:
Grace Lamunu
Children:
34. Innocent Alimochan, 17 yrs, S1
$183.12/370,000

35. Denis Lubangakene, (Dreams of being a Driver) 14 yrs, P5
$79.19/160,000

36. Brenda Anena, (Dreams of being a Teacher) 10 yrs, P5
$79.19/160,000

37. Gloria Abalo, (Dreams of being a Police Woman) 7 yrs, P2
$44.54/90,000 ug sh

Mother:
Hellen Anyek
Children:
38. Denis Okwera, 17 yrs, S1
$242.51/490,000

39. Isaac OKello, (Dreams of being an Engineer) 14 yrs P7
$54.44/110,000

40. Nelson Onenchan, (Dreams of being a Lawyer) 10 yrs, P5
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

41. Carlo Langoya, (Dreams of being a Doctor) 7 yrs, P2
$49.40/100,000 ug sh

42. Geoffrey Opwonya
Nursery next year

Mother:
Christine Auma
Children:
43. Beatrice Lanyero, (Dreams of being a Teacher) 17 yrs, P5
$44.54/90,000 ug sh

44. Nancy Akello, (Dreams of being a Teacher) 14 yrs, P2
Sponsored in full by Dinah DeLuca. THANK YOU DINAH!
$39.59/80,000

45. Fiona Apio, 10 yrs
Sponsored in full!
$39.59/80,000

46. Bob Nyeko, 7 yrs
Sponsored in full!
$39.59/80,000

Mother:
Milly Auma
Children:
Awaiting information

Mother:
Jennifer Achiro
Children:
47. Daniel Akemkwene, 9 yrs, P3 Sponsored in full by Lisa Cannon, Thank you LISA!
$48.01/97,000

48. Ronnie Okot, (Dreams of being a Doctor) 8 yrs, P3 Sponsored in full by Lisa Cannon, Thank you LISA!
$48.01/97,000

Racheal Apio, 1 yrs

Gabriel Ochen, 1 yrs

Not too long ago we covered the fact that the first ever WherecampAfrica was being held in Nairobi. Well, I neglected to follow up and there are some cool things that have come out of that event.

Firstly…. WHERECAMP KAMPALA!!!

WhereCamp Africa: Kampala is tentatively planned for Friday October 30th at the same venue as the Africa GIS 2009 conference. (I had to look it up, GIS= Geographic Information System) The event will occur on the final day of the conference and should allow plenty of opportunity for traditional GIS folks to interact with local developers.

A little about the GIS Conference:

AFRICAGIS is the premier conference and exhibition focusing on geo-information technologies and applications in Africa. The principal objective of AFRICAGIS is to provide a platform for geo-information professionals from Africa to learn about geo-information technology and its applications. It provides a forum for geo-information professionals to meet, interact, and be updated on new developments, products and emerging trends and issues.

There is more information coming, so stay tuned and well let you know about all the WhereCamp developments.

And if that is not enough mapping fun for you…. also in the works:
WhereCampAfrica Bamako!
In the planning stages for April 2010 during the 2nd annual African Geospatial week. During which the annual CGIAR-CSI (The Consultative Group for International Agriculture Research- Consortium for Spatial Information) meeting will take place. Keep your eyes peeled!

Along with all the camps the team at WhereCampAfrica in conjunction with Open Street Map and Development Seed is also planning a potential Open Source Mapping Project in East Africa: AfricaGIS Participatory Mapping Project.

From their Prospectus

The opportunity is immediately available to leapfrog the African mapping community into the latest accessible practices of the GeoWeb, utilizing open data, open standards and open source software for application and systems development.
This project aims to catalyze a dormant but otherwise very motivated African geo community through local, community based, but scalable participatory mapping

With four ambitious phases, this project works hard to get the participatory part right:
We have already told you about phase 1:
WhereKampala – An informal un-conference focused on mapping and spatial technology where participants set the agenda.

The rest of the phases include:
Map Kibera – Mapping the Kibera slum area of Nairobi to raise awareness, catalyze a community and test open data licensing with major vendors and initiatives

Mapping Parties – Expand on mapping Kibera and hold mapping parties in and around East African capitols including Nairobi, Kampala, Lilongwe and Kigali.

Open Source Geo Workshop - Train in the use of Open Source Geo technologies, including PostGIS, GeoServer, GeoWebCache, GeoNetwork and Open Layers immediately before or After the AfricaGIS conference.

This all volunteer project is looking for funding to get off the ground… so contact them if you are interested in giving this important project a helping-hand.

Find Jubal Harpster:
via e-mail: jharpster@wherecampafrica.org
Jubal on Twitter

WherecampAfrica on Twitter

For those of you looking for more information on the first WhereCamp:
One of the main objectives of the original camp was to showcase the opportunities that rapidly changing Information and communication technologies offer. The hope was to really leverage the media to raise awareness especially in the area of agricultural production and productivity. Media represented at the event included BBC, IPS, UN IRIN, Nation TV and Newspaper as well as the Africa Science News Service. The complete list of media outlets that covered the event is impressive. WhereCampAfrica Coverage Report_June2009

#Afridev panelist at South by Southwest: (L to R) David Kobia - Ushahidi & Mashada; Rose Shuman - Question Box; Erik Hersman - Afrigadget; Jon Gosier - AppAfrica Labs

This past weekend, I had the honor of being invited to be on a panel discussion at South by Southwest (SXSW), “Appfrica: How Web Applications are Helping Emerging Markets Grow” The panel was moderated by one of my favorite techies who’s single-handedly birthing Uganda’s “tech sphere,” John Jon Gosier. Jon is the founder of AppAfrica Labs, an incubator based in Kampala, Uganda. Joining me on the panel were David Kobier and Erik Hersman from Ushahidi and Rose Shuman, founder of Question Box. You can watch the video (bad audio feed) or read a recap of the discussion by ALEX DE CARVALHO or Jon Gossier.

While the topic of discussion centered mainly around the road blocks inherit in writing apps for developing regions like Africa, the underlying hurdle to the growth (and commercial viability of products in this space) is connectivity. Wether you are an African or a Westerner developing applications and technologies with global ambition, connectivity is going to affect how you build and roll out your product. This is not to say that all of Africa should be looked at as holistically unconnected. Certainly, there are markets in Africa where connectivity is vastly better;  South Africa and the Mediterranean North African countries, for example. The opposite holds of areas that have abysmal broadband infrastructure, like the DRC, Southern Sudan, etc.

But this patchwork service availability is a “now” problem, let’s look at Africa 24 months from now. Of the 5 serious broadband initiatives slated for completion in the next 5 2 years, SEACOM is in the process of landing this in Kenya and will be operational by this summer. The rest, including Google’s O3b Networks, go live within the next 18 months. In order to develop and succeed in Africa’s emerging “tech scape,” you have to have the ability to look around the corner and quickly predict what the environment will look like. Actually, that’s not even true, you have to have the vision to paint a picture of what you want it to look like! Look at the current conditions, spotty as they are, as gaping holes in market opportunities. Think outside the box. You have to think mobile, and mobile web. Africa isn’t a laptop destination, it’s a mobile-based application destination. What market solutions will you have ready to hit critical mass once this major stumbling block to market access is alleviated? You have to be able to finish the African Proverb, “When the cable arrives…”

SEEING THE BIG PICTURE AROUND THE CORNER

An article arrived in my inbox this morning that commented on Google’s acquisition of a startup video conferencing company. On the surface, Google acquiring another company is nothing earth-shattering. If fact, I am rather disappointed when a month goes by without Google swallowing investing in yet another upstart. But the landscape changes completely when you look around the corner and see what’s coming. Google is a major investor in O3B Networks (O3b), the nemesis to the uncoordinated consortium of highspeed undersea cable initiatives. Instead of laying fibre, O3b is betting on a constellation of 16-Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites to the tune of $650 million. LEO Satellite access would be more beneficial for landlocked countries because [satellites] would provide landlocked countries direct access to broadband backhaul without having to traverse and negotiate rights of access to undersea cables with coastal nations. This also relieves land-locked nations from costly and wrangle-some partnerships like EASSy—instead, allowing them the ability to independently deploy high-speed networks countrywide and worldwide.

Lets look closer.

Google pretty much offers a host of very good services for free: mail, calendaring, photo-management, video, etc. What is/was lacking from it’s vast portfolio of products, was realtime collaboration tools. Enter Marratech, a video conferencing and collaboration company, that Google just snapped up. Marry that acquisition and a successful launch of O3b, and you’ve got yourself uninhibited, real-time, global collaboration that includes developing markets. (Pssst! Tech-savvy, entrepreneurial Diasporans! This is where the light goes off in your head, I am just saying). All of a sudden, the playing field is leveled. Access is ubiquitous. African software engineers think globally, not regionally. The sky, as they say, is the limit.

All this, of course, is assuming that O3b can negotiate country-level spectrum rights. Steve Song, a Shuttleworth Foundation fellow in South Africa and general telecommunications enthusiast had this to say about the many challenges facing O3b’s impending launch via email last fall:

If O3b works out, it will be very good news for Africa. However, I see a few challenges in the way:

1) regulatory challenges. 03b will have to negotiate a spectrum license for every country they land in. Regulatory frameworks in
Africa are evolving but there is still a lot of undue influence by incumbent telcos who may or may not be interested in seeing o3b
succeed.

2) LEO satellites. Previous attempts to establish connectivity via a web of LEO satellite have both failed. Iridium and Teledesic sucked up a ton of money and both failed. Launching a satellite involved a certain amount of risk. Just look at the last Intelsat launch attempt. O3b multiplies that risk by 16. Also, these are non-geostationary orbit satellites which mean that a) they don’t stay
up as long as other satellites and b) they need to manage constant hand-off of bandwidth connections as the satellite pass over.

3) Greg Wyler. Founder of Terracom, then Rwantel. Stories differ about what happened there but I tend to take the side of the
Rwandans…. in the words of Minister Albert Butare…. “Promises were made…”

True on all three counts, but I am putting my money on Google. No, I am putting my money on all the broadband initiatives headed to Africa’s digital shores to succeed. If it’s true that competition is good for the consumer, then the existence of these ventures is a good sign. O3b Networks builds out it’s satellite network, and EASSy, NEPAD, et al lay down down some mean fibre. All of a sudden the cost of Africa merging onto the information super highway drops through the Serengeti floor.

THE TAKE AWAY

A digital highway is being built not to Africa, but out of Africa. From business processes outsourcing to next-generation technology and incubation hubs, Africa is ripe for technology investments. It’s still early enough in the game to engage Africa. In fact, the time is right to ask @afridev where the market opportunities are. The time is right to look around the corner and see the big picture. “Africa is rising.”

UPDATE (March 21, 07:51)
Made spelling correction and added additional links for reference.

WE HEART SOCIAL MEDIA
Thanks to the generosity and enthusiastic support of all our Twitter supporters, family and friends, Women of Kireka quickly tipped their $1,000 fund-raising campaign at The Point in less than 18 days. As Siena stated, after a lengthy conference call, Project Diaspora decided to lower the fund-raising goal to $1000 due to the stressful economic situation in hopes of raising the $1000 by March 1st. What we didn’t count on was the generous willingness of everyone who donated to pass on the message for others to donate as well. The result was a deluge of good-hearted giving and social media putting its best foot forward.

For the first time, we saw the power of social media pushing this campaign to the “tipping point”. To some, this might not be a massive accomplishment, but to us, it is a massive first HOOOrah! into the many projects that we have on tap here at PD. As noted in our list of things one should know about development projects, this is very much a manageable budget, with manageable goals for our first project.

Our next step is a strategic review of our planned use of the funds that you have generously awarded the women. We will have a budget and timelines in the coming weeks. Thanks to everyone who donated. We hope to have some training activity on the ground in the first weeks of March ’09 with continued escalation of updates.

OH BUT THERE’S MORE…
On my visit to see the women for the first time last December, I had shot some video at the quarry. The footage went missing and I had a sinking feeling that I had left it in Uganda. This week, while cleaning off my desktop (I love a clean desktop), something told me to double-check an untitled folder before I deleted it.

Boom! Gold!

So it is my pleasure to share the videos with you. They have been uploaded to our newly-minted Youtube channel. Here’s one of those videos. You will have to excuse the goofy-haired, blabbering host. He’s new at this.

As with my encounter Amos, meeting Grace Lamono at the Kireka stone quarry was an uplifting experience. She’s warm and out-spoken, and in a way she’s the de facto spokeswoman for the the other 14 Acholi refugee women and their children. It’s not because conversational English skills, but also her upbeat, expressive and effervescent personality. On my visit to the quarry last December, I was able to sit down with her for a few minutes to talk about her goals, aspirations and the group’s challenges trying to survive as domestic refugees in Kampala’s fast-paced, and expensive environment. I wish I’d had an opportunity to talk to all the women the day I visited but most of them were not working that day as it was a holiday weekend.

You can find out more about grace by visiting the official Women of Kireka informational blog, maintained by Siena Anstis.

 

FUND RAISING UPDATE:

As you can see in the sidebar, the fund-raising is going better than expected given the uncertain economic times. We are creeping down slowly towards our first $1000-goal mark. If you haven’t already pitched in, please help us hit that tipping point so we can kickstart some positive change in these women. A majority of these funds will be used to buy supplies and train the ladies to kick off their own skills-building fund raising efforts by making leather and beaded bracelets. We’ll have more information on how you can get one of these custom-made bracelets in the next few weeks. Stay tuned for more information. Again, if you haven’t joined the cause, please don’t hesitate, donate today.

My encounter with Amos last December offered me an opportunity to take a critical look at how development projects affect communities. I discovered that there’s always going to be someone left out in the cold, sitting outside the fringes of your project’s target audience. It’s not done on purpose, and it’s most certainly not done out of malice. Siena Anstis—who originally introduced PD to the Women of Kireka back in September of last year—simplified it for me when I told her how frustrating this realization was for me, “you can’t help everybody, but if you can, help someone.”

As much as I’d like it not to be true, it is. Amos fell outside the scope of our project with the women. If PD is going to be successful and get our project(s) off the ground, we have to be content with those limitations, however cruel they may seem. I took a look at the projects currently under PD’s portfolio, and lo if there are not lessons to be learned. Below, I have listed some things you’ll need to consider while starting your own development project. Keep in mind, all project needs vary and may indeed require adherence to these, none, or additional considerations; this is what we here at PD have learned so far.

1. Ask
   There’s nothing worse than starting a project that doesn’t need to be started at all. What you think is missing, might not be of material concern to the development of the community. It is important to have a dialog with the intended recipients of your good will. The simple act of asking—”what is it that you need, what is it that will make this community and your lives better?”—can go a long way to building good will and community buy-in for your project.  If you build something that benefits everyone, there’s a chance it will succeed and become self-sustaining. Make sure that those you mean to help understand the way to use what you are providing them. Do they know what a given tool does and what need it addresses. Is it a need that they want solved? Does it create value for them rather than cost them? Is it more valuable for them to keep or more valuable to sell? A simple conversation can help you determine if the project is sustainable. Furthermore, before you build a development project make sure there is not another group on the ground working successfully to do the same thing. Leverage their success for the good of those you are trying to help rather than starting from scratch.
2. Choose a narrow area of focus
   Choose a focused, specific area, or sector where you think you can make the most impact. The smaller, the better. Think of it as giving yourself a chance to get things right. The small size also allows you to work out the operational kinks. The bigger the project; the bigger the budget, constraints and responsibilities. If you are just starting out, don’t bite off more than you can chew, even if your heart is screaming for you to help everybody and their mother.
3. Kind-hearted development noob? Know thyself
   If you don’t speak Mandarin or know anything about Chinese culture and customs, your water project—however well-intended—will be headed for EPIC FAIL. If you are still determined to forge ahead, then spend a little extra time on step one above. If you to feel that you have walked in their shoes, and have no reservations about your project, then you are ready. Knowing thyself also requires knowing your limitations. Take it from our very own Siena Anstis, “DON’T START A DEVELOPMENT PROJECT ALONE IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”
4. Have a specific goal you want to accomplish with your project
   Make sure it’s something measurable and can be accomplished in a specific amount of time. For example: dig a well, in XYZ village, within three months. That way, at the end of three months, anyone with vested interest in your project can easily verify if the goal was accomplished or not.
5. Give yourself a realistic timeline
   You are probably going to spend more time fund-raising, than you are building the water project. Consider the logistics of your projects and how that affects its completion. How long will it take you to finish appropriate paperwork, if any? Are you going to need a team of people for this project, and how long will it take for you to recruit them, train them and bring them up to speed? What other priorities do you have in your life? Does the project timeline coincide with your travel schedule?
6. Have a manageable budget
   If your water project costs, say, a million dollars, chances are slim that you’ll be able to raise that amount in three months (unless of course, you already had the funds in your sofa, or you are related to the Gates family). It’s one thing to have step 1-5 planned out, but without a budget, your project most likely isn’t going to flow. Also, make sure it’s a budget that’s easily attainable — either through traditional fund-raising, investments, personal funds, or a combination of the above. If steps 1-5 are planned appropriately, by the time you get to step six, you will find that the budget required for the project is well within reach.
7. Use local capacity
   The use of local capacity means making every effort to utilize all available local resources (i.e., materials, labor, management, etc.). Unless you are a member of that community’s Diaspora, chances are you won’t be spending your whole life on this project, nor are you living in the same community. Consider what will happen when you leave. Who will take ownership of the project? Who is going to fix the well when it breaks down? Better yet, who knows how to fix it when it’s broken. Make sure the parts and supplies can be created or sourced locally; that includes local fix-it people. Don’t pull a Chinese and import your crew of consultants, technicians, and day laborers whose only task is pounding nails. Do make an effort to train willing individuals in areas where they may be lacking. Knowledge transfer is not only huge, but critical if your project is going to be sustainable over a long period of time.
8. Manage Expectations
   There’s nothing worse than promising Evian water, but delivering puddle water. Consider that the people you are helping are already in a desperate situation. If things were great, you wouldn’t be thinking of doing a project for them. All things considered, it’s better to be realistic with what it is that you can deliver. Do this in step one, and at every encounter with your recipients. Do be honest with them not only about the benefits, but the challenges you will face in bringing your project to fruition. If the project fails to come to fruition, at least they know you didn’t just abandon them. They will have information on the trials and tribulation of bringing that particular project, in that community, to fruition. This way, if someone else more capable comes along at a later point, they’ll hear all about it if they start at step one.
9. It’s OK to say no
   It’s inevitable that in the middle of your project you are going to identify cracks in the cement within your target community. And you are going to want to help. Here’s a hint. Don’t. Yes, it’s cruel. The reality being that if you help them too, what about everybody else? If you are already there doing a project, chances are, there are a lot more problems in that community, many beyond your reach or expertise and certainly outside the scope of your project. If it doesn’t conform to steps 1-5 on this list, let someone else do it. You have your hands full already. As in step eight, be honest with yourself and those you are helping. You are there to do a specific project within a specified amount of time, with a specific budget. There’s always going to be a subset of people that are beyond the scope and reach of any particular project. And that’s not your responsibility.
10. Don’t be afraid to bend the above rules
    Okay this sounds hypocritical, I know, but think about it. When has any recipe for success ever been followed to the letter? Every sauce requires adjustments, likewise, every project is a different monster with it’s own complexities and exceptions. If our Women of Kireka project can make an exception by considering the merits of helping Amos, perhaps there’s someone on the fringe that can benefit from you bending your rules a little. Just remember to consult step three carefully before you embark on any rule-bending.

So there you have it. A short guide to getting your very-own International Development project under way. It’s not the ultimate guide, but we hope with your input, it’ll grow up to be the über-guide to ID projects. And if it all seems too daunting and discouraging; take a deep breath, relax, and approach it one step at a time.