Finalist — Drivers of Change: Business Award: TechnoServe
‘Helping people help themselves through viable business” is how Leslie Johnston, one of TechnoServe’s country directors, describes the organisation.
The United States-based nonprofit organisation, which has been in operation for almost 40 years, runs programmes in 10 African countries, including Mozambique and Swaziland in Southern Africa.
In Mozambique it works in a number of sectors to expand processing and marketing capacity to provide more jobs for the rural poor.
The cashew nut industry, for instance, desperately needed rebuilding after the civil war. With 40 staff and a budget of US$6- million a year, TechnoServe helps entrepreneurs to establish processing plants, and trains farmers to produce a higher number of better quality nuts.
It has also helped launch a company that markets Mozambican cashews on international markets. This work has so far created 6 000 new jobs in rural areas and more than 12 processing factories, and the industry. It has the potential to create a higher income for almost one million farmers.
In Swaziland, the focus is on entrepreneurship. The programme started in 2006, when TechnoServe received enough money from USAid to run it for five years. It has different interventions for helping aspiring entrepreneurs, often farmers, and existing businesses to develop and grow.
One of the interventions is the Believe Begin Become (BBB) programme, which takes 60 entrepreneurs through a rigorous training programme.
TechnoServe invites applicantions through a competition. Staff go on a road show, telling people about this great way to start a business. Entrepreneurs then apply, go through an interview process and the applicants are reduced to 150. They are then judged on viability, experience, and the competition they will face.
Sixty are chosen to go through to the training component of the programme. One entrepreneur’s project is chosen for the grand prize of around R150 000.
But once the competition is over, the real work begins. ‘They enter after care,” says Johnston, country director for Swaziland. ‘We do a needs assessment and work with them. We are there to bounce ideas off, or to help with things like financial management.”
Johnston says about 30% of applicants end up starting their own businesses. ‘Our belief is to help people to help themselves,” she says. ‘I love getting out there, and meeting the farmers we are supporting, hearing how we’ve helped to link them to the market and given them better lives.”
The Drivers of Change judges described TechnoServe as an ‘excellent example of how business development can overcome poverty”.