Caught in the Middle

Mario and Samuel had their first encounter with the orange-eating group of oppositionist church leaders. That the leaders agreed to allow them to come to the meeting at all was a small victory, considering that they have been rebuffing me since the fall. I'll accept that as a tiny morsel of evidence that our nationals-first strategy of implementing this program is working: with Mario and Samuel in the lead, we were finally granted another hearing.

Of course, that we were granted another hearing is not to say that the leaders were completely ready to accept our ideas. The leaders provided our two new program coordinators with the same impassioned drubbing that they had given me.

Mario expressed afterwards that, despite our warnings, he was unprepared for their combativeness.

Samuel, who had been part of that very leadership team before accepting the current assignment, knew what he was up against but was still disheartened by their reaction. He understood the drive behind their bordering-on-belligerent behaviour, but now sees it as plain old selfishness.

They were, in a sense, caught between us, their employers, and them, their compatriots.

Mario and Samuel shared with the leaders the village-based savings and loan program that we learned about on our trip to Nampula. They explained that they see this program as a foundation that will serve to build up the financial capital necessary to successfully implement other programs: micro-enterprise training, chicken farm franchises, and more.

The unhappy leaders recycled their old complains: they don't want to save their own money, and they don't want loans. They want us to give them money with as few strings attached as possible. Preferably none, please.

But they would like to participate in the first group. I guess that's a sort of back-handed endorsement that they see merit in the idea, even if it's not their first choice.

Perhaps the best news of the day came afterwards, when Mario and Samuel expressed that they remain convinced that what they witnessed in Nampula would be positively received by communities here in Maputo, and are determined to march forward.

They have identified an ally among the group of leaders, and are intent on implementing a pilot project in his community sometime in the first half of April. The clock is ticking...

A Second Step Forward

Last week, I wrote of the challenges that I ran up against when presenting our chicken farming "franchise" model to a group of church leaders. I had naively assumed that the church leaders would be more receptive of an opportunity to partner with successful entrepreneurs to develop a micro-enterprise.

This week, I travelled out of the city with my colleague Glenn to present the idea to Christina and Miguel, the family of chicken farmers who could potentially serve as the "franchisor" in our model, and received a more positive reception.

Since we had been at their home a couple of weeks ago, they had expanded their chicken houses and were now raising 2,150 chickens -- roughly a 100% increase.

Miguel explained to us that they expanded because they saw greater demand for their product. He also explained that entrepreneurs never stop expanding. He's not satisfied with 2,150 chickens, but wants to grow the business even larger.

For better or for worse, that sentiment is the fuel that drives economic development around the world.

It's also the sentiment that we're hoping to build upon for the success of our "franchise farming" model. Christina and Miguel have a vision of us helping them to expand their business by building more chicken houses and buying more chickens; by contrast, our vision is to help them expand by teaching them to sell the expertise that they have developed over the past decade of raising chickens to help inexperienced franchisees to have the same success.

Christina and Miguel received the proposal in a very encouraging manner: skeptical optimism. They welcomed the proposal, and thought that it was a good idea. They also spoke at length about a list of fears that they have.

Of their fears, trust was featured most prominently. How can we trust the franchisees, they asked. What if they steal our chickens? What if they don't work hard? It's a valid concern.

We can't assure them that the franchisees are worthy of their trust, but we can provide Christina and Miguel the opportunity to meet any potential franchisees before committing to move forward with the project. After all, they are the ones who need to trust their franchisees; not us.

They also spoke about assuming additional risk by bringing outsiders into their already-successful operation.

And they shared with us the story of a woman who had found business success, only to be poisoned to death by envious clients.

I was glad that they shared these fears with us. Their sharing signaled that they trust us enough to be honest with us. It also signaled that they're engaging the proposal seriously enough to properly weigh its risks and benefits.

I'm not an expert at reading this foreign culture. It had occurred to me that their response might be the polite, indirect way of turning down our proposal, but I don't think so. And neither did our interpreter.

A second step forward.

Next, we have to bring the idea back to the church leaders. If they again demonstrate reticence, we may have to build some momentum by proving the concept using a more willing group of people, in a different village.

* * * * *

As we wrapped up the meeting and were about to begin our drive back into the city, Miguel walked around back of his house and soon re-emerged with a live chicken under his arm. A gift to express his appreciation for us and our work. We politely declined their generous offer, sheepishly admitting that we didn't know how to prepare a live chicken.

His wife laughed at us, and insisted that we return to their house some day to feast on that chicken together. She would even teach us how to kill and prepare it. I will never turn down an invitation to a barbecue, but I hope next time to bring with me several potential franchisees to share the feast and begin building the bonds of trust.

A Spirited Opposition

Late last week, I presented our chicken farming strategy to a gathering of Mozambican church leaders. We try to work through this group, encouraging them to take ownership of projects rather than doing them ourselves, empowering Mozambicans to help Mozambicans.

We try to "lead from the side," building their leadership capacity, hoping to work ourselves out of a job. If these leaders aren't willing to endorse our projects, we reason, then neither will they take sufficient responsibility over them to ensure their success.

Strangely enough, the prospect of facing these $1-a-day men caused my heart to beat a little harder than normal. It was reminiscent of the countless times that I've sat across a table from a committee of high-powered Cabinet ministers back home presenting recommendations for the direction of our province. In both cases, I must admit to a little anxiety.

And in both cases, the scrutiny was trying. The questions they asked were difficult, and they didn't always like my answers. I wished that I had've done a little more homework. There's always a little more to do.

On some level, I was glad for their combativeness. Had I expected to come riding in on a horse from stage right to save the poor Africans from their plight? They are still living, breathing, critically-thinking human beings.

For hours they asked questions. I tried to understand in Portuguese, and asked for translation when I needed to catch a nuance. I usually responded in English, because the translator had a better chance of accurately conveying my thoughts.

Maybe the translation was the problem. Not the words, but the barrier of suspicion that naturally divides people speaking through the help of an intermediary. I wished I had've spoken fluent Portuguese. Or Shangaan. At least the translator was an insider, known to the group and myself.

Their questions seemed to boil down to plain selfishness. We were presenting a proposal for franchised chicken farms to benefit the communities in which their churches are located. Not restricted to church members, and certainly not restricted to church leaders.

They wanted to redesign the program to deliver employment opportunities for themselves.

And they didn't want to take a loan from an arms-length micro-credit organization. Their reasons were numerous, many valid. The subtext was that they wanted us to provide the money, no interest required, and no risk required. We wouldn't force repayment because we're a Christian organization, they silently reasoned.

All of their criticisms were carefully addressed in a business plan that we had prepared for their input. Sure, micro-credit interest rates are high, for example, but the plan takes that into account and still shows a resonable profit for owner-workers.

Their counter-proposal, not so much spoken as implied, was that they would take our money, try their hands at raising chickens, and if they ever found themselves better off than us, they could give us our money back. They pressed for a handout.

* * * * *

Knowing that many of them wouldn't have had eaten yet that day, I brought a bag full of oranges and passed them around. The group then passed around a machete that they used to peel the oranges, and threw their peels into a plastic bucket in the centre of the ring of blue wooden benches that we were perched atop. (Ok, so there were some differences between this meeting and the Cabinet committee meetings back home!)

I brought one orange too few, so didn't take one myself. The man beside me, generous in spirit and seeing me as an equal, peeled his orange, broke it in two, and offered me half.

These are people with big hearts, but imbued with a strong survival instinct. After all, they are hungry and poor. In their situation, I can't say that I wouldn't press for a handout with an equal amount of zeal.

In fact, they probably interpret my unwillingness to capitulate and provide a gift as my own lack of a generous spirit.

To many, providing a handout may seem like a logical response to economic injustice in Africa, especially when poverty is viewed as a lack of resources. Isn't the best way to fight poverty to do so with money?

But handouts don't empower people to help themselves in the long-run. Worse, they're not even neutral, but sap the motivation to take necessary and healthy risks required to get ahead. Having received handouts in the past, they expect handouts to continue in the present. Anything less than a direct gift is rejected.

Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, in his autobiography, "Banker to the Poor," makes the following statement about the applicability of micro-credit in contexts with a strong social safety net:

[M]y great nemesis is the tenacity of the social welfare system. Over and over, [micro-credit projects] have run into the same problem: recipients of a monthly handout from the government ... calculate the amount of welfare money and insurance coverage they would lose by becoming self-employed and conclude the risk is not worth the effort. (Yunus, pp 189-90).

In Mozambique, there is no government social safety net, but handouts from foreign governments and non-governmental organizations, including our own, have created the same mix of dependency, complacency and expectancy.

In the long-run, people will benefit from being empowered to help themselves. But the prospect of not receiving another handout is a bitter pill that they're being asked to swallow.

* * * * *

In a gesture to ensure that relationships were preserved in the face of the difficult meeting, one of the church leaders came up to me afterwards and apologized for the feisty spirit of the group. "But it was your own fault," he said. "Your oranges gave us energy."

And then, to make sure I knew he was joking he added, "Next time, bring ice cream."

Debunking the Fallacy of "Limited Good"

Some people might be wondering (though nobody has asked) why I spend so much time learning culture and language while in Mozambique. After all, if we're only spending a year here, wouldn't success be easier to come by if I just focused on the task at hand?

The reality is that success will not be possible unless I learn the culture of Mozambique as fully and completely as possible. A cultural lesson that I learned this week highlights this fact.

The people of Mozambique ascribe to a concept called "limited good": that everything, whether tangible (such as wealth) or intangible (such as happiness) is in limited supply, and that one person having an abundance of anything means that someone else will be lacking in it.

All facets of life are seen as zero-sum. If I have more health or wealth or happiness than my neighbour, he will perceive that I have stolen his share of it.

At first thought, this seems like a strange idea. Free-market capitalist societies have as a central tenet that wealth is in unlimited supply; that it can and is created (albeit not distributed evenly) every day.

(Armchair economists viewing the world from the left or the right of the political spectrum will forever argue the veracity of this point.)

Upon further reflection, one must admit that the idea of limited good lurks just beneath the surface even in our own culture. It rears its head in the form of jealousy when a colleague gets a coveted promotion, or when a neighbour buys a shiny new car, or when a friend is publicly recognized for a good deed.

The theory of limited good has profound implications for our chicken farming strategy, and for economic development projects in general. It makes no difference whether or not the theory is true; because people believe it, their actions will be shaped by it.

If our project is to be successful, we need to create the conditions necessary to avoid both jealousy on the part of those who don't participate, and a deliberate undermining of success on the part of those selected in an effort to avoid standing out from the pack.

The collective nature of African culture prevents individuals from wanting to distance themselves from their neighbours. Those who do find success may fear recrimination from jealous family and witchcraft-practicing neighbours.

Chicken farming in Mozambique is a good idea with plenty of winners. Consumers will have access to a better diet. Producers will have more wealth to help their family survive and to spend at their neighbour's fruit stands and bakeries.

Prosperity, without greed, has a multiplication effect that allows everyone to win.

* * * * *

While we may debate the limits of tangible goods, we should never doubt that the intangibles -- things like happiness -- are in limitless supply. God permits -- indeed, God wants -- all of us to live good and righteous lives.

If the concept of limited good is applied to these intangibles, it serves only to drive a wedge between ourselves and God in an effort to preserve harmony among people. If instead we could recognize that "good" is not a commodity in limited supply, we would all be better neighbours and global citizens.

If the people of Mozambique could realize that good begets good, they may be more motivated to lift themselves out of the proverbial muck.

One (Tentative) Step for Microcredit

Love him or hate him, Rudy Giuliani (in his autobiography, Leadership) advises against announcing new projects until they have been successfully implemented and results have been proven. As mayor of New York City, his practice was to underpromise and overdeliver, increasing the electorate's pleasure with his results.

For the sake of chronicling our journey of thought and activity, I'm going to break Mr. Giuliani's rules of leadership. I'm going to tell you what we're planning on doing. Your part of the bargain is to not hold it against me if this plan doesn't work out exactly as described.

In an earlier lamentation, I expressed some frustration about the limitations of the microcredit industry in Mozambique. Specifically, I worried about the helpfulness of an industry that charges the world's poorest entrepreneurs interest rates on their loans of 6% per month, and that makes credit accessible only to those with an existing business. New entrepreneurs, no matter how well thought-out a business plan they have crafted, need not apply.

Our team recently visited a small chicken farm that has spawned the development of a strategy for tackling one of these two limitations: allowing budding entrepreneurs without business experience to access existing microcredit channels.

Our vision is to facilitate the creation of "out-grower co-operatives," leveraging the expertise of a successful entrepreneur to assist budding new entrepreneurs to start their own businesses -- in this case, chicken farms.

Think of it as franchised chicken farming.

We will match groups of people interested in starting a new business (the franchisees) with an existing, successful chicken farmer (the franchisor) to start a new farm. The successful entrepreneur will benefit by sharing in any profits of the out-grower co-operative; the new entrepreneurs will benefit by having access to the expertise of the successful entrepreneur, which will help them to establish and maintain successful farms and, importantly, allow them to obtain start-up capital based on the creditworthiness of the successful entrepreneur.

A side (but not insignificant) benefit is that it will bring more meat into protein-starved diets.

The out-grower co-operative strategy is based on another noteworthy leadership principle written about by leadership academicians and practitioners alike: build good ideas around great people.

We are proposing to create chicken farms not because chicken farms alone will pull Mozambique from the mire, but because the "key people" we have identified for the pilot phase are successful chicken farmers. Had they been coconut growers, or garment makers, or fishermen, the model would be the same: built around the expertise of the key people identified.

Once the new chicken farmers have several cycles of business experience under their figurative belts, they may choose to continue operating the chicken farming co-operative, or may choose to leverage their newly-established business experience to start an enterprise of their own choosing and design.

We are hoping to be able to test the model this fall, but still have many details to work out. We also have a lot of people to convince on the merits of the model before we can implement it -- not least of which is the micro-credit community.

And, of course, the next challenge will be to find a way of reducing the cost of credit in a manner that will out-last my tenure in Mozambique.

Further Reading:

• Out-Grower Co-operative Strategy - English (PDF)
  
• Out-Grower Co-operative Strategy - Portuguese (PDF)
  
• Financial Tables (PDF)