FACULTY FOCUS
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Why do you consider developing a private
sector in emerging economies so vital?
To me it’s a good way of enabling and
empowering people to improve their lives,
giving them opportunities. Large numbers
of people in emerging economies are
entrepreneurs in some way. Not often by
choice, often because that’s the only way
that they can make a living for themselves
because there aren’t enough traditional
forms of employment. So a big part of
helping people develop and improve their
lives is helping them run their business
more effectively. For instance, half of
people working in emerging economies
work in the agricultural sector as farmers.
Being able to help someone improve the
productivity of their farm, being able to help
them to find better markets for their goods,
improve the prices they can get for their
goods, to manage their costs versus their
revenue more effectively, is an important
way of helping those people develop.
And through more income, they can send
their kids to more schooling and pay for
improved housing, as well as other services
that they might want. They can improve
their overall lives. To me, it’s an important
component in our achieving our overall
development goals.
I understand you’ve had some practical
experience with this, helping improve
Ethiopia’s coffee industry. Can you elaborate
on that?
This year, I’ve spent some time working in
Ethiopia, a little bit of time in Kenya as well.
I was working for an organisation called
Technoserve. Their motto is ‘business
solutions to poverty’. Their big focus on
helping, in particular, smallholder farmers
but, just generally, smallholder business
people around the world improve their
businesses and, through that, improve
their lives. This year, I spent some time
on a project called the Coffee Initiative,
which has worked with about 250,000
smallholder farmers in East Africa – across
Rwanda, Ethiopia, Tanzania and Kenya –
and helped them to improve the way in
which they grow and produce their coffee
to improve its quality and their yields.
The project also helps the co-operatives
and farmers manage their costs more
effectively and improve the prices they get
for the coffee, [helps them get] access to
big export markets internationally by linking
up with [companies] such as Nespresso,
the big multinational corporations. Through
that process, they increase the incomes
from their coffee and create sustainable
businesses that are helping them to
improve their lives.
It’s quite fascinating to travel into
Southern Ethiopia to this place called
Jimma, which is one of the coffee-growing
regions, to talk to farmers there about the
impact the project was having on their lives.
One farmer was telling me about how he’d
been able to send his kids to finish school
now because he had been able to pay the
fees with the income he’d received. He
bought his eldest son a truck that his son
was then using to run a small business in
the village doing trucking, earning himself
income. That’s quite inspiring to see. It’s
something I’d like to become more and
more involved in through my studies.
Will your Oxford research be focusing on
these kinds of issues?
Yes. I’ll be doing study in development
economics with a particular focus on
private-sector development and working
with small businesses in emerging
economies. I’ll have a broad focus. Not
necessarily just on coffee farmers in
Ethiopia but on how we can help small
businesses, in general, in the emerging
world. There will be a particular focus on
business training, which is kind of a good
way to supplement the history we’ve had
helping people with micro-credit and
micro-finance, which has been the more
famous side of business development.
What makes you passionate about this area?
I suppose there are a few things that have
contributed to this over the years. First
of all, I was born in Cape Town, in South
Africa. I saw, from a relatively young age,
real discrepancies in the way that people
lived, their standards of living, and the fact
that poverty had also been fairly persistent
in particular areas. It raised a question in
my mind, ‘I wonder how you tackle this,
how you deal with this and how you can
create effective long-term solutions that
help people, that empower people, that
aren’t just about trying to feel good about
doing something but also create some real
change?’ In particular, at university, I realised
after studying development economics that
there is real potential here to help people
in an effective way, to empower them, to
have impact, and to think carefully about
how you measure the impact that you have,
so that you can ensure that the work you’re
doing is as effective as it can possibly be.
As I got more and more involved in that,
my passion was enhanced. That’s what has
driven me into this area, made me excited
about it, made me passionate about it.
Tell us about the selection process for the
Rhodes Scholarship. Was it gruelling?
Yes, I suppose it was. It’s one of those
things, when you’re in the process it feels
like there’s quite a lot on the line. That can
be quite exhausting in a way. It’s as much
about the waiting around, the