Monday saw meetings with old friends and getting to know new ones.
I started with a meeting with the Mayor of Arua Charles Asiki. Charles has just been reelected for a second five year term. There are three almost equal groups within Arua – Protestants, Catholics and Moslems. The role of a mayor is not made easy by this division. However Charles has managed to balance the three and earns high marks from the people of Arua for his work. In particular he has cleaned up the town and dealt with a Cholera outbreak. Things are working better and even though the town is expanding, it is under control. We talked about economic development, power, water and education and then the work of BVA and ways in which we could bring clout into political discussions to help the West Nile region get its fair share of Government development work, which it clearly hasn’t over the last 20 years. We also talked about Charles business aspirations and his desire to join BVA. We agreed to stay in touch and that I would stop by each time I am in town.
Peter Jurua was next on the list. Peter is one of the original BVA members and his business is meat processing. He has had a particular interest in pork. However, with a high Moslem population, this has limited his ability to get distribution on the retail outlets in town. On this trip, Peter has made the fundamental decision to change from being “Mr Pork” to “Mr Meat”. By that I mean he ahs decided to focus on meat processing as his fundamental business and then be prepared to offer whatever product the stores want to sell. This will probably include beef sausages, minced beef (hamburger meat), chicken, goat and even rabbit (more on this below), as well as his roasted pork and pork sausages. I believe this will increase his sales significantly and add to the quality of product available in Arua.
The rabbit story is interesting. You might remember that we spent the morning yesterday with the students of Mvara Secondary School teaching about business and entrepreneurship. Well following the sessions, a couple of boys approached Peter and told him they were beginning to breed rabbits and would Peter be interested in having them supply him. He agreed to experiment with them and see what happens. Perhaps we have a growing rabbit market now in Arua. What good things can happen when we promote these ideas and see how people can work together. Sorry for all those who have bunnies at home!
Then it was on to CAFECC a Christian micro-finance group in town that is sponsored by Peer Servants in Boston. I have been meeting and trying to advise CAFECC for 3 – 4 years now and I’m impressed that they continue to make progress. Unfortunately they are sub-scale, and need a larger loan capital base. Peer Servants are prepared to put more money into CAFECC, but want to have another donor give $5,000 in order that they would put in $17,500. If you might be interested in leveraging this deal, please contact me and I can give you the details.
Joyce is a new friend. She is a member of WNWA (West Nile Women’s Association), who bid for the construction of a coffee drying facility back in the early 2000’s. The facility is built with a large generator, crushing and drying equipment from Brazil all in place that probably cost over $200,000, but the factory has never processed a single coffee bean! How is this possible? A long story of poor investment policy, inexperienced operations people and local politics. What a waste of resources in a country that has none to spare. George and I are going to look at the project to see if it is even worth looking to revive. I will be meeting with the head of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority on Wednesday in Kampala before getting on the plane back home.
Sylvia was next. She runs an internet café with photocopying and stationary as well, all crammed in to a small and very busy downtown store. She is a very creative and aggressive business person and we built for her a test program to help her run her books on a monthly basis. Most business people in Arua keep a cash book. This is literally a notebook into which they enter every item of revenue and every expense. That is usually the extent of their record keeping. As you can imagine, this doesn’t yield much information for running the business. So Greg Baumann our King’s College intern create an Excel program which allows Sylvia to input a limited number of items into the spreadsheet at the end of the day which automatically creates a monthly income statement – neat! Thanks Greg and George for your help too. The picture above is me showing Sylvia how it works. She was very excited. This is just a first pass attempt. George and I believe it is important that each of our entrepreneurs have this easy to use capability, and we will look for better long term solutions (like an accounting package that works for us in Africa) because Excel is not the long term answer.
Finally I had dinner with new friends David and Heather Sharland. They are with the Christian Missionary Society (Anglican). David is an agricultural specialist and Heather is a midwife. They have been in Africa for many years and have great experience. I visited David’s Test Farm which he is using to show farmers in the area how to farm in ways that will yield more produce while building up the soil for the future. Because many of our businesses are related to agriculture, David can be very helpful in thinking what might and might not work. Heather is an excellent cook and provided a great meal for us. Thanks Heather! I look forward to getting to know them better in the future. It is amazing how quickly the Holy Spirit draws believers together into community as we all share the same focus and hope!
Tomorrow I spend the whole day with the Coppedges, the missionaries who brought me to Arua in the first place, but I think I’ll leave that story till tomorrow and leave you hanging tonight!
Blessings to you all!
A
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