Stories - Helping survivors of genocide rebuild their lives

Liberian elections in 2005

During the Liberian elections in 2005, a Network for Africa volunteer was manning a polling booth, monitoring the voting process. It was five thirty in the morning, and thirty nine degrees centigrade, yet a crowd of thousands had formed in orderly lines in the clearing, waiting to vote. The Network for Africa volunteer spotted a woman appear at the edge of the clearing, and from her face it was clear she had forgotten it was election day. In a flash she instructed her three children to run off in different directions. Within five minutes they returned with flour, sugar, oil and a cooking pan they had borrowed from their mother's friends. The woman started a fire and within no time she was cooking donuts and selling them to the crowd.

As the network for Africa volunteer commented, “That woman probably didn’t have an MBA, but she knew a business opportunity when she saw it. Like so many African women, she could make the most out of almost nothing.”

Network for Africa is building on the natural entrepreneurial instincts of Africans by taking its business project into schools in Rwanda. Our volunteer teachers divide each class into groups that become companies, identified by an original name and logo. Each company participates in informal seminars in which they are taught business vocabulary, how to write a business plan, and ultimately how to turn innovative ideas into practical business enterprises.

Each company is then given a small amount of capital (about £5, or $10) and a further two weeks to make a profit from their capital and their company’s business idea. If they make a profit, it is the company’s to keep. If they make a loss, they repay the initial capital. Every company taking part in the project has so far made a profit, one making three times the amount of the original investment.

Much of Rwanda’s infrastructure was destroyed during the 1994 genocide, and there is huge unemployment. In a country with few natural resources, the Network for Africa project encourages young people to identify the possible profitable gaps in the market and to act on their instincts and ideas with a small amount of money behind them. The project adds to their confidence to take the first steps to starting their own businesses.

Network for Africa needs financial help to send its volunteer teachers to Rwanda and to support their work in schools.