Afleveringen
-
Join us for the final episode of season 1 of Afri-CAN!
At Pharo Foundation we understand the critical role savings can have and this is integral to our third mission of Productivity - part of which is to remove financial barriers to employment. Indeed, we have seen firsthand what savings can do for people in Savings Groups which we have set up for farming communities in Ethiopia.
To discuss savings in more detail we have two guests on this episode:
The first is Kenyan entrepreneur, Samuel Njuguna, the CEO and Co-Founder of Chumz - a Kenyan savings platform designed to build better financial habits using behavioural psychology and gamification to encourage its users to save.
With him, we have Wangui Kimaru, Senior Programs Manager at Emerging Leaders in Kenya. This is an organisation with a purpose of empowering youth. Wangui initially used the Chumz platform in her personal life and then approached Samuel to integrate this platform at Emerging Leaders.
Thanks for listening to season 1 - we look forward to recording season 2!
-
According to the World Bank, a 1% increase in female education participation, can result in a 0.3% increase in average gross domestic product and gains of up to $15-30 trillion in lifetime productivity and earnings. In Africa specifically, we see the highest rate of female entrepreneurial activity globally, with approximately 24% of women engaged in business ventures. So, for Pharo Foundation, it is clear that educating girls is indeed an investment worth making and particularly where we work in East Africa.
We share our commitment to educating disadvantaged girls with the renowned Malala Fund - an international, non-profit organization that advocates for girls' education. To highlight the critical impact of investing in girls education, this episode explores this topic with Malala Fund's, Saba Zewdu, Manager of their Ethiopia programmatic grant portfolio and Pharo Foundation's Head of Education in Ethiopia, Milkyas Solomon.
-
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
-
This episode takes place in-person at Pharo Management's London Office - the emerging market hedge fund which finances Pharo Foundation. In this special episode we take a look at philanthropy from the perspective of the philanthropist - discussing how they choose their causes and how they allocate their resources.
To discuss this, we have Pharo Foundation's own founder, Guillaume Fonkenell. With him we have Jonathan Bayliss, the Co-Founder of EMpower UK, a charity which supports vulnerable young people in emerging market countries.
-
n estimated 250 million children in low and middle-income countries are at risk of not reaching their full developmental potential. Given Early Childhood Development (ECD) is one of Pharo Foundation's flagship programmes this is an important topic to us and we were keen to bring in Saving Brains experts to discuss this further.
Saving Brains invests in bold, evidence-based innovations that nurture healthy brain development and strengthen caregiving in the earliest, most critical years of life—from pregnancy to age five. To discuss this and what we can learn from their work, today we are talking with Sanjana Janardhanan, Portfolio Manager, Saving Brains at Grand Challenges Canada and Dr. Vishwajeet Kumar, Chief Scientist at Community Empowerment Lab.
-
This episode explores how we can optimise and increase access to healthcare through innovation, in contexts which are resource poor, such as Africa.
To discuss this, we have brought on Niek Vesteegde, a tropical doctor turned entrepreneur, and Founder and CEO of Goal 3 - a social enterprise dedicated to transforming paediatric and neonatal healthcare through scalable, sustainable and data-driven solutions that are fit for context. With him, we have Alef Meulenberg, who is the co-founder of Rhiza Babuyile and Rhiza Holdings which implement an innovative sustainable developmental model in disadvantaged African communities.
-
As Pharo Foundation's missions progress and we look to scale up our cost effective and evidence-based interventions, it's clear to us that utilising a range of innovative financing instruments to scale up our missions is critical. Among these instruments, outcomes-based financing is gaining traction and proving very effective. At its core, this method relies on a pre-agreed set of outcomes being achieved in order to trigger payments.
To explore how this method works, and its benefits, we have spoken with Adriana Balducci, Head of Programme Development at the Education Outcomes Fund (EOF), and Chloe Edleston, Regional Lead for East Africa at Social Finance.
-
In a previous episode we spoke with Oxfam about how far we should go in introducing innovations that challenge local culture. In this episode, we focus on how this translates to the education that we provide to our youth. We explore how we can leverage local culture to shape our youth into unique critical thinkers.
To address this question, we are focusing on Somaliland and our guests are two respected members of the local community: Muna Ahmed Jama, Pharo Foundation's Head of Education In Somaliland, and Dr. Jama Musse Jama, the founder and organiser of the Hargeisa International Book Fair and Director of the Hargeisa Cultural Centre.
-
This episode focuses on one of the most important questionsin philanthropy: how do philanthropic organisations go about ascertaining that they are indeed doing all the good they set out to do in the first place? While most development philanthropists are well-intentioned, whether these goodintentions end up improving development outcomes is not a foregone conclusion. So, to help us look at how to carry out effective impact assessment and all this can mean, we have three experts joining us in this episode: Fabio Bezerra, Director of Design, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning at ForAfrika, Lina Henao, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning Director at iDE Mozambique and Ken Lee, Chief Research and Evaluation Officer at Pharo Foundation.
-
In this unique episode we are joined by Kidus Asfaw, Founderand CEO of Kubik - an Africa-based start-up transforming plastic waste into low-carbon construction materials that are cheaper and faster to build with than cement. Joining Kidus is our youngest guest to date, Helen Tekalign. A prodigious young student and already the winner of many local STEMcompetitions, Helen is in 8th grade at Pharo School Assosa located in a rural area of the BGRS state on the western edge of Ethiopia. The two discuss their entry into the field of STEM, and Kidus shares his journey from young tinkerer to CEO of his own successful start-up, and how he hopes to see Helen and other Ethiopian students like her do the same.
-
This episode focuses on innovation in the most basic sense: the introduction of something new into an existing cultural context. Oxfam's Raissa Azzalini and Zakarie Abdi discuss sustainable, culturally appropriate, and environment-friendly Water, Sanitation and Hygiene solutions in fragile contexts.
-
This episode examines whether there are any lessons for Africa to learn from the development experience of East Asia. We want to look at what factors led relatively poor East Asian countries to develop so quickly and even saw them become technological innovators in the space of just a few decades.
To make comparisons between these two continents and see how East Asia’s history can apply in Africa, we have brought on an expert in Development Studies and one of Pharo’s own leaders in innovation in East Africa. These are: James Putzel, Professor of Development Studies in the International Development Department at the London School of Economics and Political Science and Bethel Tsegaye, CEO of Pharo Ventures and Country Director of Pharo Foundation Ethiopia.
-
There is a cliché that the diaspora’s migration crowds out opportunities for home grown talent and national innovation through the so-called ‘brain drain’. However, there are many initiatives that defy this cliché and in this episode, we explore the many modalities through which the diaspora can make a positive difference both at an individual level and on a national scale, leading to increased innovation. To help us look at this we have brought on three expert guests who have each experienced the catalytic power of the diaspora. These are: Loksan Harley, Independent Migration and Diaspora Specialist and Executive Director at Homelands Advisory, Dominic Mwenja, CEO and Program Director at Miramar International Foundation and Funsho Allu, Board Member at Pharo Foundation and Founding Partner of TIA Capital.
-
In this episode we explore the various existing models of philanthropy and whether those working in this sector can/should innovate in the way they do philanthropy. We cover a variety of models from direct delivery to effective altruism through flexible funding, and we reflect on their implications for measuring impact. Our expert guests are David Nash, Community Director at Effective Altruism UK, and Dr Steph Hayden a researcher from the University of Kent.
-
According to the inter-continental panel on climate change, Africa is the continent most affected by this process. As such, in episode three we have brought in expert guests to tell us what the most cutting-edge environmental innovations are today, how we can support African innovators, and what it takes to get an idea from innovation to application.
Our guests are Anuradha Bajaj, Chief Innovative Finance and Investment Officer at the Earthshot Prize, and Ronald Pfende, one of its finalists and Founder/CEO of d.light – a company that brings clean and affordable power to rural African communities.
-
For episode two we welcome Professor Panos Hatziandreas, head of Lebawi International Academy in Ethiopia, and Dr. Anne Makena, co-director of the Africa Oxford Initiative, to discuss innovation in the context of African education.
If done right, a good education system is arguably the best means of lifting a population out of poverty. Our expert guests explore what it means to get it right in the African context, with specific reference to the role of education technology.
-
In Afri-can’s first episode, Pharo Foundation CEO Tom Mason and Chicago Booth Business School Jean-Pierre Dube debate the role of risk-taking, experimentation and profit in driving African innovation. Drawing on their experience, they bring examples of how the private sector acts as a catalytic investor, which enables economic development in Africa.
-
Pharo Foundation's Global Director of Partnerships and Communications, Francesca Beausang, introduces our new podcast series Afri-can. In this series, she will be hosting a range of guests from the worlds of academia, philanthropy and business, to explore new approaches to development with a specific focus on African innovation.
Look out for our first set of three episodes, which will go live on February 15th at 10 a.m. (GMT).
-
Ahead of the release of our first episode on February 15th, this trailer outlines what the brand new Afri-can podcast is about.
Our host, Francesca Beausang, looks forward to introducing you to her expert guests and exploring the ideas and concrete innovations through which Africa is becoming a model of innovation-driven development for the world.
