Category: Kenya

The Barefoot MBA is heading back to Kenya, this time via the Stanford program that first supported it. Through Stanford’s Service Learning Program and ThinkImpact, which provides experiential learning opportunities in rural Africa, a team of 18 students will adapt and teach the Barefoot MBA to entrepreneurs in the Coast region. We are excited to strengthen our first partnership and build a new one, a fitting celebration of the fifth anniversary of the Service Learning Trip that inspired the Barefoot MBA.

NAIROBI – A few minutes before our stated start time of 10 a.m., our tent was empty. Well, except for a few chairs. The rain had just passed, and makers were still setting up. Some asked if they could use our chairs at their booths. They saw no signs of a workshop.

But this is Kenya, and things here run on Kenya time. Our workshop was no exception. We delayed our start time to 10:30, and then 11, and by 11:15 a handful of people had gathered – not as many as we hoped, but enough to start teaching. By 11:25, every seat was filled. By 11:30, people brought their own chairs. We were finally underway.

Like yesterday, we started with pairs of contrasting stories that are the core of the Barefoot MBA lessons. And like yesterday, participants caught on right away: Production is important because it adds value and allows sales at a higher price, leading to higher profits. Marketing is about understanding wants and needs; if a customer understands why he needs a product, he is more likely to buy it.

Also like yesterday, we illustrated the lessons with an activity adapted from our initial pilot in Thailand. This time, two teams made and sold bicycles to each of six buyers with specific demands. We limited the production capacity of each team, and at first each wanted to produce as many generic bicycles as possible. One team quickly shifted strategy, though, choosing instead to sell fewer high-quality, customized bicycles at a higher markup – and eventually outselling the other team. The different strategies led to a discussion afterward of specialization versus diversification. Ultimately, the conversation returned to marketing.

Participants applauded when the session concluded, and we thought we were done. Then came the best illustration yet of Kenya time: just as we wrapped up, a handful of our most engaged students from yesterday approached our tent and asked when today’s session would begin.

NAIROBI – The 100 or so makers here at Maker Faire Africa come from all over the continent, largely from Kenya but also from countries like Burundi, Ghana, Rwanda and South Africa. Their products span a broader array, from hand-crafted mobiles to water pumps, eggshell art to stoves made from burning trash.

But at the Barefoot MBA workshop, participants had a singular focus: learning basic business. Our first day’s session taught profit and investing using stories and an interactive activity we adapted from our initial pilot, in Thailand. Our 25 participants engaged in the stories and actively participated in the questions that followed. They were enraptured, though, by the activity, which illustrates interest by showing the value of several equal investments over the same time period.

We developed the activity in rural Thailand, where participants playing the roles of customers invested in items that grew naturally, like seeds and baby animals. We hesitated to use agricultural examples here in Nairobi, preferring instead to use investments with which largely urban participants could identify. Joy suggested cement, and we demonstrated the concept of investment by having participants invest in cement mix and two kinds of brick-making machines. (One participant still invested in nothing, retaining our control case.)

Participants understood immediately; later, those who walked by our workshop said they could tell by body language and laughter alone that participants were learning.

In the discussion that followed, participants answered our questions and asked some of their own. When asked for other examples of investments they’d made, one even said he just sold eight cows, six more than he bought several years ago. When someone else asked what he should invest in next, we underscored the importance of investing in familiar areas – imagine if someone who’d never seen a cow suddenly owned eight or even two.

Overall, feedback was positive. A participant from Burundi asked how he could use the Barefoot MBA at home. Others said they’d bring their friends to tomorrow’s session. And we heard later from event organizers that people asked why we weren’t teaching the other fourteen Barefoot MBA lessons.

Come back tomorrow for two more, we said. And then enjoy the rest of Maker Faire.

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NAIROBI – Tomorrow is a big day here in Kenya.

The country will celebrate the promulgation of its new constitution in front of hundreds of thousands of spectators and dignitaries like Kofi Annan. And at the University of Nairobi, Maker Faire Africa will begin. MFA is expecting some 100 makers – innovators, inventors and other creative entrepreneurs – for two days of idea sharing and community building.

This afternoon, the grounds for MFA were but a collection of tents on a flat campus field. Tomorrow, those tents will be transformed, many into exhibition space. One tent already has an official “Business Corner” banner, formalizing a two-day home for the Barefoot MBA. Joy and I will spend the morning talking to makers so that after lunch we’ll be ready to teach our first lessons, on saving and investing.

The organizers of a conference in Africa aimed at identifying, spurring and supporting local innovation are using the Barefoot MBA to help participants understand business basics. Maker Faire Africa brings together makers to drive and celebrate ingenuity, innovation and invention on the continent. MFA held a successful inaugural event in Accra, Ghana, last year and is organizing a follow-up event this summer with another in Nairobi, Kenya. We are working with MFA to give this year’s attendees — who largely have relatively low levels of formal education, live in rural areas and have businesses at varying levels of development — the knowledge they need to solve problems themselves. We also hope to attend the event.