Hello from Copenhagen

Hi Everyone!

It’s been a little over a month since we left Kenya, and I have been reflecting a lot on our experiences there. I miss the friends I made there and hope to get to see them again someday. Shifting from Nairobi to Copenhagen was a pretty heavy culture shock. I found myself getting strange looks when I would run across the wide boulevards here, as though I’d never seen a crosswalk! Also it took a while before I stopped addressing everyone on the street with “Jambo”!

One experience that I have been reflecting on is trying to help our drivers and students, the Mouti brothers, find a technological solution to the devastating energy shortages that were threatening to destroy their cyber-café and cell phone businesses in Kibera. The severe droughts that Kenya was experiencing during our stay there not only resulted in regional water shortages and crop failures, they also strained Kenya’s hydroelectricity production. While the downtown region had electricity 24/7, the outlying regions including Kibera were faced with scheduled blackouts three days a week from 6am to 6pm, which doomed any business that relied on electricity to function (cell phone charging, cyber cafes, barber shops, some restaurants, even the local movie theater). We worked with our amazing, charismatic and very fun drivers and students, Fred and Peter Mouti, to figure out how they might be able to purchase a battery charger/power inverter to allow them to charge batteries at night and allow their businesses to operate during the day. Our discussions brought to light a wide range of opportunities and challenges relating to energy in Kibera. If the Mouti brothers could get a loan to install the system, they might eventually have the opportunity to sell electricity to their neighboring businesses, to charge batteries for local homes (apparently many homes in Kibera use car batteries for lighting and even TV), to provide battery charging or jump-starting services for the local mechanics, and to apply for a government grant to install solar panels. On the other hand, investing in this equipment and operating when others couldn’t brought the risk of theft, retribution from competing businesses, and the possibility of having to pay bribe money or get shut down by local authorities.

Since we’ve left, I’ve learned that the power is back up and running around Kibera, but if the situation changes, I’m glad that the Mouti brothers have a backup plan in their pocket- especially since cyber cafés and cell phone shops provide a very necessary service in the community: connecting people to information and to each other.

Working with the Mouti brothers has inspired me to learn more about energy systems in the developing world, and I am excited to have the opportunity to travel to Cairo next month to volunteer for the non-profit group Solar C3.I.T.I.E.S: "Connecting Community Catalysts Integrating Technologies for Industrial Ecology Systems." I will be helping this amazing group build solar water heaters, biogas digesters, and water filtration systems in Cairo's Zabbalen "Garbage City".

Here at Copenhagen Business School I am currently taking classing relating to social entrepreneurship and business strategies in the developing world. Being able to draw on my experiences with SE101 has made my learning experience here much more rich and relevant. I have had a lot of classmates from universities and business schools around the world ask me how they can get involved in programs similar to SE101. If anyone reading this has suggestions for them, please let me know!