Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [52]
There are similar efforts elsewhere designed to develop a national model to eliminate extreme poverty and substantially increase per capita income. One of these was inspired and is funded by the Scottish philanthropist Sir Tom Hunter. Hunter started his business career as a young man, selling running shoes out of his small van. By 1998, his operation had grown into Sports Division, a network of more than 250 sports apparel stores. He sold it for £290 million and with his wife, Marion, established the Hunter Foundation, which initially supported education and economic empowerment in Scotland. By the time I met him a couple of years ago, he had developed and funded, in partnership with the Scottish government, an economic education program for all Scottish primary school children. Tom was also active in mobilizing popular support for Prime Minister Tony Blair’s proposal to have the G8 promote doubling aid to Africa and debt relief for poor nations at its annual conference hosted by the United Kingdom at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2005.
Hunter is a fascinating character. Compact, intelligent, intense, blunt, and just forty-six years old, he looks as if he’d be more at home on a rugby pitch than in a boardroom. He joined me on a trip to Africa in 2005, and I was struck by the similarities in our approach: we both believe in programs that have a large impact within a reasonably short time frame at the least possible cost. He told me he wanted to give away a great deal of money without wasting any: “I am Scottish, you know.” We talked on that trip about the good results his enterprise education efforts had achieved in poor neighborhoods in Scotland, and agreed that poor people everywhere could do well if they had the skills and basic systems necessary to succeed. Over the next few months our discussions grew into the Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative to spark substantial and sustainable economic growth in Africa.
At the inaugural meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, Hunter committed up to $100 million over ten years, and we decided to work on developing national growth strategies beginning in Rwanda and Malawi. In both cases the governments asked us to come in, pledged full cooperation, and assured us that our work was consistent with their own development strategies.
Our mission is to develop programs that produce profits from agriculture; ensure more access to nutrition, clean water, and health care; can be expanded nationwide; and eventually can be fully supported by local communities and the national government without outside help. Our work began in eastern Rwanda, in a poor dry region of 425,000 people, and in three regions in Malawi with a total population of 584,000. In all these areas, most people rely on agriculture for survival.
In Rwanda, CHDI improved agricultural productivity by increasing the use of fertilizer, disease-resistant seeds, advanced planting techniques, irrigation, and microcredit; by cultivating markets for the produce and developing value-added farm products; by providing more access to clean water, especially in health clinics and schools; and by strengthening the health-care systems working with Partners In Health.
Even though the program has been under way only a year, farmers in Rwanda enjoyed a 240 percent increase in maize harvests and created a significant surplus thanks to fertilizer, new seeds, advanced planting, and good rains. CHDI worked with the Rwandan government to import a record fourteen thousand tons of fertilizer at a 30 percent discount, and negotiated lower interest rates of microcredit loans for farmers and cooperatives, enabling many farmers to purchase their own fertilizer and seeds for the first time. These steps are helping to establish food security for thousands of families. In Malawi, at the government’s request, we began by improving the health infrastructure, training community health workers, and supporting treatment for 3,500 HIV-positive children.
CHDI will continue to expand in Rwanda, working with farmers to extend cash crops including soybeans;