startup kenya

Dear Startup Kenya Erastus (and African women Entrepreneurs) Waithe , and friends of start up new york and everywhere that dean rolle alumni or friends linkin

Here is a primary list of people I respect and in some cases have active connections with in Kenya- each one is a somewhat different connection story- so happy to take more detailed questions and also sort out who makes most relevant first contact due to locality, practice interest etc. I would not claim to have grounding in Kenya in ways that many of you do.  -again if you wish circulate selectively but note reporting errors mine alone! chris macrae

1 I have known and be inspired by ingrid munro the founder of jamii bora slum and youth banking for a long time.. in 2009 probably ingrids last trip to new york she told big bankers this

WATCHED

8:13

JP Morgan Listens to Lessons from Kenya Microcredit Jamii Bora

by microeconomist

• 6 years ago
• 1,115 views

Microcredit offers the safest banks in the world. In the last decade, microcredit has reached 100 million of the world's poorest.

she was asked to be main host of 2010 african microcreditsummit-  a gigantic task that did not improve her health- although queen sofia had wanted ingrids model to be benchmarked in over 60 most slum impacted cities in southern hemisphere- the leaders of microcreditsummit failed to find funding for that . Jami bora innovations included huge youth programs -for example with her then friend Wangaari Maathai. Ingrid was inspired to empower youth from kibera to build a solar ecovillage kaputei which I believe has 2000 family units -ingrid also led one of the largest cooperative health insurance contracts ever bought for the poor - a win-win with missionary hospitals that had become under-cliented

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she is now quite old and i am not sure how actively involved she is in operations- probably the best way to contact her is to phone her head office and mention i personally suggested senior or local people in your networks connect and try and get a meeting or her mboile phone- she started jamii bora in 1999 after a career at unhabitat. Its probable her work kept regulations open enough for mpesa to succeed but that is a complex story. 

2 My understanding is Dianne's networks have contacts with unhabitat and its hq at many levels because its the main network of goal 11 sustainability communities and cities - and the one we all see some quick ways in connection youth networks with

3 I have briefly met rachel ruto and have email contact of her secretary. I understand http://www.joywo.org  table banking is currently as exciting as sustaining poorest banking for women gets- the strategic architect of scaling that is naila chowdury who john , amy and I know- for 16 years with yunus grameen phone in dhaka she now lives in DC region. Amy's us-Ethiopain friend at the satellite learning facility www.yazmi.com hq's in silver spring md were involved in piloting a satellite channel for table banking with Naila  www.women4empowerment.org . Thing is after the killing of 130 students at time of announcement of Obama entrepreneur summit, I necded to stop publicly sharing best leads on kenya as I dont feel i understand local safety issues particularly in education formats like bridges schools which I had been wanting to actively understand especially as obama was promising to integrate khan academy maths with them

4 On both of my visits to the vatican facilitated by bernardo and his friends I have been told that romes health service nuns are currently building a lot of capacity in kenya. Antonio is in charge of italy-kenya investment networks but he only speaks italian. Whilst I was specifically told to help promote these nuns networks , my lack of italian has so far slowed down understanding of best way to make a local visit to the chapter in the bronx. While you might have hoped Pope Fracis visit would change curriculum of development economics=  i havent found any college leader in spite of a years us searches other than dean rolle doing that. I thin lum school in berkeley can be a tipping point on that and amy and I are hitting every dc latin american network youth empowerment we can towards that convergence. Give us 2 weeks to report back

5 At mit there is a small circle of mobile and tech wizards who have all the code started by Nick Hughes that started up mpesa and became the translation to the biggest cashless bank in the world of end poverty www.bkash.org - ofwww.brac.net Bangladesh - mostofa is the person who knows best how to contact local leaders of bkash- naila is best at contacting MIT leaders of mobile banking apps

5a acumen has arguably been the most patient investor US portfolio in kenya until out app'd by give directly. They co-habit huge offices with google and should not be left out of connections but so far I havent found the right way in for someone like me to individually make

6 New york headquartered Give Directly - whose san diego and berkeley origins - amy and I have heard abut at regional presentations in recent months is focusing most on Kenya region at the moment- like Kiva they are involving us students and Kenya diaspora in double checking most trusted recipients but give directly does this at whole community levels. 

7 Both give directly and IHUB/ushahidi are networks where connecting with founders is a dream i recommend but havent found an actionable way to do yet. However Ebola caused new levels of collaboration among the big institutions in DC - innovations around grand challenge of Ebola actually stimulated USAID to  host their first ever  hackathon and they suddenly found youth hubs around the world were locally better informed in key respects than their top experts - also china aid had in some cases better relations with these youth hubs across africa than usaid. Some of this story emerged from Diannes most recent windsor castle worldwide consultation but since chatham house rules applied to the details I am only slowly finding way to make connections in DC that I want to see youth and apps designers empower

best chris macrae dc 240 316 8157