Check out this guest post from Indego Africa volunteer Sarah Dunigan. For more Indego Africa stories, check out their blog, Social Enterprising:

I am often asked what drives me to volunteer in Africa. I find it hard to put into words, but sharing a story often helps.

For the past two months I have had the pleasure of volunteering for Indego Africa, an innovative social enterprise empowering hundreds of women in Rwanda to lift themselves out of poverty by selling their fair trade handicrafts and returning 100% of profits to fund training programs in business management, entrepreneurship, microfinance, computers and literacy. Until recently, Indego Africa’s cooperative partners, Cocoki and Covanya, had never sold their handicrafts in the local Rwandan market. Instead, orders have always been picked up at the cooperatives by Indego Africa and shipped to the United States. But last Friday, at the U.S. Embassy Holiday Crafts Fair here in Rwanda, everything changed.

The cooperatives were in full preparation mode in the weeks leading up to the fair. The foot-powered sewing machines at Cocoki whirred as the artisans created their unique textile products. Rows of women lined the floor at Covanya weaving and individually signing the tags on their brightly colored baskets. They even requested that Indego Africa lead extra training sessions on business English, product pricing and accounting.
When the day of the fair arrived, the women were still feeling a bit unsure of themselves. Upon arrival at the market, we even discovered that other handicraft organizations were, unfortunately, not represented by their artisans. But the women took a collective deep breath and got to it – and the customers responded!
Covanya nearly cleared out their entire inventory of baskets, and Cocoki’s yoga bags and laptop sleeves were flying off the table. The women’s English rapidly improved as they answered questions about pricing and styles. They handled the money, wrote out receipts, and even balanced their receipt books against their cash drawer at the end of the day to make sure they matched.

This was a defining moment for the women of Indego Africa. They were learning by doing and the result was a dramatic increase of confidence in their capabilities as independent businesswomen. As the number of products dwindled, Daphrose, a master weaver at Covanya, turned to me and said through a huge smile, “This gives us courage!”

-Sarah Dunigan, Indego Africa Volunteer in Rwanda

In the IFC-World Bank Doing Business 2010 report released yesterday, for the first time a sub-Saharan African country—Rwanda—was named the world’s top reformer of business regulations, based on the number and impact of reforms implemented. Doing Business is an annual report that ranks economies based on 10 indicators of business regulation that record the time and cost to meet government requirements for starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business.

In Rwanda, it now takes an entrepreneur just two procedures and three days to start a business. Imports and exports are more efficient, and transferring property takes less time thanks to a reorganized registry and time limits. Investors have more protection, insolvency reorganization has been streamlined, and a wider range of assets can be used as collateral to access credit.

Mauritius, ranked 17 globally, is the top sub-Saharan economy for the second year in a row in terms of the overall regulatory ease of doing business.

However, despite these advances, more reforms are needed in Africa. The average rank for sub-Saharan African countries remain the lowest of any region.

Globally, the report shows that despite the financial and economic crisis, a record 131 economies reformed business regulations between June 2008 and April 2009. Singapore is the top-ranked economy on the ease of doing business for the fourth year in a row, but most of the action occurred in developing economies. Two-thirds of the reforms recorded in the report were in low- and lower-middle-income economies.

-Mikiko Imai

Check out this excellent blog post from Mr. Paul Rusesabagina who was portrayed in the film “Hotel Rwanda”:

More than 800,000 men, women and children were killed in the horrific Rwandan genocide of 1994 – including many of my friends and family members.

Perhaps you saw the film Hotel Rwanda, in which actor Don Cheadle portrayed me. Cheadle, Nick Nolte, Joaquin Phoenix, Sophie Okonedo and their fellow cast members highlighted the challenges my family and I faced working to save approximately 1,200 Hutus and Tutsis from genocidal killers who surrounded the hotel I managed in Kigali.

Sadly, the actions that led to the Rwandan genocide have never been fully revealed. The ethnic and political conflicts that preceded the genocide continue to this day and have spilled over Rwanda’s borders. This means that justice has not been done for victims or survivors. It also means that related violence is continuing in nations bordering Rwanda such as the Congo, where 5 million have now died.

You can help change this. Click here to send a free message asking international leaders to support the Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation’s call for an internationally administered Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the Great Lakes Region of Africa, which includes Rwanda, the Congo, Burundi and Uganda.

This is the only way to truly heal the wounds left by the genocide and bring justice to victims and survivors from all backgrounds.

Former South African President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu, both Nobel Peace Prize winners, established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission on apartheid era crimes in South Africa. This helped to bring more closure to that painful, violent period of their nation’s history. Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in other nations have laid the important groundwork for peace.

Is justice for genocide survivors and victims worth a minute of your time? If so, please click here to send a free, instant message to world leaders in support of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

As someone who witnessed the barbarity of the Rwanda killings firsthand, I urge you from the bottom of my heart to join our efforts to support true democracy and ensure that genocide never happens again. Thank you so much for your support.

Sincerely,

Paul Rusesabagina, Founder of Hotel Rwanda Rusesabagina Foundation

In light of a recent New Times headline stating that Rwanda President Paul Kagame was moving to “shun” development aid, The New Times published a letter today from David Himbara of Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s office clarifying President Kagame’s position. Himbara clearly states:

“The President’s position is very clear – and cannot just be summarised as a call to “shun aid”…Now, as the President has repeatedly said, we in Rwanda, along with other less developed countries, need initial and temporary support to build the foundations to enable us, for ourselves, to create prosperity.”

More excerpts from Himbara’s letter to the New Times are below, the full piece is here.

Good aid, if you will, is assistance with a purpose – the purpose to support a countries’ development in their own terms, for the benefit of many not the few. In contrast, bad aid is often tied to vested interests and does little to promote real development.

He does not condemn all aid – only bad aid. He has never called to setting timelines for ending aid for any country, let alone Rwanda, especially given that we still receive substantial amounts of support – around just under fifty percent of our budget – from external assistance, which we still require in order for us to develop and prosper.

-Chris Scott

Two of my colleagues were in Rwanda last week for a conference of African Ministers on climate change and whilst there they caught up with Catherine Namugala, the Zambian Minister of Tourism, Environment and Natural Resources.

She did a little video for ONE, talking about climate change in Zambia. She says that the adverse effects of climate change are definitely being felt in Zambia, most notably for subsistence farmers and others living off the land. Changing rainfall patterns as part of climate change are leading to increased flooding and drought for example.

Namugala goes on to say that even though her country does not contribute significantly to climate change, Zambia is focussing on raising awareness amongst the general population and also looking at ways to adapt to the effects of climate change. Emphasising that it’s a question of morality, Namugala concludes with a call to developed countries to do their bit as the major contributors of global warming.

-Jessica Gomez-Duran

Jeffrey Sachs wrote a strong op-ed in the Huffington Post on Sunday outlining the flaws he sees in many anti-aid critics arguments and highlighting the many benefits of effective aid. I pulled out some excerpts below, but recommend reading the full piece.

The debate about foreign aid has become farcical. The big opponents of aid today are Dambisa Moyo, an African-born economist who reportedly received scholarships so that she could go to Harvard and Oxford but sees nothing wrong with denying $10 in aid to an African child for an anti-malaria bed net. Her colleague in opposing aid, Bill Easterly, received large-scale government support from the National Science Foundation for his own graduate training…

I certainly don’t begrudge any of them the help that they got. Far from it. I believe in this kind of help. And I’d find Moyo’s views cruel and mistaken even she did not get the scholarships that have been reported (Easterly mentioned his receipt of NSF support in the same book in which he denounces aid). I begrudge them trying to pull up the ladder for those still left behind. Before peddling their simplistic concoction of free markets and self-help, they and we should think about the realities of life, in which all of us need help at some time or other and in countless ways, and even more importantly we should think about the life-and-death consequences for impoverished people who are denied that help…

Americans are predisposed to like the anti-aid message. They believe that the poor have only themselves (or perhaps their governments) to blame. They overestimate the actual aid from the US by around thirty times, so they imagine that vast sums are flowing to Africa that are then squandered. Many believe, typically in private, that by saving African children we would be creating a population explosion, so better to let the kids die now rather than grow up hungry. (I’m asked about this constantly, usually in whispers, after lectures). They don’t understand the most basic point of worldwide experience: when children survive rather than die in large numbers, households choose to have many fewer children, in fact more than compensating for the decline in child mortality. Africa’s high child mortality is ironically a core reason why Africa’s population is continuing to soar rather than stabilize as in other parts of the world.

Of course, most Americans know little about the many crucially successful aid efforts, because Moyo, Easterly, and others lump all kinds of programs – the good and the bad – into one big undifferentiated mass, rather than helping people to understand what is working and how it can be expanded, and what is not working, and should therefore be cut back. Nor do Americans hear that many poor countries graduate from the need for aid over time, precisely because aid programs help to spur economic growth and successfully prepare countries to tackle future priorities. US aid to India for increased food production in the 1960s paved the way for India’s growth takeoff afterwards. There are countless other examples in which countries have benefited from aid and then graduated, including Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, Israel, and others. Egypt is on that path today, and Rwanda, Tanzania, Ghana, and others will be as well if both donors and recipients carry forward with a sensible assistance strategies…

Edith Jibunoh and I are in Rwanda this week, attending the Third African Ministerial Conference on Financing for Development. The theme of the meeting is ‘climate change financing’. African governments will be discussing the funds they need to adapt to the potentially devastating impacts of climate change in their countries. I will be blogging more on this in coming days…

It’s my first time in Rwanda, the country most well known for the genocide of 1994. Less well known is what Rwandans have achieved in the 15 years since.

Rwanda’s progress has gone at a cracking pace. Economic growth rates have been closer to ten per cent than five per cent for most of that period. The majority of Rwanda’s children now sleep under mosquito nets, and since mid 2006, both deaths and cases of malaria in Rwanda have dropped by two-thirds. The number of people in need of life-saving AIDS treatment who received it rose from one per cent in 2003 to 71 per cent in 2007. The number of kids in school has also rocketed. These are remarkable statistics, and behind them lie countless human triumphs.

Much of this progress has been achieved with the support of aid money from the UK, the US, the EU and others. Aid contributes to over half of the Rwandan budget. There’s little doubt that it’s had a positive impact here. But the smart young entrepreneurial Rwandans I’ve met here so far also want to make clear that while they welcome aid it needs to be delivered in the right way – and it needs to have a built in exit strategy.

President Paul Kagame and his government have asked donors to support Rwanda’s priorities rather than their own. They have insisted that the donors coordinate their efforts better to reduce the profusion of meetings to attend and forms to fill in.

There is a lot for us to learn from the Rwandan story in terms of aid effectiveness. How can aid be improved so that it delivers results and avoids dependency? How do we help foster the entrepreneurial spirit that will ultimately take African countries forward? I look forward to my next few days here!

-Oliver Buston

President Obama can provide leadership that creates a world where no one has to do die from a mosquito bite. Malaria is the number one killer of young children in Africa – but it doesn’t have to be. Rwanda and Ethiopia have cut deaths due to malaria by 50%, providing positive examples of the potential that exists in Africa and elsewhere to reverse the trajectory of the disease. Ending deaths from malaria in Africa and in other regions is achievable in the short-term and should be acted on now, but the United States should also lead the world in investments for what is needed to ensure the longer term improvement of health. ONE’s briefing to the presidential transition team makes recommendations for how President Obama can lead the United States in doing its fair share to realize both of these goals.

President Obama can start by fulfilling the commitment he made at the Clinton Global Initiative in September 2008 to end all malaria deaths by 2015. The United States will not be alone in this effort, but in Obama’s own words: “The United States must lead.” ONE recommends that President Obama propose $825 million in total funding in FY09, and $1.55 billion in FY10 for malaria. These numbers were not drawn out of thin air; they are the US share of the total amount needed globally to fund the Global Malaria Action Plan (GMAP) – the roadmap to eliminate deaths from malaria.

The GMAP sets an interim goal of 2010 to reduce the burden of malaria by 50%. This would be achieved by providing “universal access” (reaching 80% of those in need) to prevention and treatment services. If these targets are reached, by 2015 the world will have eliminated deaths from malaria and nearly 100% of those in need of prevention methods and treatment will be covered. This ‘quick win’ will help to lay the groundwork for strengthening health systems in developing countries.

Weak health systems are constraining the potential impact of large amounts of funding for specific diseases – including that of the United States. ONE’s briefing to the transition team recommends that the Administration spur discussions at the Italian G8 Summit of a multilateral initiative that would coordinate health system strengthening efforts. To indicate its intent to support this initiative, ONE recommends that the United States should pledge an initial $250 million in FY11. In addition to funding national health system plans in at least 19 countries by 2010, such an initiative would have several positive spillover effects. It would reduce the reporting burden many countries face, would coordinate donor efforts to ensure they are aligned with country plans and priorities, and would use limited aid dollars more efficiently.

Making an initial investment in malaria would set the foundation for a longer-term health system strengthening effort. In turn, investing in health systems would help to ensure that reductions in malaria deaths and increased access to malaria prevention and treatment last through generations, in addition to maximizing the potential of investments in other key areas to significantly reduce morbidity and mortality in developing countries.

-Lisa Fleisher

After abolishing and modernizing various patriarchal laws in their country, the Washington Post reports that women have become a driving force in Rwanda’s economy and government. Rwandan women have greatly progressed from once not even being able to inherit land to now holding a third of all cabinet positions and making up 56% of Rwanda’s parliament—a near perfect reflection of Rwanda’s demographics.

Excerpts below, full article here

One lawmaker said the committee has compiled “a stack” of laws to modify or toss out altogether — including one that requires a woman to get her husband’s signature on a bank loan.

“The fact that we are so many has made it possible for men to listen to our views,” said lawmaker Espérance Mwiza. “Now that we’re a majority, we can do even more.”

The unusually high percentage of women in Rwandan government is in part a reflection of popular will in a country of 10 million that is 55 percent female.

“This was a broken society after the genocide,” said Aloisea Inyumba, Kagame’s former gender and social affairs minister, who was also a prominent official in his ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front when it was still a rebel group fighting the country’s genocidal government. “We made a decision that if Rwanda is going to survive, we have to have a change of heart as a society. Equality and reconciliation are the only options.”

-Chris Scott

The short video right before Cindy McCain’s big speech tonight showed an image of Cindy in a ONE shirt and ONE hat!

The photo was taken while Cindy was on ONE’s recent bipartisan trip to Rwanda in July. It includes Senators Frist & Daschle and Democratic strategist John Podesta and was taken while the group was touring the Masaka clinic outside of Kigali, where they talked with doctors, nurses, health officials, and patients about HIV/AIDS treatment in Rwanda.

I was hoping to grab a screen shot of the image straight from the video, but the video doesn’t seem to be online yet. I’ll place the image here when it’s available.