Gap in Capacity Scuppers Efforts to Uplift Poor

from All Africa

This examines the use of resources to uplift the poor. the authors say that South Africa have many recources but the are under used. - Kale

Business Day (Johannesburg)

By Ted Black and Andrew Black
Johannesburg

ON HIS 90th birthday, Nelson Mandela said: "There are many people in SA who are rich and who can share their riches with those who have not been able to conquer poverty."

We all understand why he said that, but "wealth redistribution" is the wrong focus for the nation. More than enough of it has taken place since 1994 -- legally and illegally.

Over the past 60 years, developed countries have given billions of dollars to help developing ones escape poverty, disease and provide hope. Despite an extraordinary level of financial support, relatively few countries, mainly Far Eastern, have emerged with viable economies. Many others, especially in Africa, have sunk deeper into debt with ever more of their people falling into poverty. Success stories are rare.

Various unstoppable forces contribute to the failure, not least political and economic beliefs and systems coupled to greed. However, as the late Peter Drucker pointed out many years ago, "Capitalism has been proved a false god because it leads inevitably to class war among rigidly defined classes. Socialism has been proved false because it has shown it cannot abolish these classes."

Does this mean the best wish for SA is to have an avaricious, privileged, multiracial elite perched on the lid of a simmering cauldron of unmet expectations? Rather go for a message of hope with the right goal in mind. Again, Drucker defined it clearly for us. "The task is not to make the poor wealthy, but productive," he said.

Of all the forces that work against success, one key factor is the inability to get things done. Moreover, the same assumptions that drive the "big-fix solutions" in business underpin most government social and economic programmes.

A gaggle of experts develops large-scale recommendations for change and presents them. They usually involve big projects -- change in legislation, introduction of new technology, large-scale training and the inevitable restructuring. Human and capital resources are duly committed to these activities.

AS SENSIBLE and informed as the programmes are, their success needs tremendous can-do capacity at national and local government level. This capability is rare and hardly ever developed. Human resource departments can't do it and neither can business schools -- both are like marriage counsellors. They can help, but in the end it is the task of husband and wife to make the marriage work.

It is the same with management development -- it can't be done in a classroom. It has to take place on the job.

This capacity gap -- the one between knowing and doing -- scuppers social and economic progress in developing countries as much as it hampers productivity improvement in businesses.

As Drucker dryly observed: "The wonder of modern institutions is not that they work so badly, but that anything works at all."

However, his sarcasm was deliberately provocative. It pointed to a fundamental truth. There is always a deep reservoir of potential waiting to be tapped.

In the private sector, productivity is higher because of competition but there is still massive opportunity to improve. The power of our major corporations to fix prices allows huge levels of costly incompetence to exist. As to governments worldwide, the potential to improve is boundless.

It means the answer to the poverty problem is not about redistribution of wealth. The poor do not create poverty nor does unemployment sustain it -- the system that surrounds them with its institutions and policies does.

Economists for the poor like Peru's Hernando de Soto, Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, and the late Norman Reynolds in this country, have repeatedly proved that the poor have vast amounts of unused abilities and skills.

In recent years, development professionals working with government officials at local levels in Africa have started tapping into them by using Rapid Results initiatives to building can-do abilities.

The first step is to make the ego-free admission that the way we do things now is not working. It frees you to tackle things in a new way. The projects usually last no more than 100 days but they are not quick-fixes implying rough and ready short-term solutions.

For instance, in Madagascar, more than 40 Rapid Results teams lifted the percentage of regular users of family planning services in one region from 12,5% to 17,5% of women of childbearing age within nine months.

This defied expert predictions and created a performance breakthrough in a culturally sensitive area that had resisted change for decades. Moreover, they accomplished it within budget and existing resources. Today, more than 100 family planning clinics are under way in all 22 regions of the country. A cadre of trained rapid-results coaches from the health ministry supports them.

The new confidence that the projects unleashed triggered more initiatives to tackle other priorities such as maternal risk during pregnancy and birth. Because of these successes, the president of Madagascar has introduced the approach into various parts of the public-service delivery system in the country.

IN SIERRA Leone, the Rapid Results approach proved that the newly elected local councils were ready to manage their own development agendas. To sustain peace after many tragic years of civil strife, decentralisation of responsibility and authority was critical. However, central government was reluctant to release funds to local councils -- "How can we be sure they have the capacity to manage funds in a responsible way?"

Nineteen Rapid Results initiatives silenced the critics. Each local council converted one of its campaign promises into a 100-day goal and delivered on it. Three years later, the councils, supported by trained coaches, still use the approach to organise development projects. For instance, after testing only 1000 people in two years, the National AIDs Secretariat tested 15700 Freetown residents for HIV/AIDS in voluntary counselling and testing centres in 100 days with no additional resources.

In Kenya, coaches trained as part of a World Bank capacity- building initiative are now the core team supporting the "Results for Kenya" public sector reform programme. The government recently won a UN award for it.

A separate initiative emerged after a six-year stalemate between the government and industry on the fortification of staple foods to fight malnutrition. A 100-day project to form a public/private partnership broke through the logjam to fortify 15% of the country's cooking oil with Vitamin A. By the end of the project, the rapid results team had successfully designed and implemented a certification system and placed an official government logo on the three leading cooking oil brands.

The momentum and confidence created by this initial success generated additional efforts. The partnership is moving on to fortify flour products with iron, zinc and folic acid.

IN SA a few years ago Sasol sponsored a small, pilot project in Zamdela Township in Sasolburg. Its aim was to help young people to start their own businesses and to improve the results of existing businesses.

The participants, 20 men and women, were chosen carefully. Eight started street trading and the rest pursued opportunities in the community at large. Six businesses already existed but the rest were start-ups. They included selling cellphone airtime, cabinetmaking, dressmaking, catering, sign writing and photographic and electrical services.

The usual training brief was ignored. Instead, the programme was designed for on-the-job practice and coaching, not theory. A four-day classroom session -- the only training in a nine-month programme -- ended with a 10-day breakthrough project.

Many important lessons were learned during those 10 days, including the fact that nothing drives performance better than a clear, easily-measurable task. The entry ticket was R100 in cash -- not easy for many of them to bring.

Organised into small teams, their goal was at least to double the money per person in 10 days. The winning team would have most sales-in-cash banked, with progress measured by the minute.

None failed, and many discovered elements of lean thinking.

As it was winter, one team sold woollen beanies, gloves and scarves door-to-door with five other products. Schoolchildren became the main customers.

Next, they found that inventory is waste. The stock was sourced in Johannesburg -- a costly journey. Rather than holding products in stock and offering them for sale, they took orders first, negotiated for the right stuff, bought what was needed and sold for cash on-delivery.

They also learned that you get economic results by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems. After a primary school principal banned them from selling directly to pupils they changed tack and took bulk orders from the school with a volume discount. They turned their cash 20 times in 10 days.

Each team finished with more than it started. Those who made most profit but generated less cash learned about debtors and the cash-to-cash cycle. To increase sales of signboards they gave credit. Instead of having their cash in the bank, customers were still holding onto it after 10 days.

Then two 100-day projects followed. Over a nine-month period, this little group generated R5 sales for every R1 Sasol put in. Almost all of them survived and even expanded to employ more people. Sadly, the sponsoring initiative ended there.

Dr Jo Barnes, a senior lecturer in health sciences at Stellenbosch University, is an exemplar of doing what you can with what you have. An epidemiologist with a special interest in waterborne diseases, she initiated a number of small projects in rural communities to reduce water-pollution levels.

"Each of them, is an example of how small and humble ideas can bring incredible results," she said.

A team of 15 jobless matriculants was trained in trades such as plumbing, painting and woodwork. The municipality provided a year's worth of materials for maintenance and repairs. As part of its practicals, the team repaired the community hall and toilet blocks.

Another group, for only one meal a day, volunteered to patrol their community, pick up litter and clean the rivers.

"Sometimes, they scolded those who were being completely careless towards the environment," she said.

Another campaign was an educational one. Fifteen people walked door-to-door handing out pamphlets typed in Xhosa. They stuck them to the walls of every single dwelling, shebeen, toilet block, police station and spaza shop. There were four, simple instructions on them:

* Always wash hands after using the toilet;

* Accompany children whenever they go to toilet blocks, and stop them from playing nearby;

* Do not to throw rubbish around, such as plastic bags, as these block the toilets; and

* Rub newspaper as if washing it.

"Seeing as toilet paper is so expensive," she said, "most people use newspaper, but it has a layer that makes it non-absorbent. So our last instruction was to rub it to make it soft and absorbent. That way it flushes through the system."

Barnes and her team quickly figured that these four messages were the most important to spread and the results were remarkable. After repeating this process a little while later they followed up with a survey on knowledge retention. They found that 85% of the community still had the pamphlets on their walls.

And the result? Pollution levels downstream from the settlement plummeted, proving that pollution can be reduced rapidly and affordably in rural areas. However, when the team handed the projects over to the municipality, it took only two months for levels to shoot back to where they had been.

As Barnes says: "When a bit of creative thought is applied, it is simple to find a variety of ways to help. But we have to bypass the inertia. The solution is simply to start -- start with what can be done. Push the boundaries by doing what we can do well, no matter how small it may be.

"There is an urgent need to mobilise people who can help and work out simple solutions for those who need them.

"The only way to achieve this is to get real commitment from government -- a commitment that is above politics and above party lines," Barnes says.

"The most necessary message of all, and one that needs to go out to every single settlement, every municipality and every person, rich and poor, is that certain things in life are beyond politics. Environmental and health rights are common to all of humanity."

THE greatest lesson of all, as Yunus found in Bangladesh and elsewhere, is that people, however poor, can lift themselves out of the quagmire of poverty with very little. They need the ability to borrow small amounts of money and, as De Soto advocates, own their homes.

The truth is that SA, like any business, does not have to look outside for more resources. We have them. We pay for them. We don't use them.

Ted Black (jeblack@icon.co.za) is affiliated to Robert H Schaffer & Associates, which sponsors Rapid Results - an initiative to build development capacity.

Andrew Black is head writer for ISIZA magazine, which focuses on the construction industry.


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