Now in its sixth year, 14 students will travel to 4 African countries to learn and work with five dynamic social enterprises. Two teams will participate in Uganda (Rhino Camp in the north and Kampala in the south) making this the 15th country in which we have studied.
- African Health Placements (South Africa)
- Living Goods (Uganda)
- Global environment and Technology Fund (Ghana)
- Bridge International Academies (Kenya)
- Gulu Agricultural Development Company (Uganda)
African Health Placements – Johannesburg, SA
Africa Health Placements (AHP) is a social enterprise dedicated to solving the crisis of the shortage of doctors in Africa. AHP recruits, places and retains health care professionals to close the gap by placing them in underserved areas around the southern African region, and supporting them to be effective clinicians and change agents during their placements. AHP has placed over 4200 practitioners in the field over the past 12 years and has been largely supported by philanthropic capital. The Yale team will work with AHP to help develop a “Community of Practice” – researching the opportunity to reengage alumni from the program to sponsor and mentor new professionals in the program.
Student participants: Garth Holden, Grace Jin, Julian Johnson
Living Goods – Kampala, UG
Living Goods (LG) supports networks of ‘Avon-like’ health entrepreneurs who go door to door to teach families how to improve their health and wealth and sell life-changing products such as simple treatments for malaria and diarrhea, safe delivery kits, fortified foods, clean cook stoves, water filters, and solar lights. By combining the best practices from business and public health, LG is dramatically lowering child mortality and creating livelihoods for thousands of enterprising women. Recent success (RCT trails) has led to an unprecedented growth opportunity for LG – where they anticipate expanding 5-fold their existing base of 2000 community health promotors. The Yale students will engage in a detailed interview process to highlight challenges (CHP perspective) to achieve this scale-up.
Student participants: Nadira Abdilnathi, Simon Cooper, Liana Wang
Global Environment and Technology Fund – Accra, GH
Around the world, 884 million people lack access to safe drinking water and 2.6 billion have inadequate sanitation. The impact of inadequate water and sanitation stretches across all sectors of development: health, education, gender equality, economic development, food security and even national security. GETF accelerates the delivery of safe water and sanitation through partnerships that catalyze financial support and drive innovation for sustainable solutions. Working with partners in Ghana, the Yale students will work on a team promoting an innovative insurance product designed to protect community water source points against pump non-performance (mechanical and otherwise). The team will be engaged principally on interviews regarding the financial feasibility of this idea from the view of water source committees themselves.
Student participants: Teni Lanre-Amos, Daniel Rice, Somto Okereke
Bridge International Academies – Nairobi, KN
Bridge partners with governments, communities, teachers and parents to deliver evidence based quality education for primary and pre-primary school children. The organization currently serves more than 100,000 pupils in more than 520 nursery and primary schools across Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria, Liberia and India. In the Bridge “Theory of Change”, innovation and technology can transform learning. Bridge develops world-class lessons based on national curricula, in-depth teacher training and support programs and uses cutting edge wireless technology. Their schools deliver increased learning for pupils by being data driven and evidenced based. Recent results showed that children get the equivalent of 64 more days of learning in a Bridge school; when it comes to reading and 26 additional days of learning in Math. The Yale students will work with the Bridge customer insights group to assist in research that hears specifically from parents of children in the program.
Student participants: Samuel Burton, Rahim Haliminski, Grace Kyallo
Gulu Agricultural Development Company – Gulu, UG
The Gulu Agricultural Development Company (GADC) was established in Uganda in the aftermath of the LRA-instigated war which devastated the Northern region for nearly 20 years. The company revived and took control of the COO-ROM ginnery in Gulu 2009 to establish agricultural buying and value addition operations, which have grown rapidly ever since. The company has since expanded to two further ginneries in Kitgum and 
Rhino Camp. GADC is currently active in the cotton, sesame, chili, sunflower, maize, sorghum, oil milling and maize milling businesses and conventional and organic products are sold on national and international markets. The company employs over 400 permanent and casual employees, nearly all of whom are Ugandan nationals and sources products from over 80,000 smallholder farmers across Northern Uganda. Through this field network and its partnerships, GADC provides agricultural extension services and training for farmers on a variety of topics including agronomy, organic principles, post-harvest handling, numeracy, and basic financial literacy. The Yale students will assist this initiative by examining additional support services GADC may be able to provide to its member farmers.
Student participants: Alexandra Lanier, Marina Miller