innovationsWashington, DC | September 10-12, 2013 A quarterly journal published by MIT Press

Youth and Economic OpportunitiesProduced in partnership with Making Cents International and the Citi Foundation

Lead Essays

Arnest Sebbumba Finding the Word for Entrepreneur in LugandaJudith Rodin & Eme Essien Lore Rethinking Youth OpportunityÁngel Cabrera & Callie Le Renard “Go to college...!”Stan Litow Innovating to Strengthen Youth EmploymentCarl Schramm University Entrepreneurship May Be Failing

Case NarrativeJacob Korenblum Frustration, Fearlessness, and FortuneMartin Burt The “Poverty Stoplight” Approach Kevin McKague et al. Reducing Poverty by Employing Young WomenNell Merlino Cracking the Glass Ceiling and Raising the Roof Shai Reshef Going Against the Flow in Higher EducationFiona Macaulay A World of Opportunity

Analysis and Perspectives on PolicyNicholas Davis et al. | Trina Williams Shanks et al. | Ann CottonMichael Chertok & Jeremy Hockenstein | Akhtar Badshah & Yvonne Thomas Jamie M. Zimmerman & Julia Arnold | John OwensBeverly Schwartz & Deepali Khanna | James Sumberg & Christine Okali

ENTREPRENEURIAL SOLUTIONS TO GLOBAL CHALLENGES

TECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION

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Introductory Essays5 Guest Editor’s Introduction

Making Cents International and Citi Foundation

7 Investing in the Economic Progress of YouthJasmine Thomas

Lead Essays

13 Finding the Word for Entrepreneur in LugandaArnest Sebbumba

19 Youth Opportunity: Rethinking the Next GenerationJudith Rodin and Eme Essien Lore

27 “Go to college, young men and women, go to college!”Ángel Cabrera and Callie Le Renard

35 Innovating to Strengthen Youth EmploymentStanley Litow

43 University Entrepreneurship May Be Failing Its Market TestCarl Schramm

Case Narratives

49 Frustration, Fearlessness, and Fortune: How Youth-Led Startups Are Redefining EntrepreneurshipJacob Korenblum

Fundación Paraguaya55 The “Poverty Stoplight” Approach to Eliminating

Multidimensional Poverty: Business, Civil Society, and Government Working Together in ParaguayMartin Burt

innovationsTECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION

Special Issue for the 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference

Hathay Bunano77 Reducing Poverty by Employing Young Women: Hathay

Bunano’s Scalable Model for Rural Production in BangladeshKevin McKague, Samantha Morshed, and Habibur Rahman

Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence97 Cracking the Glass Ceiling and Raising the Roof

Nell Merlino

University of the People109 Going Against the Flow in Higher Education:

Deliberately Including those Previously ExcludedShai Reshef

Making Cents International125 Toward a World of Opportunity

Fiona Macaulay

Analysis149 TEN Youth: Unlocking Enterprise Growth by Focusing on

the Fortune at the Bottom of the Talent PyramidNicholas Davis, Ebba Hansmeyer, Branka Minic, Shantanu Prakash, and Subramanian Rangan

167 Financial Education and Financial Access: Lessons Learned from Child Development Account ResearchTrina R. Williams Shanks, Lewis Mandell, and Deborah Adams

Perspectives on Policy185 Sourcing Change: Digital Work Building Bridges

to Professional LifeMichael Chertok and Jeremy Hockenstein

197 YouthSpark and the Evolution of a Corporate Philanthropy ProgramAkhtar Badshah and Yvonne Thomas

211 It’s All About the JobsJamie McAuliffe, Jasmine Nahhas di Florio, and Pia Saunders

227 Who Teaches Us Most About Financial Programing in Africa? Ann Cotton

241 Hope or Hype? Five Obstacles to Mobile MoneyInnovations for Youth Financial ServicesJamie M. Zimmerman and Julia Arnold

255 Future Forward: Innovations for Youth Employment in AfricaBeverly Schwartz and Deepali Khanna

267 Young People, Agriculture, and Transformation in Rural Africa: An “Opportunity Space” ApproachJames Sumberg and Christine Okali

279 Offering Digital Financial Services to Promote Financial Inclusion: Lessons We’ve LearnedJohn Owens

About InnovationsInnovations is about entrepreneurial solutions to global challenges.The journal features cases authored by exceptional innovators; commentary andresearch from leading academics; and essays from globally recognized executives andpolitical leaders. The journal is jointly hosted at George Mason University's School ofPublic Policy, Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and MIT's Legatum Centerfor Development and Entrepreneurship. Topics of interest include entrepreneurshipand global development, the revolution in mobile communications, global publichealth, water and sanitation, and energy and climate.Authors published in Innovations to date include three former and one current head ofstate (including U.S. Presidents Carter and Clinton); a Nobel Laureate in Economics;founders and executive directors of some of the world’s leading companies, venturecapital firms, and foundations; and MacArthur Fellows, Skoll awardees, and AshokaFellows. Recently the journal has published special editions in collaboration with theClinton Global Initiative, the World Economic Forum, the Rockefeller Foundation,Ashoka, the Lemelson Foundation, and Social Capital Markets.

Subscribe athttp://www.mitpressjournals.org/innovations

This youth-focused double issue is the product of a shared passion to improvelivelihoods and economic opportunities among the world’s 1.8 billion youth. Thepublication is particularly timely given the increased focus being given to pro-gramming, funding, and research on the contributions of young people in a timeof economic volatility. As the economy shows signs of recovery, the InternationalLabor Organization reports that the global rate of youth unemployment hoversaround 13%, just below the jobless rate at the peak of the crisis—this still repre-sents an estimated 73 million young people. Despite staggering unemployment,our concern is not the scale of the problem. Instead, we are encouraged by the scaleof the opportunity before us.

With the support and collaboration of the Citi Foundation, Making CentsInternational will leverage this Innovations issue as well as the annual conference,funder meetings, “Apply It!” webinars, blogs, crowd-sourced solution events, andother tools to engage a global network of partners to galvanize dialog, collabora-tion, and knowledge-building toward a collective global agenda for youth.Through its Collaborative Learning and Action Institute (Co-Lab), Making Centswill promote and improve economic opportunities for youth around the world.This year, the Co-Lab aims to strengthen knowledge management in the field,enhancing the scope and depth, diversity, and quality of how and what our peoplelearn. Co-Lab gives our stakeholders and partners a new platform to both addvalue and benefit from knowledge management that translates ideas into solutions.

The following collection of analyses, research, and remarkable stories is a partof our new vision. In searching for authors, we weren’t searching for all theanswers. We looked across diverse sectors for authors who could connect disparateconcepts, innovations, theories, stories, or research results that move the youtheconomic opportunities agenda forward.

To highlight a few authors, first and foremost, we hear the voices of young peo-ple describing the hard work, ambition, fortitude, and support needed from othersto bring innovations to old problems. Arnest Sebbumba, a young farmer, takes usinto rural Africa and reveals the choices, challenges and opportunities facing agri-cultural entrepreneurs in Uganda. Social entrepreneur and Founder of Souktel,Jacob Korenblum, shares the thrills and spills of navigating entrepreneurship andidentifying new opportunities in conflict-environments.

© 2013 Making Cents International and Citi Foundationinnovations / 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference 5

Making Cents International andCiti Foundation

Introduction to the Special Issue

6 innovations / Youth and Economic Opportunities

Featuring best practices and innovations in youth employment, JamieMcAuliffe’s case study of Employment for Education demonstrates how the NGOcreated a youth jobs model that reverses conventional supply-driven educationprocesses that often widens unemployment. Meanwhile, Michael Chertok andJeremy Hockenstein, of Digital Divide Data, highlight a growing $300 billion busi-ness process outsourcing industry, and the economic potential of Impact Sourcing

as a “game-changer” for scalingskilled jobs among youth.

Innovations aimed at increasingfinancial education, access, and inclu-sion among young people is critical.Research from Jamie Zimmermanand Julia Arnold of the New AmericaFoundation chronicles various mod-els that incorporate mobile technolo-gy into youth financial services pro-grams, illustrating both the promiseand, notably, high-cost and regulato-ry barriers to implementation.

Underscoring the critical role ofthe private sector, Branka Minic, Nicholas Davis, and Ebba Hansmeyer and theirteam approach youth capacity from the perspective of developing talent within thecorporate workforce. Their model enables businesses to find and develop talent tofuel growth, productivity, efficiency, and innovation while providing young peoplewith the skills and knowledge they need to more easily secure employment.Simultaneously, Akhtar Badshah and Yvonne Thomas of Microsoft, reflect uponthe company’s core philanthropic philosophy—providing information and com-munications technology (ICT) training that empowers individuals with high-demand skills.

We extend our sincere thanks and appreciation to the authors who investedtheir time, energy, and expertise to produce this special issue, which both embod-ies and inspires a guiding theme of collaboration. And, in that spirit, we ask read-ers to consider how they might apply these lessons and innovations to their ownwork, and share their results with us. Many of these authors will be featured in“Apply It” learning events throughout the coming year atwww.YouthEconomicOpportunities.org. We look forward to your participation.

Making Cents International Citi Foundation

Making Cents International and Citi Foundation

This youth-focused doubleissue is the product of ashared passion to improvelivelihoods and economicopportunities among theworld’s 1.8 billion youth.

On March 29, 2010, we watched the birth of our first calf conceived using moderntechnology. As she entered the world, I was struck by how quickly she managed tostand on her feet. For such a delicate animal—when she lay in the grass her skin-ny legs looked like a pile of sticks—she was impressively strong.

Our new addition was a breath of fresh air, but more than that, she was the tan-gible result of the several years I’d spent conducting research on the internet andreading articles about animal husbandry— studies that no one in my family hadthought to undertake before that. She represented a progression toward greaterself-sufficiency and more dependable revenue for the farm, and thus towardgreater stability for those of us who depend on the land.

A year earlier, we had lost my heifer to East Coast fever, a common diseaseaffecting farm animals in my home region of Kayunga, Uganda. It’s hard for any-one who did not grow up on a small family farm to understand how much loss anddevastation such a death causes in terms of potential income generated from thefarm, and all the effort expended in taking care of the animals. Also, it greatlyaffects the family’s ability to pay school fees, which come through the sale of farmanimals. We agonized over the details. Which warning signs did we miss? Couldwe have intervened if we had recognized them?

No doubt this sort of unpredictable stress, a hallmark of farming life, is the rea-son many of my peers sought paths to more “professional” careers in sectors liketechnology, government, banking, and business. At 25, I am one of the very few inmy age group who want to stay on the farm.

Though my family has managed the farm—troubleshooting and performingdaily crisis interventions—for three generations, my grandfather and father stilllacked the expertise to respond to East Coast fever. They fit into a wider culture of

© 2013 Arnest Sebbumbainnovations / 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference 13

Arnest Sebbumba

Finding the Word for Entrepreneur in Luganda

Arnest Sebbumba is a 25-year old Ugandan farmer, entrepreneur, and technologist.He has experience in entrepreneurship and financial management, and was a mem-ber of the International Labour Organization (ILO) Youth Entrepreneurship Facility.He has put his entrepreneurial skills to work expanding his family farm and teachingyoung people about effective agriculture through the organization he founded,Countryside Youth Foundation.

14 innovations / Youth and Economic Opportunities

local farmers who fail to see the opportunities offered by agribusiness practices. Idon’t blame them for this shortsightedness; if I’ve learned anything about entrepre-neurship, it’s that not all entrepreneurs are “born entrepreneurs.” Entrepreneurialfarm owners like myself are a product of the right environment: one that inspires,and that nurtures imaginative interpretations of “what could be.” And, in mostcases, this current of innovative ideas must be injected into a community.

My father and I beamed over our newborn calf, relieved that our first experi-ment had succeeded. The farm’s newfound vitality wobbled tenuously, as if bal-anced upon scrawny legs itself, but this first step proved our resilience. And it wasan argument, however small, that perhaps I was onto something in believing thatmy generation could and should pursue innovative, business-savvy farming as astable livelihood.

NO WORD IN LUGANDA FOR ENTREPRENEUR

It is difficult to translate the word “entrepreneur” into my native tongue, Luganda.Most of my friends come from farming families, but few of them have any

interest in managing their farms for a living. Agribusiness skills aren’t taught inlocal schools, though our population is overwhelmingly agrarian; instead, mostyoung people aspire to an education that will lead to respected professional jobs.This avenue is widely viewed as the best choice for a well-educated young man, asso few people are aware of the economic potential presented by the land.

I was privileged and grateful to be sent to a good local boarding school. Thiswas possible because my dad had established himself in Kampala, the capital,where he could spend a few days each week repairing automobile electrical sys-tems. That extra income meant he could afford to send my siblings and me toboarding school.

The annual cost for us to attend boarding school was 3,000,000 Ugandashillings or approximately $1,200 US. During vacations from school, I recall bik-ing from my family’s home to the farm each morning to milk the cows; this alwaysfelt like dull maintenance work, as the indigenous cows we had at that time yield-ed so little milk. It was just one of the many endless chores our family performedevery day to ensure our security, but ultimately they did nothing to improve ourfate. At 16, my father enrolled me in supplementary computer lessons, which Iwould attend in the afternoons after I completed my chores. I looked forwardeagerly to the lessons, seeing them as a more productive use of my time.

It was around this time I also began managing the farm, taking over for myfather by overseeing all operations. He had dedicated years to preparing me for thistransition, patiently passing on his acquired skills in farming, husbandry, and elec-trical installation. But I continued to think of the farm as a part-time duty thatserved merely to subsidize my studies and keep my family afloat.

Like so many of my peers, I too would have sought employment in the tech-nology sector after graduation, were it not for the training I received through a

Arnest Sebbumba

Translating “Entrepreneurship” for Uganda ... and for Ugandans

program called STRYDE (Strengthening Rural Youth Development throughEnterprise).

STRYDE is a four-year regional youth enterprise development program run byTechnoserve, which enables youth aged 18 to 30 to transition more successfully toeconomically independent adulthood. It begins with a three-month trainingcourse containing five training modules: personal effectiveness, personal finance,professional effectiveness, entrepreneur-ship, and agribusiness. After the train-ing, participants engage in a nine-monthaftercare program that involves a men-torship program with a local business,job fairs and expos, finance clinics, and abusiness plan competition. The objec-tive of the training is to push partici-pants to see past the limiting local statusquo—traditional farming methods peo-ple have adhered to for decades—and to challenge us to consider how to scale ourfarming operations, address long-standing problems like East Coast fever, and rec-ognize new opportunities for expansion. It encourages us to think of agribusinessas a potentially powerful use of our educational backgrounds in business and tech-nology, thus increasing our opportunity, ability, and motivation to engage inincome-generating activities. For four hours a day, twice a week, I and 24 otherparticipants learned finance, business, and entrepreneurial skills as they applied tothe land.

It wasn’t until this training that I began to see the land as an expansive blankcanvas. After all, what can be made of soil, water, and sunlight? Nearly anything.The course opened my eyes to the potential of the assets I already had at my dis-posal, and allowed me to acknowledge my strengths and the opportunities that lit-erally existed in my own back yard; in fact, in our own back yard I established azero grazing unit, keeping some cows under intensive management with restrictedmovement, unlike the free range on the larger farm I am running as a business.Perhaps more importantly, the course boosted my confidence that I could succeedwith such initiatives as sustainable business models.

Ultimately, I chose to bet on the land, abandoning technology for an adventur-ous future in agribusiness. Small victories have convinced me that this is a viableoption not only for myself, but also for other young Ugandans.

GETTING INTO THE RESEARCH AND SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP WORLD

In 2012 I was one of nine young people aged 19 to 24 invited to join theMasterCard Foundation’s Youth Think Tank as a part-time researcher to conductqualitative research about the employment and enterprise experiences of youngpeople in Uganda. Along with my peers from Kenya, Rwanda, Ghana, and Sierra

innovations / 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference 15

It wasn’t until thistraining that I began to

see the land as anexpansive blank canvas.

16 innovations / Youth and Economic Opportunities

Leone, I gathered insights to answer this question: How can we increase youthemployment (formal, informal, and self-employment) in growth sectors such asagribusiness, green growth, information and communications technology, andfinancial services? Together we conducted 160 interviews; then, through 10 days ofonline discussion and a 2-day face-to-face session in Nairobi, we wrote the report.1

“Experts” who come from a very different reality often try to intuit the needsof youth on the cusp of their productive lives, based on a set of demographics orstatistics about youth unemployment, but few have thought to interface directlywith them. Perhaps because I am in this phase of life myself—because I have theperspective of a young man from rural Africa—I see great value in programs likethe Think Tank. This is my own future in the hands of governments, NGOs, andbig business.

As we compiled these personal stories in the Think Tank project, we saw thatyouth in East Africa consistently said they wanted “increased access to leaders anddecision-making processes.” They also wanted to know more about professionaloptions, and “the markets and industries that hold the greatest opportunities foremployment,” and said they needed greater access to employment and entrepre-neurship training programs. We believe that if these young people are included indecision-making processes, often provided by programs like STRYDE, they will bemore likely to succeed.

On a personal level, I have benefitted tremendously from the network I devel-oped through the program. Surrounding myself with creative, solution-orientedindividuals has been socially and economically empowering, allowing me to fur-ther explore my own farm’s potential. But more importantly, it has inspired me tothink about how I could help my own community. The group nurtures a mentali-ty that values entrepreneurial solutions to social problems, and it is this supportiveecosystem that drives my own volunteer work with agribusiness forward.

I had observed that my peers, who had no agribusiness education, were notbehaving in economically rational ways. As this was severely affecting the standardof living among youth in my local community, I set about looking for solutions.Armed with new knowledge about the needs of local youth and a new focus onsocial entrepreneurship, last year I dedicated myself to building on a nonprofitconcept I developed three years ago. The organization, Countryside Youth

Arnest Sebbumba

The Youth Think Tank Report

The most rewarding part of the interview process for me was getting insightsabout unemployment that are based on views and experiences of … peers andcommunity helpers. Given the fact that I serve a youth organization, these willbe used to design more suitable projects for the youth in my community... Themost challenging part of the interview process was translating some words,specifically “an entrepreneur,” to the local dialect that some interviewees couldunderstand.

Translating “Entrepreneurship” for Uganda ... and for Ugandans

Foundation (CSYF), allows me to share with others the confidence I gained fromprograms like STRYDE. CSYF encourages young people to look for existingopportunities that are just waiting to be recognized.

CSYF provides agrarian youth in my home district with increased access toinformation through publications provided by the Technical Centre forAgricultural and RuralCooperation (CTA). Amongthe topics covered are animalhusbandry, crop production,handling harvests and stor-age, and marketing produce,as well as information tech-nology. I had a theory that ifthe family farm was framed asa social enterprise, one thataddresses social and econom-ic challenges in rural Africa,then more young peoplewould be interested in dedi-cating themselves to farming.CSYF is testing that theory inaction; it is my hope that theorganization will allow youth to empower other youth in the community byincreasing their knowledge, and therefore their economic potential.

Professional jobs in the tech industry and other sectors are by no means lessworthy career paths; the local educational trend that fosters such preferences isvaluable in its own right. But continued support for agrarian enterprises and thesustained introduction of innovation are crucial, not only to the individuals whomake a living off the land, but also to the survival and growth of the community asa whole. A healthy agribusiness community reduces local vulnerability, but schoolsare not teaching children how to manage a farm and farming apprenticeships arenearly non-existent. So we must work to evolve a solution.

THE CHANGE IN OUR FARM AND MY ASPIRATIONS

Among other things, my agribusiness training has coached me to address EastCoast fever on our farm, preventing the deaths of dozens of our animals. In part,my ability to dedicate my time to the farm, rather than to other economic pursuits,is responsible for this change. A business-minded approach has allowed me tocarve out a livelihood for the family from land that previously provided us onlywith a precarious subsistence.

Artificial insemination was another strategy I introduced to our farm. We alsointroduced a composting program that saves us money we would normally spend

innovations / 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities Conference 17

Continued support for agrarianenterprises and the sustained

introduction of innovation arecrucial, not only to the

individuals who make a livingoff the land, but also to thesurvival and growth of the

community as a whole.

18 innovations / Youth and Economic Opportunities

on fertilizer and brings in a little extra income, as we’ve begun selling our compostto other farms in the area.

The programs I participated in did not specifically recommend initiatives likethese. Rather, they were valuable because they encouraged us to take a broader per-spective on the possibilities each of us had at our disposal. They challenged theparticipants in the programs to see the opportunities in commercializing and scal-ing already-existing activities; I was inspired to greatly expand our farm’s dairyoperations. My family expects we will soon produce roughly 100 liters of milk perday, and I am currently revising the business plan for submission to the competi-tion run by STRYDE.

Mine has been a journey with many legs, accumulating greater security for myfamily and, hopefully, an opportunity to make a valuable contribution to my com-munity. The CSYF has trained 10 young people in its first three months, but thenext step is to establish the foundation as a powerful training and informationresource for youth in all nine sub-counties in the district.

My work with CSYF is intended to contribute to a new local tradition of thriv-ing entrepreneurship and solution-oriented thinking. I would not expect my chil-dren to choose agribusiness—I hope that they can have the education and trainingthey need to follow their own dreams and pursue their own interests—but CSYF isthe brick I can offer to the construction of such an enterprising culture.

If Luganda does not yet have a word for “entrepreneur,” then I figure it’s mygeneration’s charge to invent one.

1. Available at http://www.mastercardfdn.org/wp-content/uploads/Youth-Think-Tank-Final-Report-June-2013.pdf

Arnest Sebbumba

innovationsTECHNOLOGY | GOVERNANCE | GLOBALIZATION

GEORGE MASONUNIVERSITY

School of Public Policy

HARVARD UNIVERSITYKennedy School of

GovernmentBelfer Center for

Science and InternationalAffairs

MASSACHUSETTSINSTITUTE OFTECHNOLOGY

Legatum Center forDevelopment andEntrepreneurship

INNOVATIONS IS JOINTLY HOSTED BY

Special Issue for the 2013 Global Youth Economic Opportunities ConferenceGuest Edited by Making Cents International

and the Citi Foundation

School of Public Policy

mitpressjournals.org/innovationseditors@innovationsjournal.net

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