Seek Dignity? Then, “You Gotta Shake Your MoneyMaker”

Posted by John Couretas
on Monday, July 24, 2006

The Super MoneyMaker Pressure Pump

No, we’re not talking about Elmore James’ Blues hit covered by the likes of George Thorogood, Fleetwood Mac and The Black Crowes nor its racy subject matter.

Rather, it’s how members of the other oldest profession in Kenya and Tanzania power the irrigation pumps that extend both their growing season and range of crops. This foot-powered move beyond subsistence farming to much more profitable harvests, such as vegetables, is facilitated by the aptly named MoneyMaker series of pumps. 

KickStart (previously Approtec) 10 years ago produced the Original MoneyMaker Pump; the over 4,000 in operation still generating $3.9 million in profits annually. Since then the Super MoneyMaker Pressure Pump, resembling and operated much like a Stairmaster, can push water uphill 7 M (23 ft.) to irrigate 2 acres. The newest – and most affordable – version, The MoneyMaker Plus Pump relies on swinging one’s hips side to side on a skateboard-like platform, a motion that, unlike arm-powered pumps in particular, can be performed all day. Costing $34, KickStart officals claim it generates $1000 in profits the first year.

Though even this amount can be out of the reach of the world’s poorest, KickStart co-founder Martin Fisher, insists on a business model. Along with enriching “farmerpreneurs”, Kickstar has created a private supply chain though hundred of farming supply shops that sell the pumps and spare parts. Undercutting these local merchants and removing their incentive to stock parts would be one of the serious disadvantages of giving away the pumps.

Beyond the pragmatic concerns, their ultimate goal is to “create dignity,” Fisher said on NPR’s Weekend Edition. He concluded, “When you give things away, you are really just creating dependency and people hanging out waiting for more handouts.”

Monitoring African Aid and Development

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor
on Friday, June 23, 2006

Ecumenical News International (ENI) relates the launch last month of a new initiative in Africa, designed to “to mobilise a strong African voice in development.” The effort is called African Monitor and is led by the Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, South Africa, Njongonkulu Ndungane.

African Monitor’s mission is to begin to fill this need: “African Monitor is an independent body, acting as a catalyst within Africa’s civil society, to bring a strong African voice to the development debate, and to raise key questions from an African perspective.” The initiative represents a truly unique and much needed enterprise, since before the creation of African Monitor “there was no existing pan-African network that can provide such a catalyst across the sub-Saharan region, and taking a perspective across aid, trade, development and financial flows.”

In his address before the opening of the group, titled, “Let African Voices speak out for effective action on Africa’s development,” Archbishop Ndungane emphasized the need for accountability and true follow-through on the part of donors and developed nations: “We saw that Africa’s grassroots voices, currently marginalised and fragmented, could be harnessed to pursue these ends, and that faith communities, the most extensive civil society bodies on the continent, could provide the backbone of networks to bring these voices into the public arena.”

The Acton Institute has long supported the claim that African civil society needs to take a leading role in the development of the African continent. See, for example, the conversation with Rev. Bernard Njoroge, bishop of the diocese of Nairobi in the Episcopal Church of Africa, and Chanshi Chanda, chairman of the Institute of Freedom for the Study of Human Dignity in Kitwe, Zambia, about the issues of debt cancellation the moral nature of business (video clips, .wmv format, available for Rev. Njoroge and Mr. Chanda).

Immigration Reform, French-Style

Posted by Jonathan Spalink
on Wednesday, May 17, 2006

“As we look at how the immigration debate is unfolding, there are reasons to be concerned about the rule of law,” Jennifer Roback Morse writes. “The mass demonstrations of the past weeks reveal a much more sinister development: the arrival of French-style street politics in America.”

Read the complete commentary here.

Ecobits

Posted by John Couretas
on Tuesday, May 2, 2006

Two quick bits for your Tuesday:

- Federal judges on green junkets at your expense? CRC says so!

- Is "steady state ecological economics" the answer to environmental and economic woes?

[also, a quick thanks to Jordan for inviting me to join the PowerBlog team.]

(more…)

Grand Rapids Growth

Posted by Jordan J. Ballor
on Wednesday, March 29, 2006

It has been a bit of a mystery over the last few months, as an anonymous group of developers had been purchasing up a series of properties near downtown Grand Rapids. The investigative work of the local TV news turned up the plans for the group to end up with a 41-acre area that runs along the Grand River through the heart of downtown.

Currently, the area is mostly made up of unused manufacturing facilities, abandoned buildings, and generally unproductive land. Over the last week, WOODTV 8 has learned the identify of one of the primary developers and their plans for the property. The project is called the RiverGrand, and Duane Faust of a developing company with offices in Atlanta and Los Angeles has been identified as a key player.

In an interview with Faust, 24 Hour News 8’s Suzanne Geha got Faust to describe the project: “We plan to build a large scale, mixed-use infrastructure development project that will serve as the standard bearer for not only Grand Rapids but the entire state of Michigan, making the transition from an industrial, manufacturing-based economy to a technology-economic-health care-entertainment as well as financial economy that everyone else is doing in the country,” he said.

There are currently no blueprints, but Faust says the project would take the best elements from other well-known developments, including Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, Atlanta’s “Atlantic Station,” and London, England’s Canary Wharf.

Like Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, the RiverGrand would have a marina for use by boaters. Similar to Atlanta’s “Atlantic Station,” the RiverGrand would be “a city within a city,” made up of mixed-use land that serves as the core of downtown economic, residential, and social activity. And akin to London’s Canary Wharf, the land would be the home for several high-rise buildings, which would “significantly” change the skyline of Grand Rapids.

Since the RiverGrand project is much smaller than these other developments, the similarities would be appropriated to the scale of the plan, of course. Even so, Faust predicts that RiverGrand will employ 10,000 people.

This is good news for an area that has been hit hard by recent manufacturing losses. Electrolux, which at one point employed 2,700 people in Greenville, Michigan, closed its doors earlier this year. The key for the Faust plan is that Michigan is to move beyond a primarily industrial economy, and the attractiveness of the RiverGrand project is the diversity of economic opportunity it embraces, from tourism, music and entertainment, to commercial and finance industries.

This is in marked contrast to the plan from the politicians in the state’s capital. On the heels of the Electrolux move, Gov. Granholm trumpeted the news of a new plant being opened in Greenville, which would employ 500 people. The facility is owned by United Solar Ovonic, which is a developer of alternative fuel techonlogies, including the production of solar cells.

It’s clear that the Lansing politicians see the future of Michigan’s economy to be a continuation of the industrialized past, as two consecutive administrations (Engler and Granholm) have used tobacco settlement funds to set up technology and biotechnology funds for new endeavors in Michigan.

The problem with such efforts is that the liberty of entrepreneurial enterprises should not be pitted against the determinism of lawmakers. As we have seen, the transition from an industrial economy can be difficult for many in the short-term. And while it is tempting for politicians to try to find for themselves the next big thing, they must resist that temptation and simply place Michigan in a position where it has a clear and fair tax structure that is competitive with other states and nations.

Technological innovation will always be an important part of a robust economy. But a diversification that deals with the realities of a global economy will be the real answer to long-term growth. For that reason, the future hope for Michigan lies more with entrepreneurial endeavors like the RiverGrand project as with the decisions of Lansing lawmakers in determining the future industries of Michigan.

Projects like the RiverGrand will do more to make Grand Rapids a “cool city” than state programs ever could.