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19:53..Episode 1: The Story of Complexity
What If We Get It Right?
Lyrics
Patrick Byamungu[00:00:00]
OK, so I’m Patrick Byamungu. I am actually the Director of La Difference, but I am also the co-founder of La Difference.
View moreMike Beeston
[00:00:24]
Our aim is to help establish an SME, a socially aware, conscious SME sector in the region, which doesn't really exist at the moment, but which we think, and many people think, could help to contribute to stability and peace.
Tessa Wernink
[00:00:44]
In the first series of What If We Get It Right. We focused on a community of entrepreneurs who through their work are questioning current systems and imagining and creating a different future. For the second series, I wanted to explore how for-profit and socially aware businesses could be a way to build sustainable value across the world.
This goal brought me into contact with Patrick and Mike Beeston, Patrick and Mike set up an organization in the Eastern Congo called Ensemble Pour La Différence –I heard that they were supporting existing local business owners of small and medium enterprises (otherwise known as SMEs). They provide support and training. Their overall goal is to build an infrastructure, or ecosystem, of socially aware businesses
I wanted to speak to them and find out how they ended up doing what they do and what they are working to achieve. Knowing a little bit about the Congo. I wanted to know how their work was different from charities and NGOs. Are they just another NGO or is there something else to learn?
Patrick Byamungu
[00:01:53]
Yeah. Um, I was born in Kivu. I live here, I like the region and I try to build everything here.
I remember that the idea with Mike, I meet with Mike Beeston, at this time, I was really making many reports, video reports because I have a background and, and a solid experience in making small films and, reporting.
So I have been doing that for a long time with local NGOs. And for me, I really didn't like to continue to work in this way, because for me it was like it had become more and more like a cycle of intervention of those NGOs.
Because all the time, when we have a problem in the region, we can see the NGOs come with a strategy and start to work with people locally there. They want just to solve the emergency problem. And once the emergency problem is solved, they leave for another region and the population who stayed there - when the project is finished - the same problem comes again.
And another NGO. I don't know if it's the same, who just changed the name and come, come two years after. I don't know if they do the same, but when another NGO comes again, they come to resolve the same problem. So this really makes me uncomfortable.
I didn't realize why all, with a lot of number of NGOs who are operating in the Eastern part, why they can not think in the best way to really help people and try to build a strong society.
Tessa Wernink
[00:04:21]
Patrick and I spoke on the phone. He has come from an NGO background and is a journalist. He speaks seven languages.
He's a local guy who has come out of the community, which is trying to help. But why does he think that social businesses are going to work and will they make ‘la difference’?
Patrick Byamungu
[00:04:42]
The social business brings value in society - bring a direct value - because I will see it in two aspects. The first aspect: the characteristic for the social business is to create wealth. And wealth is very, very important in conflict region. The social business is really touching the daily life of a community. The daily life of each one in the community.
So for me, I think this is the first big difference: this way to create wealth in the community. And this wealth, small by small, this wealth will really make a difference in the whole of the economic system of the area, where social businesses are operating.
The second difference for me: it is the habit. You know, more and more the community receives grants, the community receives donations from the NGOs.
More and more, they are thinking that life is easy. They are thinking that every time when I have a problem, I will just do nothing. I will just sit and say, okay, the UN has said I need this, or another ONG (*NGO), I need this. No!
So this, I think this makes the population more poor than to push them to work themselves, to try to build something themselves and to grow as social businesses.
Tessa Wernink
[00:06:50]
Patrick is on a mission to help his home. He wants to get out of this cycle and he told me that the situation is changing and that the context is ripe for an organization like theirs.
Mike has worked in Europe, setting up global businesses in the field of design and innovation. How does his business vision apply to the small and medium-sized enterprises in Eastern Congo?
Mike Beeston (horn honking)
[00:07:15]
In the last 20 years, the role of business design. So, using human-centered or life-centered processes to develop businesses and to root them in real needs, has become much more integral to how we do things in Europe. So, you know, those kinds of techniques are relevant or those processes and approaches are relevant in the DRC, to ensure that whatever SME is coming through is rooted in the real needs of people and how to respond sustainably to those, to those real needs.
And innovation is very... I mean, the Congolese are really innovative. I mean, just as a culture, naturally so born out of need and necessity. And that can be, in a way, it can be kind of channeled or given more facilitated, you might say, with these human centered design processes in order to break through the limitations of poverty and, and some of the things like education or taxation, or, you know, historic structures which have historically kind of kept things down. Innovation can help break through those and get to the other side in a more systematic way.
Tessa Wernink
[00:08:33]
It all sounds very theoretical at this stage. Social businesses, social innovation blah-blah-blah who are the people that La difference works with? What's going on in the communities?
Are there local Eastern Congolese who are interested in this approach? And what is the criteria that attracts La Différence?
Mike Beeston
[00:08:56]
Yeah, in the broadest sense then, they are probably late twenties and thirties. They're connected to the internet, in so much as they have a mobile phone and that they're part of the world. We have, over time, also worked directly with farmers and with people in a way in more remote circumstances. But the people who pick up the initiative, the people who kind of drive solutions, they tend to be at this young age and they tend to be quite “with it” in the sense that they're connected to the mobile.
And they're wanting to put in place proper solutions: structured, sustainable. You know, solutions that make a difference.
That’s not to say that those people who are disconnected from that don’t want to do the same thing, but how we work with, with people that distance to travel can be quite great. It can be quite a long way to bring a farmer who has never been connected, who has never been exposed to business. Who's never really understood finance, for example, that's quite a long journey to travel, to get to a successful growing SME.
So, you might say it's easy, but I would actually say it's kind of more substantial if you can work with these younger entrepreneurs, if you like, and if you can help them help the country move forward.
Patrick Byamungu
[00:10:20]
You can not say that you are going to improve the life of the community and you are not able to improve your own life.
So you have first to prove and to have this commitment and say, okay, I want to change my life.
We are essentially working with those kind of entrepreneurs who can be able to work on this level, personal level, community level to have this view or vision to change the whole of the community.
But also our focus is not on the early stage, because the early stage, we reserve this for incubators. We know that, we have confidence that the incubators can play, very well, this role, but we are working with those entrepreneurs, or those businesses who have one or two years of experience.
Tessa Wernink
[00:11:34]
So they are businesses with a couple of years of experience.
Why do they need support from La Difference? What's stopping them from achieving what they want on their own?
Patrick Byamungu
[00:11:45]
You know, it is really a challenge to start a business in Congo. That's why it's not really many, many entrepreneurs who have succeeded - because of the complexity of the business environment.
But also, on the other hand, the social entrepreneurs are playing really a huge role because you know, there are no jobs in Congo. 84% percent of people are jobless in Congo.
Yeah. So this mass of people, what do they do every day? It is those social companies who use this mass of people every day. The government is not able to create the jobs. The job is really insufficient. The only way to go is for people to go and work in those social businesses.
So the social businesses, they are really playing the role which should really be played by the government.
Tessa Wernink
[00:13:00]
What?! 84% of people are jobless?! I think it's time for a little bit of context.
So, the DRC sits in Sub-Saharan Africa. Under the equator, and it is the second biggest country in Africa.
It covers an expensive land that is bigger than Spain, France, Germany, Norway, and Sweden combined. It is bordered by nine countries. It has a population of over 90 million people with almost half of them living in the cities. There are 240 identified languages with a few national ones like French, Lingala and Swahili.
The Congo is home to a wide variety of wildlife and incredible biodiversity, a huge expense of rainforest. In fact, 18% of the planet's total is in that area. And a rich supply of minerals. Tin, tantalum, tungsten, cobalt that goes into your phone and computers as well as gold, diamonds and other precious materials.
An internet search will list the DRC as both the second poorest nation in the world with a GDP of $409 per person in 2017 and almost 60 million people living on less than 1,90 a day.
But it will also show up as the richest nation on earth, with untapped deposits of raw minerals worth $24 trillion dollars. The DRC is a country whose people have known almost two centuries of rapid change, conflict and intense political instability.
From colonization to independence, to military coups, regional civil wars. And throughout this time, continuous exploitation of its natural resources by foreign countries and global corporations.
As a consequence, a staggering amount of development aid has gone into the country, more than 100 billion dollars since 1980. With the largest-ever UN presence to protect civilians and yet, the average Congolese citizen has a lower standard of living than in 1980 and the war in the early 2000s led to the death of 5.5 million people. And the insecurity continues.
This is the context in which La Difference is operating. Every day. It shows a country that has had to be resilient, and it shows the particular difficulties of building a functioning and lasting economy in the Congo.
In Patrick's lifetime, a lot has changed.
Patrick Byamungu
[00:15:23]
Our economy is really decreasing. And the country for me, it's not changing. I remember very well 40 years ago, someone who worked for his family, he had been able to eat three meals a day, but now it is nearly impossible. Because their life now it's become hard and hard. More than 60 million person, they are living in extreme poverty. Now, we have many social problems.
So every, every time. Congo is like decreasing. The entrepreneur sector needs, really, to work in a peaceful region. Something which is making me happy is that DRC is really going in this way.
Two years ago we succeed to change the government without war and without many trouble. So, this makes me really confident.
Mike Beeston
[00:16:41]
The commitment that you need to really start a pro-business and make a success of it. That 100% focus that you need is actually quite hard in Congo to commit to. But they've been supported by incubators. And that's good. And to an extent, some of the NGOs are also beginning to support that startup.
The difficulty comes when your savings are running low and perhaps your family and friends have provided some support, but that's running low and it's proved more difficult to establish your product or service. And, you know, you're now facing issues to do with, I don't know, the dollar Congolese Franc exchange rate, but issues that you didn't foresee are now coming in and it's a real, real struggle.
If you somehow got through this difficult phase, I think people call it the pioneer gap, and you are a success. Now you can go to investors, or lenders. But so few get through that gap. That there aren’t that many who are engaging with these, let’s say, institutional investors.
Tessa Wernink
[00:17:42]
Besides the tangible problems in the Congo. There is also a repetitive narrative that portrays the country in a singular way: rich, but poor. Beautiful but ravaged. Natural, but savaged. This framing, in many ways, is another real challenge to address.
The story of La Difference is the story of people in the Congo speaking up and saying that foreign aid isn’t working. According to the World Bank, small and medium sized enterprises are essential to poverty reduction and economic growth and the International Peace Institute says they can ‘make a powerful contribution to the ecosystem of peace’. What if the future of Congo lies not with development aid, but with conscious, socially aware entrepreneurs, then the question is: what do they need to get it right?
Thanks to the help of Armant Chako, project director with La Difference, who became our journalist in the field, local entrepreneurs: Douce Nmwezi, Washikala Malongo and Chance Rwezi told us about their personal experience of life and setting up a social business in Eastern Congo.
And together with Patrick and Mike, they will show us how they deal with the issues of changing mindsets, ongoing corruption, leadership gaps, and how they are doing the long work of building a nurturing business environment that supports innovation.
Tessa Wernink – outro
[00:19:15]
This podcast series is a collaboration between Tessa Wernink and global design agency Impossible. Interviews with the entrepreneurs were organized, conducted, and translated by Armant Chako. Production, scripting and narration by Tessa Wernink. Sound design and editing by James Powell. All music used in this podcast is listed and credited on whatifwegetitright.com. Design an artwork by BeAPeach and Impossible. Special thanks to La Difference for all their help and support in putting this podcast together.
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