A viewpoint from a cultural crossroad

We Jackson men are known for our washing up skills. The old man is so keen in fact, that unwitting dinner guests often have their have their half-finished plates whisked away ninja style from under their noses to the kitchen.

My brother and sister and I were raised to do our fair share, and to value equality and fairness, in this case that if someone else had slaved over hot pots and pans all afternoon they should be allowed to put their feet up in front of Corrie afterwards.

Growing up our family had fairly fluid roles when it came to work and home life. My Mum successfully launched and ran several businesses and supported the family when my Dad was made redundant and decided to do his Masters degree. Perhaps nothing out of the ordinary today but it felt a bit special at the time to be picked up from school by your Dad who let you sit precariously on his bike's handlebars as we zig zagged down the hill past my friends walking home with their mothers.

This belief that although we might not be born the same, that we all have the right to be treated with equal respect and be given the same opportunities is fundamental. For me personally, it's part of what I think makes us human.

Although certain progressive strides have been made in Kenya (for example making female circumcision illegal), the general attitude here towards women still grates with me.

I'm told by an elder, 'Why would you wash your own clothes when you have sisters?' which is symptomatic of the male outlook. The conversation sticks with me and I keep seeing this attitude in the roles that are prescribed to men and women. For instance, to me it's entirely unfair when young women are expected to go out and work and then come home to fetch the water and do all the cooking, cleaning and washing whilst men are waited on.

It strikes me that culturally Luos are at a half way point between the new world (modern, educated women working in professional jobs) and the old one (preconceptions about women's work and place in the home). Elsewhere in society there are more serious social problems associated with this mind-set.  

This week I've spent time with local NGO Dev Link who work on promoting human rights and safety for women. Discrimination is rife when it comes to gender, reports of violence against women are often ignored and the HIV/AIDs epidemic has left huge numbers of vulnerable to abuse in the face of abject poverty.

The root causes are complex, but often stem from an old Luo tradition of men 'inheriting' wives in the event of a death of a husband. Salmon, a kind and compassionate programme manager at Dev Link tells me that in generations past the tradition was meant to protect and provide for women, to ensure that the deceased's name lived on.

A polygamous people, a brother-in-law or other close relative would traditionally take on the inheritance of the wife. In generations past, to have multiple wives signified success and the means to provide, and men with only one wife would not be permitted a voice in community discussions for this reason.

Although attitudes are changing and fewer and fewer Luos take multiple wives, the practice of inheritance still persists. Again, the old and the new clash, sometimes with grim consequences. Today, Rusinga has a transient population as poverty inland forces people to relocate away from their families to the coast to find work as fishermen. In parallel, the HIV epidemic (27% infection rate across the island at the last count) mean that there are more deaths and consequently more women left isolated from their extended families and without a dependable source of income.

Wife inheritance in this setting can become abusive, where women are often forced to accept the offer of a local man in the absence of their extended family in exchange for security. These men are often motivated by sex or wealth rather than the intention to support a grieving and vulnerable family. Violence is not uncommon in these circumstances, and I'm shaken by one case where an inherited wife was first abandoned whilst pregnant before being brutally attacked with a machete by the new husband. Luckily she survived, but there have been a number of murders involving wife inheritance. Dev Link tell me that they are seeing at least one new case like this every month, and estimate that many more go unreported.

Although Kenyans have a constitution of rights, actually accessing them is another matter. Corruption, favouritism and the sheer cost of travelling to and from court for trial has meant that accessing justice through the police and the judiciary is far from universal.

More broadly, many other widows are forced into a practice called 'Jabyoa' which is where women are forced to offer themselves sexually to fishermen in order to be given the chance to buy fish to sell on for a meagre profit in the local market. The practice is so ingrained that many women don't necessarily see a problem with Jaboya, or at least see it as a necessity or way of life here, yet the health impacts are severe and Jaboya is one of the driving factors of the region's significant HIV rate.  

Essentially the problems facing women are a product of poverty. A combination of a lack of education, lack of opportunities to earn a livelihood and poor access to healthcare result in the narrowing of choices and the accompanying social problems. 

It paints a bleak picture, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that the atmosphere on the beaches would be dark and depressed when actually the reverse is true. The women I meet and photograph smile brightly and laugh generously. They are enterprising, and more and more are running their own businesses and managing their own money.

Dev Link is run by a truly inspirational woman called Esther Soti who has set up several projects across the region where girls are rescued from early marriage and abusive relationships, has led campaigns against Jaboya and trains local women to become paralegals to handle human rights abuses in courts.

I hope that this is symptomatic of the next generation and broader cultural and systemic change. Attitudes are shifting slowly, and there is real hope that in the future women will not just be afforded their rights, but become the leaders in their communities, in business and in government.

Pivotal to long term change are like organisations like Alekii delivering primary education to girls to afford them choices in the way they choose to live their lives, who they chose to share them with, and how they make a living.

In the mean time for me it's back to the washing up. I know it's only small, but I'm teaching the younger boys in the family that if they want to play football, first you either cook or you have to do the dishes. That's only fair. 

Dreams from my Grandfather

My grandfather's name was Reg Silletto. What a name. He was, and continues to be, an inspiration to me and I'd like to share why.

My earliest memories of him always involved him peering at me over the business pages of The Daily Telegraph. He was the entrepreneur of the family, a great salesman (and talker), and meticulous with numbers.

The story begins in the 1950's where he'd become sales director of a well established engineering firm in Scotland. He travelled widely, particularly across Northern Ireland and the Republic and got to understand the challenges small farmers faced. In Ireland inherited land was divided between sons rather than passing to the first born meaning that over the centuries farms became smaller and smaller making it extremely difficult to make a decent living.

Following the unexpected death of the firm's well respected managing director, the board decided to bring in a new MD with a very chequered past and a suspected history of defrauding unsuspecting investors. Reg's opinion was that the new guy was a con man, and protested the same to the board. His disapproval was met with deaf ears though, and he was issued an ultimatum - either fall in line or show yourself the door.

                               

He chose the latter. Whether it was out of genuinely out of principle or pride I'll never know. Maybe it was a bit of both. I'd like to believe that his values drove his decision though, that he felt that he couldn't work for alongside others who tolerated dishonesty, and that his complicity would define him accordingly.

Meanwhile, in Denmark a young engineer was working on a new prototype that would eventually revolutionise the farming industry in Ireland. Small but powerful machinery that perfectly suited the small farms found up and down the country. 

If his first decision took principles, the next one took courage. The Danish engineer offered him three prototypes to sell in Ireland and the whole family invested everything they had relocating to Drogheda. The risks were huge, going it alone to sell an unknown, untested product in a foreign country would eventually exhaust all their savings. When they arrived the family were so poor that my Mum had to go to school in her old uniform because they couldn't afford new clothes.

He set up premises on a disused piece of land next to a railway station, painted the new machines himself and sold them. The rest is history, orders came flooding in, a new factory was built and dealerships throughout Ireland, Scotland and England opened. Years later, with delicious irony, he was even offered the opportunity to take over his old firm who by then had fallen on hard times. In the end he decided against it and they eventually went under.

In his later years he branched into property and invested wisely in the stock market. He used to split his portfolio and go head to head with his investment firm which year after year he'd usually outperform.

He wasn't perfect of course. As with so many entrepreneurs who focus so intently on their businesses, his family felt his absence. Although he inspired loyalty, he was a difficult man who wanted things his own way and wasn't tolerant of those who didn't bow to his authority. But at his core, I like to believe that he was a man driven to success, but not at the expense of his principles which is why I respected him so much.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, had Reg been alive today he almost certainly would have believed that many of the problems facing developing countries could be solved through trade and enterprise. And I believe the same.

In her unflinching book Dead Aid, Dambisa Moyo highlights the fall out of decades on unchecked government aid doled out to African dictatorships. Put very simply, her argument is two-fold: One, at a systemic level aid made these new African economies inefficient, corrupt and ill equipped to compete on a global scale which is why Asia and South America's growth in comparable free market economies has been significantly faster. Two, that at an individual level aid creates a dependency culture where people and their communities learn to rely on hand outs rather than work towards prosperity.

Across East Africa I've seen the dependency culture for myself. Why would you go out and work or collaborate with your community to improve yourselves when the white man will come and do it for you for free? At Alekii I was angered but not surprised that one of the teachers quipped 'Yes but the musungos (whites) will just pay for everything' whilst talking about the future of the school. 

Working in Uganda I remember a volunteer teacher who bought a pair of shoes for one of her pupils because he had injured his toe on the 3 mile walk to school he did barefoot every day. Completely understandable, but the unintended consequences were grizzly - the following day five or six of her classmates came to school with cuts on their feet that they had inflicted on themselves with razor blades to get new shoes.

This is an isolated, extreme case of course, but perhaps symbolic of the dependency culture and behaviours that we in the West can stimulate through aid.

Clearly philanthropy (and in fact aid) still has an essential role to play in development overseas, particularly with health and humanitarian response where there are scant alternatives. However, for Alekii to stand on its own, the solution has to be free enterprise which can run alongside the school providing a sustainable income and creating jobs and opportunity for the community. The challenge, of course, is capital.

Impact investing has been around for half a decade and is rapidly growing in popularity in the financial sector. It can take various different forms, and investors may expect various different levels of return, however what is common is that there is a measurable impact which is reported alongside the return on investment.

I've always believed that at it's purest sense modern consumerism is a quite a good proxy for democracy. Every time you buy something you vote. You vote for a company's ethical policies, their commitment to workers' safety. Of course this assumes we are all informed consumers which isn't always the case, but the truth is that we hold a lot more power in our everyday spending than we realise.

This is doubly true of our investments where we have real scale and influence to demand that we not only make a good return, but that we also create some positive change that mirrors our own values. I don't see why creating a positive impact and making a return on an investment should be mutually exclusive.

It's for this reason that I'm launching The Alekii Harambee Club - an impact investment club in partnership with the Alekii Centre.

In Kiswahili 'Harambee' literally means 'all pull together', or joining hands as a group, community or even country to achieve a particular goal. It became common language as Kenya gained independence from British colonial rule in the early sixties where the likes of Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya's first president) strove to join the many disparate tribes in search of self determination, unity and prosperity. In modern Kenya the word harambee provokes a sense of togetherness - the Kenyan national football team for example are known as the Harambee stars.

The concept for the club is simple - members will invest in new start up businesses on Rusinga Island that a. provide above market returns for investors and b. deliver benefit to the community by way of education, employment or other social/environmental benefit.

Profits over a fixed term will be divided 50:50 between club members and the Alekii Centre to invest in education, youth training, healthcare and other measurable social impact programmes which will be reported to club members along with their earnings. After the term has expired the enterprise and it's assets are released back to the community.

I know many of you have expressed an interest in this kind of programme in the past. Either because you share these kind of views on development, have become disillusioned with traditional philanthropy or are just looking for good investment opportunities for your portfolios.

As I write I'm in Nairobi dotting the I's and crossing the T's of our pilot enterprise business plan which looks extremely promising as well as a club constitution for new members.

I'll be approaching some of you directly with our plans over the coming weeks, but if you're interested in joining the Alekki Harambee Club then please comment or email me at davidshanejackson@gmail.com and I'll make sure you're part of the first initial offering which is due to complete in August.

We plan to start small and prove the concept works, but our aspirations are much larger. The beauty of an enterprise approach to development is that it can be quickly scaled, and I hope in ten years time the club will become a significant force for good in the local area backed by a group of happy investors in the UK.

I owe a lot to my Grandfather. Many of the decisions I've made in my life simply wouldn't have been possible without him and I've always held myself accountable to his ideals and values. In launching the Alekii Harambee Club I hope to, in my own small way, emulate the traits that made him great - becoming an entrepreneur, acting according to my values and having courage. 

I hope you'll consider joining me.