The importance of cross-sector partnerships and value of diverse perspectives
By Patricia
Our company visits afforded us a look into a wide variety of social impact work, ranging from impact investing to public health, energy, education and diversity and inclusion.
Organizations like Sesha Capital, an investment firm founded by two young former consultants, closely resembled the kinds of budding companies we might come across in business school circles. Others, like Room to Read spoke to some of the challenges that don’t always make it into class discussions. Room to Read is an international youth literacy organization with a South Africa chapter. (I’ve actually supported the organization and have been on their email list since college!) Through our discussion with the leaders of the Room to Read SA team, we gained insights into the programmatic challenges that come with running a local chapter of a national nonprofit, such as how to translate an established curriculum to a specific location – especially one like South Africa where reading programs need to consider the wide range of languages spoken by students.
A key theme of some of the other visits was the role of cross-sector partnerships in getting social impact projects off the ground.
I was particularly interested in the cross-sector work we learned about in the energy sector. While visiting Eaton Electric, we were treated to a presentation by Power Africa, a U.S. government-led partnership started under the Obama administration and coordinated by USAID. Power Africa’s goal is to address the two out of three people in sub-Saharan Africa who lack access to electricity by adding 30,000 MW of cleaner generation capacity and 60 million new home and business connections. Power Africa functions as a hub for companies, financial institutions, and governments to coordinate the actions necessarily to identify potential partnerships, secure funding, and maintain on-the-ground support. In all, much of Power Africa’s work seems to de-risk the transition to cleaner more efficient energy. Throughout our trip, we saw many promising signs of increased access to energy with rows of homes equipped with solar panels, but also evidence of the remaining challenges with load shedding and power outages. In all, the falling prices of pv solar generation and battery storage, proliferation of clean tech companies, and facilitation work from the likes of Power Africa point to tremendous opportunities for positive changes in the power sector.
My consulting project group had a chance to chat at some length with folks from Power Africa and Eaton Electric (including a BU alum!), all of whom emphasized the value of diverse perspectives in trying to solve problems at the scale of energy transformation in South Africa. They commented on our group’s wide range of backgrounds and how we could each bring valuable insights to this work, regardless of a non-technical background outside the industry.
These conversations gave me a renewed confidence in my ability to build on my experience in South Africa and continue working to address pressing social and environmental challenges.