South Africa (Spring 2019)

Importance of looking back and looking forward

By Valerie

It is important to both look back at the root causes of the challenges and look forward to the potential massively positive social impacts associated with reducing the challenge.

As I have been working over the last month on a consulting project that has the potential to support a large international company in having a true social impact in South Africa, my excitement for the trip to South Africa has been building. As I embark on the journey, I am eager to build on and apply the learning we have done in class. While the United States is vastly different from South Africa, I have spent the last couple of weeks thinking about how the challenges in both of these countries’ histories created and perpetuated the challenges that the countries face today and how moving the needle on these challenges can have a significant impact on multiple other social impact issues.

Professionally, I work in the alternative urban education sector here in Boston. Despite Massachusetts being one of the highest performing states in the United States, it still faces major challenges around educational equity and access (referred to as the achievement gap in the United States). In working to improve the educational options for some of Massachusetts’s most at-risk high school students, I have found that it is very important to never lose sight of the origins of the achievement gap. We can trace this challenge back to decades of institutional racism. Additionally, locally we can point to the challenges created by the Boston busing crises in the 1970s when Boston Public Schools were desegregated.

Given that the challenges facing the United States’ education system are complex and deeply rooted in country’s history, I also find it to be important to remember the impact that improving education system can have on our community. Reducing the number of high school students who dropout of high school each year, has the potential to positively impact the community in many ways beyond simply improving the educational system, including: decreasing unemployment rates, increasing lifetime earnings, decreasing teen birth rates, and decreasing the rate of incarceration and/or economic dependency.

While the challenges in South Africa are very different from the challenges in the United States, based on my learning to-date, the lessons from my work in the education sector apply; it is important to both look back at the root causes of the challenges and look forward to the potential massively positive social impacts associated with reducing the challenge. For example, through my work on the consulting project, I have been learning about the challenges with reliable access to electricity. While this is an issue for the whole country, it is only magnified in the rural areas. When visiting Johannesburg’s apartheid museum, I am looking forward to further delving into the history of South Africa, and connecting this important history to the country’s present-day challenges. Similarly, I am eager to learn more about how increasing access to electricity will stimulate positive social impacts in many other areas, including creating jobs, increasing access to education, and improving health related issues.

Gearing up for an amazing journey…

By Madeline

With the recent political and sustainability crises in South Africa, now more than ever is a time when I hope to utilize what I have learned in my program and in my current role.

As the trip to South Africa approaches, I am overwhelmed with excitement to see what adventures lie ahead.

Aside from the lure of taking a trip to South Africa, there were two other much more meaningful reasons why I chose this class. First, studying abroad in undergrad gave me a perspective on the world and an experience that I could not have received anywhere else. Having the ability to do that as part of a part-time graduate program is an amazing opportunity. I feel very fortunate to have the ability to study such deep and interesting topics in an immersive setting. The second being my passion for sustainability and the ability to gain real world experience that provides me the chance to affect change.

With the recent political and sustainability crises in South Africa, now more than ever is a time when I hope to utilize what I have learned in my program and in my current role. I am apprehensive to have the opportunity to take on a challenge such as the one that lays ahead. Additionally, I am beyond excited to fully immerse myself in an entirely new culture and begin to explore the unique challenges they face in becoming a more sustainable country.

Reflecting on my experience abroad in Australia, I learned that I thrive in new environments and in being able to dive deep into the people and cultures of my new surroundings. With South Africa being so unique with 11 official languages and a relatively new government and political system, I look forward to learning not only what I can contribute to my project, but what I can learn and bring back to my own future endeavors.

I can barely contain my excitement

By Brian

I can’t wait to meet with the various organizations we are touring and learn more about them and their impact on society.

In a few short weeks, I’ll be on my way to South Africa. I can barely contain my excitement as I count down the days. In the meantime, I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time reading up on the culture and history of South Africa and figuring out what I should pack. One reason why I applied to Questrom was the global immersion courses. I think all MBA students should learn more about international businesses. We live during a time when everything and everyone is so interconnected. It is much easier to work with companies around the globe today than it has been in the past and this makes it crucial to know how to interact with people from different cultures.

Another reason I wanted to come to Questrom was for the opportunity to work on a consulting project. I’ve been interested in learning more about the consulting field since day one and I’m excited to add this to my list of professional experiences. I’m happy to report that my team project has been going well so far. My teammates and I are working on various tasks and we’ve met regularly to update each other on our progress. I strongly believe that our suggestions will be insightful and I’m looking forward to receiving feedback on these recommendations and working with our client.

In reviewing the itinerary for the South Africa trip, I’m not sure I can identify one thing that I’m most excited about. I can’t wait to meet with the various organizations we are touring and learn more about them and their impact on society. The apartheid museum is an incredible opportunity to learn more about South Africa’s history and to reflect on the progress that has been made since the end of apartheid. I have no doubt that this visit will be poignant and that I will learn a great deal. I’m also particularly excited about the safari. I plan on bringing my camera with me to document this once in a lifetime experience. I want to be able to retain as much as I can from my entire South Africa trip and hope to potentially share some photos in my next journal entry.

The plastic bottle problem and investment in renewable energy

By Laura

In preparation for the class in South Africa, I’ve been researching electricity access in the country. Energy access is critical to so many other parts of life. If children have homework to do in the evening, they need light to be able to read their textbooks. Economic growth slows if businesses can only operate during daylight hours or cannot count on power sources to run tools or machinery. Electric-powered tools are more efficient for farming, but are expensive to operate and are not environmentally-friendly. Burning fuels can have negative impacts on health, and often women are disproportionately required to devote time to gathering wood for their families. The impacts on education, gender equality, public health, economic development, and more are wide-ranging and long-term.

The most accessible option for a lot of people is to run diesel or petrol-powered generators. It illustrates the ways that environmentally-conscious decisions are not always a realistic option. If you can’t rely on national utilities to provide electricity to your home, you may not have the luxury to decide to install solar panels for power. The diesel solution is good enough, and therefore many individual decisions based on per-family ability to pay allow the larger systemic issue to continue.

Without a collective infrastructure change, such as a shift to renewable energy on the national scale, the status quo functions well enough to make major changes a challenge.

The parallel that came to mind for me is bottled water usage in areas where tap water is unsafe to drink. I’ve spent time in Cambodia, where local tap water is contaminated due to poorly sealed pipes. Without tap water as an option, many people in cities drink bottled water and use it to brush their teeth. The government doesn’t see the urgency to deal with the infrastructure issues that cause the water to be unsafe because bottled water is prevalent and cheap enough to “solve” the issue. The “plastic bottle problem” - a good enough answer that prevents long-term investment in a solution - provides a work-around for Cambodia, at least for those people who can readily access purified water. As of 2014, UNICEF estimated that only 40% of Cambodians in rural areas had access to clean water, and those who did not were at higher risk of disease and arsenic poisoning due to mining run-off into the Mekong River and its tributaries.

There’s a movement across Southeast Asia to encourage people to “Refill, Not Landfill.” In Siem Reap, Cambodia, the program provides filtered water at refill stations around the city and sells branded metal bottles. The program is championed by business owners concerned with the environment, but is not solving the underlying infrastructure issues that lead to a lack of clean water. Cambodians may be able to make individual choices to reduce bottled water usage by adopting more sustainable water purification methods, but for many people in rural areas there aren’t many options available.

When looking into energy access and renewable energy in South Africa, I see similar issues. The national government has taken steps to encourage renewable energy development through its Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme, which seeks to encourage private sector investment in renewable energy infrastructure. Despite positive steps towards renewable energy, there is still significant resistance to investment in this area. Opponents argue that renewable energy will lead to job losses in the coal industry and be too costly for nationally-owned utilities to implement. To me, this seems like the plastic bottle problem again. Coal is working well enough, and it would cost too much upfront to change to renewables.

In the meantime, load shedding has caused rolling blackouts.

Wealthier consumers can seek other options, such as installing their own solar generators, but people without financial means have few other places to turn than to diesel-powered generators. If their area isn’t even served by the existing power grid, the options are more limited still. They may want to pursue an environmentally sustainable choice, but can’t make the individual upfront investment to do so. The environmental divide is further exacerbated by the socioeconomic divide, since people with more power can afford to find other solutions and therefore reduce the sense of urgency for a collective action solution.

However, it has been exciting to see through my research that a number of public and private organizations are looking for ways to increase energy access and sustainable solutions in South Africa. I’m looking forward to learning more once we’re in Johannesburg.

As the trip to South Africa fast approaches

By Krisha

It will be very educational and inspiring to see companies that are actively trying to combat the institutional divides of the past to make way for a brighter future.

As the Social Impact Field Seminar trip to South Africa fast approaches, I am excited to expand my education on the culture and inner business workings of Johannesburg. I was originally interested in taking this course as I was able to attend the operations trip to Vietnam last Spring and was so grateful for the experience to immerse myself in the culture of Hanoi. It was very beneficial to combine my current learnings from Questrom, as well as my personal business experience, and apply these to the business problem posed by our assigned organization. While that trip was more focused on operations and manufacturing, I found many of the lessons to be applicable to my current role. In addition to my previous positive experience, I am very excited to go on the immersion course to South Africa as I work in a hospital located in a low income area and have found that upon the course description many of the challenges that South Africa is facing in its health care climate parallels the challenges that I see at work.

In my current organization we are trying to find a way to offer state-of-the-art care with limited resources. I feel that from our first pre-trip session I learned that this is common in many of the industries in Johannesburg; trying to provide a high quality service or deliverable while also trying to make up for the time lost during the systematic apartheid era that still plagues areas of the South African society. This history limited the resources and access to minds that could have helped pave the way for South Africa to be world leader. During our trip, it will be very educational and inspiring to see companies that are actively trying to combat the institutional divides of the past to make way for a brighter future.

For our business tours, I am most excited to visit the Mandate Molefi organization. This organization is one that I have become most familiar with as it is the topic for my teams executive summary. As a woman of color, I rarely see a woman like myself in a leadership role. I’m very excited to visit this company and learn more about the impact that they are having by directly attacking racial bias and injustice in the workplace.

I hope to come from this experience with a better understanding of how social change goals can be implemented and brought to fruition. I also hope to expand my knowledge of the history and culture of South Africa.