Winning business ideas from RRU contest to help Tanzanians

Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) at Royal Roads University announced this week the results of the Micro-Finance Business Ideas Competition, awarding $4,750 in cash to the winning business ideas that will be developed to support small businesses in Tanzania.

These business ideas will be evaluated for implementation by three graduates of Royal Roads University's Bachelor of Commerce program who will travel to Tanzania for six months to administer the program through a fellowship provided by the Nelson Family Micro-business Fund. The fund was created to support the establishment of promising small businesses in the region of Moshi, Tanzania.

The goal of the competition was to identify, reward, and promote innovative business ideas received from people anywhere in the world that would in turn be developed in Tanzania by providing small loans to low-income entrepreneurs who would otherwise have difficulty acquiring financing.

Two business ideas tied for first place with prizes of $1,250 each. One proposed providing women with training and resources to get them into different streams of textile manufacturing, including loans to purchase sewing machines. The other  proposed having people manufacture mosquito nets, which would provide income to borrowers and help fight the spread of malaria, one of the most prevalent health risks in Tanzania.

Last month a group of six Royal Roads business students accompanied by faculty advisor Geoffrey Archer and donor Dr. Colin Nelson took the business ideas submitted for the contest and assessed their feasibility in the field. The Nelson Family Micro-business Fund will now provide three $5,000 fellowships to Royal Roads graduates to move to Tanzania for six months and turn the ideas into real businesses before transitioning them to local ownership.

"The lessons that the students learned in Tanzania are immense," said Geoffrey Archer, director of the Eric C. Douglass Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies, which is administering the micro-finance program. "This trip was a promising start to developing a two-way exchange of ideas, culture and business practices."

While on their trip students met with Louis Pope, founder of the Yehu Microfinance Trust in Mombasa, Kenya. With him they traveled to a remote branch to meet with loan officers who lend to some of Yehu's 17,000 borrowers.  En route to Tanzania students met with Mercy Njoroge, founder of a non-profit that has trained over 1,000 microfinance borrowers in how to manage their household budgets.  They also had an opportunity to meet Young Kimaru, a former World Bank executive who founded an organization that lends small amounts of money to women in the village of Mwika, Tanzania. Royal Roads students attended a weekly meeting of borrowers where they had the opportunity to speak with several women who had benefited from microfinance and to see the businesses started with small loans.

"Meeting the leaders who started these tremendous institutions and actually talking with these amazing businesswomen borrowers has really changed our perspective on the opportunities created by micro-lending," said Andrew Miller, one of the business students who went on the trip.

"It was eye-opening to see the difference a small amount of money can make in the lives of people there.  The women we spoke with had earned quadruple the amount of their initial loan."

Winners:
First Place - $1250 each

Sewing -Stephen Hodges - Corvallis, Oregon

Mosquito nets - Michael Anderson - Saanichton, British Columbia

Second Place - $750 each

Village Tourism - Amy McQuaid - Bowmanville, Ontario
Village Tourism - Lance Rath - Saanichton, British Columbia

Third Place - $250 each

Poultry - Rukaiya Sajjad - Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania

Incubators - Jamie Mcguigan- Toronto, Ontario

Honourable mention - $250 

Agriculture - Mhula Ngassa - Vancouver, British Columbia

For more information and submission requirements visit www.MFBIC.org.