Wednesday, June 10, 2009

One More Stop on the Way Home



Overview
I am blogging from the Heathrow Sheraton now preparing to head home later today. Our last day of the trip related to Africa was yesterday, and it was a fitting end. Time will tell, but it was quite likely the most important meeting we had for making this project into a long term program with outcomes for ISU, our students, and faculty. More details in a moment.

I will be reviewing overall blog and making some edits on names, spellings, and accuracy but I will preserve the observations I was making along the way as I actually saw them. I now have a clearer understanding, and some of the perspectives I had at the time were...,let's say, limited. I now see things more clearly and I would like to change some of what I said to make my observations appear more informed. But I think it is important to recognize that there each day we are learning (or should be) new ideas and gaining new perspectives that change our paradigms, our beliefs.
I think it is easy to think that what we believe now is what we have always believed. But if we are honest with ourselves we would see how much our core beliefs have changed over time, as we gain new perspectives. In Ghana they have a word Sankofa (literally meaning "go back and take"). It teaches the wisdom in learning from the past in order to build for the future. I think that to remain true to what I felt at the time is important. If I make any edits for the purpose of clarification now, I will note that it came at a different time.
I am grateful that I had a colleague, Horace, there with me. I think that made my observations more objective. Every evening we sat down and debriefed the days events, sometimes for several hours over dinner.
I hope that these blogs challenged some of the things you may have thought about Africa. That it is technologically in the stone age, or that they are all poor and in constant need of of a handout from those of us living in rich countries. Or that we have nothing to learn from them. I hope that people will see the fallacies of those assumptions as they read through my blogs, and see the photos I posted.

I already miss Ghana. It truly is a place of where modern meets traditional. A place where cultures blend, almost seamlessly. My favorite photo illustrating this was the photo of an Islamic man, in a thatched-roof village outside of Tamale, sitting on a motorcyle, with his cell phone in hand. I miss the places we saw, the food we ate, and especially the friends we made. I am comforted by a line from Frederick Beuchner's book "Telling the Truth" it reads:
You can kiss your friends and family good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your ear, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world, but a world lives in you. I can honestly say, Ghana lives in me now.
If you want to find out more about the topic of microinsurance please see our Katie School wiki
at http://www.katiepedia.com/ and search under the topic of microinsurance. I keep that updated with research and papers on the topic. I have gotten good feedback on the You Tube videos that I posted on Day 12 on Ecotourism and Day 8 on the value of microfinance for women in Ghana.
Day 12- Baobab Financial Services http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOcIdw61j1Q
Day 8- Larabanga Ecotourism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9THYjEVEC4

Here is the blog from yesterday.
One Stop to Go
We finally left Accra at around 11 p.m. headed for London. We ate a nice dinner on the plane, love British Airway meals, and then tried to get some sleep. We arrived at London at around 7 a.m. and then got a bus for Cheltenham, which is about two hours outside of London, to the home office of Microensure http://www.microensure.com/.

The history of Microensure was that it was established in 2005, as Microinsurance Agency (MIA) , the insurance agency of the international microfinance organization Opportunity International, a faith-based non-profit headquartered in Oak Brook, IL

They have packaged life and non-life microinsurance products in Ghana and have microinsurance operations in numerous developing countries. They successfully provided microinsurance in Uganda, and worked with World Bank in financing a weather-indexed insurance product for Malawi. MicroEnsure acts as a broker between regulated local insurers, reinsurers, and microfinance organizations and the farmers who purchase the insurance. They currently work with 40 different microfinance organizations, including their founding organization, Opportunity International. They provide product development, and the IT back office support for loan and insurance applications, and claims payment information for insurers and reinsurers. They see there role as helping to make sure that the insurance is affordable for the bottom billion (people who can only pay a few dollars a year).

One of the other key concepts that they relayed to us was that the best thing that microinsurance was doing was moving the risk from local people to the international reinsurance market, which can more easily spread and diversify the risk. I see the value of this, and I wonder how to work that concept with the risk retention concept I considered in earlier blog re. Agogo region. Figuring out how to integrate those two will be on my mind for some time, I suspect.


MicroEnsure recently received $24.5 million from the Gates Foundation for the purpose of faciliatating microinsurance, and weather-indexed crop insurance around the world. They have an office in Accra and are working on developing products for Ghana, including indexed insurance for crop loss.

We compared notes and reassuredly found that we had several similar findings. We both saw the importance of helping the agricultural sector because so much of the population (over 70 percent) somehow rely on that sector. We also agreed that the most important part of addressing this sector is to get farmers more credit. As mentioned in earlier blogs, banks and microfinance institutions are reluctant to expand their loan portfolios to include morefarm loans, as the are currently viewed as risky.

We discussed their approach and strategy, which was a bit different than what we were considering (I feel like I shouldn't go into too much detail on that publicly as I am not sure what they considered public information) but the result would be the same, greater willingness to provide credit for farmers.They have had success with their approach in other countries, so it may very well work out in Ghana. They certainly have the resources to overcome many challenges, and in fact have a good track record of doing just that in Malawi and India.

After about two hours of sharing observations and brainstorming ideas we came to the conclusion that we really should be working together. There are things we can be doing at ISU to support them and they have a lot to offer ISU, including providing data to help accelerate our research and development of student and faculty involvement in microinsurance, including student internships and study abroad programs to Ghana. We see a role for our students in helping with the pilots they run. This includes, the needs analysis, helping with initial product development ideas, providing education about insurance to farmers (and others) in Ghana. There would also be a number of projects students (agribusiness and actuarial science) could conduct on campus. In short, this could be an enormous win-win for both organizations.

On our way home from Cheltenham, we had the simultaneously feelings of being completely wrung out and exhilirated.

It was a long journey in many ways. One that I will never forget.
Faithfully Submitted,
Jim

Day 15- Leaving Ghana

Day 15-Our Last Day
Day 15 was busy and we had two important meeting before our 10:40 p.m. flight.
I suppose it is time to reflect on lessons learned.
First, having connections and a car (with a driver) are almost necessities.we can't overemphasize the value that Mr. Mahdi Abdullah had on this trip in providing all three.Thanks. We hope that the lessons learned, people we met, and discussions we have had will lead to something that will benefit your country. (Thanks again Mukthar).
Second, there are so many things that happened before and during this trip that seem to me to be way beyond coincidence. The latest one being the discovery that Mr. Mahdi, and the Paramount Chief we met yesterday were once next door neighbors. For the record, the trip to the Agogo was planned independent of Mr. Mahdi, in fact weeks before we had even met him. We just learned that last night that they had been neighbors, when we went to Mr. Mahdi's house. So I have to give credit to that Force that made all this happen and pulled so many people together. That is something I will never forget.

Our last day in Ghana
We started off the day meeting with Dr. Danso-Manu downtown in Accra.She handed over two USB sticks full of data on soil maps and rainfall data. It was nice to get the data in hand literally. She physically goes out and gathers the data with USB sticks.We were hoping to get at least half the 40 stations in Ghana that we had identified. Unfortunately, we only got 12 weather stations. Dr. Danso-Manu apologized, but the people she was working with had not gotten all the data input. Evidently, they are still transferring some paper data to electronic format for several of the stations. Well, it was good to have to get started.A little disappointing but at least we have some preliminary data to work with.

We then met with the Director of Research for APEX Bank again. This time formally and in detail. He and his staff were very receptive. We went through what we had learned travelling across the country, about the lack of credit for farmers.He understood that the rural banks are reluctant to loan to farmers because of the risks. He was a bit concerned about whether we would be able to get the data. I told him about the data we had collected, and the data that exists at KNUST and he was thrilled to learn that. I still had some concerns myself, given that we didn't get all the data we wanted either. While I was talking, my phone kept ringing. I ignored it the first two times since I didn't want to ruin the moment there with the APEX folks, but the third time I answered. Incredibly, it was Dr. Danso-Manu with more data.On her way home in a taxi she got a call that 17 more stations were now ready.I relayed that to APEX and they were as pleased as I was to hear the news. She brought another USB stick to us while we were there at APEX. (APEX told me how important this was to them. They had even travelled to India and met with people from other countries to try and develop something like this but the data was always the rub. (I realize that for investors to have confidence they are going to want the data ready and easily accessible.I think that his is just a transitional time and I expect that in a year or so, it will be easier to access.In the mean time, I am accepting (and if I am honest, benefiting from) the mysterious and arcane way is gathered. That will change in the near future I'm sure.

We ended the meeting with APEX agreeing to write a letter of support for us in our future proposals, and wants to introduce us to the Ministry of Agriculture in Accra.They made a contingent agreement to run a pilot for a product with reduced limits of financial exposure to see how the product performs. In addition to a simulation, I think a pilot with lower limits might work, and local insurance companies might actually be willing to underwrite that initial pilot.

We finished the formal day at 3 in time to get in some last minute shopping. Needed to catch up on shopping for a few little items to bring back from Africa before heading off to the airport.

Tomorrow we arrive in London at 7 and then take a bus two hours to Cheltenham to meet the CEO of Micorinsurance Agency -Microensure. They are the insurance part of Opportunity International based in Chicago and with microfinance offices around the world.

Faithfully Submitted,
Jim