Aiming to inspire

From China to Africa, Alvin Rohrs is on a mission to help students realize their entrepreneurial spirit and direct it toward improving their communities

Alvin Rohrs aims to inspire, and the president of Enactus, an NGO whose mission is to create young entrepreneurs in developing countries, has been from China to Africa in an effort to do so.

When the organization was set up to help improve conditions in developing countries, people urged Rohrs to follow the usual route of sending money and letting local people make decisions on how it was spent. But the 56-year-old American decided against that. He wanted a more hands-on way of doing things, and instead chose to work with business leaders and educational institutions to inspire university students to make a difference in their communities and ultimately become business leaders.

Students taking part in the Enactus program form campus teams that use business concepts to improve the lives of people in need in their community. National teams then compete to advance to the Enactus World Cup, which crowns one global winning team each year.

Enactus, which has been steadily growing its global footprint, first went to China in 2002. It currently has 11,000 participating students at 200 Chinese universities, expected to rise to 15,000 at 250 universities over the next 5 years, according to Rohrs.

Rohrs' experience in China led him to look at Africa, which he believes faces many similar development issues, for the organization's next phase of expansion.

"Africa was also undergoing an economic boom led by high international commodity prices and its abundant natural resources," he says. "Based on our China experiences, we thought it was time for us to make the entrepreneurial flame burn brighter in Africa."

The NGO began its Africa expansion project in 2004 and soon found, despite facing similar development issues, there were also significant differences between students there and in China.

"In comparison with Chinese students, African students are more proficient in multiple languages and making solutions to improve their living conditions with limited resources and financial help," he says.

"With a strong desire to change their fate, they are also keen to put more hours into studying different courses."

Rohrs, who spends around 70 percent of his job traveling the world, believes Chinese students may be held back by a fear of failure. It is more acceptable to fail and try again in business in Africa than in China, he says.

Rohrs is using experience gained in China to inform his work in Africa. The organization, which is headquartered in Springfield, Missouri, plans to bring Chinese projects covering rural development, waste recycling, poverty relief and disabled people empowerment to Africa over the next five years, as both countries face many similar issues in these areas, he says.

Enactus has also expanded its work to conduct public campaigns for sustainable development and run innovation competitions at many African universities, for which it receives financial assistance from local and international sponsors.

"In the beginning, raising money in Africa wasn't an easy task," he says. "People there didn't have a culture or tradition of donating to people or organizations. They wait and ask for Americans and Europeans to pay for it, and now they also ask Chinese to pay for it, as they have found more new market growth points in the continent."

To change this, Rohr and his team have been trying to develop a culture of giving by wealthy individuals and corporations.

"Under such circumstances, our challenge was not only raising money, but convincing people to be charitable," Rohrs says. "We discovered that there is money in Africa from wealthy people or companies and they are keen to employ more high-quality talent and bear more corporate social responsibility."

To date, Enactus has been involved in 804 projects across Africa focused on a variety of areas including farming, healthcare, education, drinkable water and poverty relief, with the participation of 9,700 students from 95 African universities in 10 countries.

In addition to helping local communities through the students' projects, Enactus has also helped to create career opportunities for them with companies searching for young talent.

Three African countries - Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa - are among the organization's ten most active regions, with more money raised in them than across the rest of the continent.

Enactus invested $500,000 in its work in Africa in 2012 and received an additional $2 million from African and international sponsors.

"The way we do things in Africa is basically having people in the country, because they know its culture and they are quite capable of training local people to raise money and empowering them to do a better job. The vast majority of money raised in the country stays in the country," says Rohrs.

While Rohrs uses his experiences in China to inform the organization's work in Africa, he also hopes his African work can act as an inspiration to Chinese NGOs to begin their own fundraising in the continent and to expand their work there.

Rohrs' aims through Enactus are in line with the continent's development efforts, according to Chu Shuntang, chief representative of the China-Africa Development Fund in Ghana, who says an "emerging entrepreneurial spirit and new value-creation methods in tourism, rural development, infrastructure improvement, retail and service businesses," are important to future economic growth.

For the future, Rohrs hopes to continue expanding his organization's operations in China and Africa in an effort to a create better quality of life for people in deprived areas, as well as fostering new entrepreneurs.

"Our projects in Africa can really help lift people's quality of life faster and help people apply the knowledge they have learnt at university to their community," he says.

zhongnan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 06/28/2013 page29)