Social Entrepreneurs
At SDG Impact Stories, we believe that small to medium-sized purpose-driven businesses can have a major impact on their communities locally, and globally. Social entrepreneurs not only have a positive impact but are profitable as well, which is essential for long-term growth.
Scroll down to have a look at all the impact entrepreneurs we covered as part of the SDG World Tour.
Vula Mobile
Problem
Communication between healthcare workers and specialists is a big challenge in emerging countries, especially in rural areas. In South Africa, local doctors often have to deal with poor communication systems, long hours of paperwork, frequent load shedding, and an overall stressful environment.
Solution
Vula Mobile facilitates referrals between healthcare workers and medical specialists, allowing them to manage patients’ cases remotely. Specialists have access to structured information about the patient, allowing them to assess their needs, and send back medical advice in a short period of time.
Impact
As of May 2022, more than 26k healthcare workers were registered on the Vula app, benefiting over 750k patients. Vula's impact translates into an average saving of 2.3 million USD for patients for not missing out on work, and another 3.2mio USD saved in unnecessary costs for medical experts.
Kidogo
Problem
In Kenya, mothers are confronted with a tough decision every day: where do they leave their children when they go to work? They often have no choice but to bring their kids to a cheap informal daycare center, where they often suffer from poor nutrition, lack of hygiene, and very little stimulation to develop their cognitive skills.
Solution
Kidogo is a leading network of quality, affordable childcare centers in East Africa's low-income communities. They've developed a franchise model which empowers aspiring female entrepreneurs to run their own centers and cover all the basic needs of children while stimulating their curiosity.
Impact
Kidogo has become the largest childcare provider in Kenya, with over 500 centers reaching nearly 11k children. 80% of the kids enrolled in Kidogo centers perform better than the average in terms of development. Kidogo notably became the subject of business cases in Harvard and Stanford courses.
Twiga
Problem
In Africa, about 50% of the food produced gets lost and doesn’t reach the consumer. In Nairobi, the retail industry is highly fragmented and mainly consists of small informal kiosks. As a result, farmers struggle to connect with retailers, which increases the number of intermediaries, lowers the quality of products, and drives up the price for consumers.
Solution
Through a B2B e-commerce app, Twiga offers a marketplace for fresh products and non-perishable items, that directly connects producers to informal retailers. Twiga collects products straight from the farms, transports them to their distribution center (the biggest in Africa), before delivering the suppliers. Products spend less than 24h in the facility.
Impact
As of June 2022, Twiga has 100k registered retailers and is supplying around 12k customers every day with around 700 products, sourced from 8k producers. On average, farmers see post-harvest losses decrease from 30% to 4%. Twiga is currently the largest distributor of fresh produce in Kenya.
Sun Culture
Problem
In Africa, 80% of families depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and only 4% have access to irrigation systems. With today’s climate crisis, it has become increasingly difficult to predict rainfall and as a result, many smallholder farmers lose their crops. Some of the major obstacles they face include low productivity, lack of infrastructure and technology.
Solution
SunCulture helps small farmers grow food without relying on rainfall, thanks to solar-powered irrigation systems. Over the past 8 years, they’ve been developing an off-grid solar technology to provide farmers with reliable access to water, irrigation, lighting, and mobile charging.
Impact
SunCulture is currently the largest solar pump distributor in Sub-Saharan Africa, positively impacting tens of thousands of farmers in 4 countries. On average, they allow farmers to increase their income by up to 10 times, increase yield by up to 5 times, and reduce water usage by 80%.
Impaakt
Problem
Efficiently monitoring and measuring businesses' overall impact on people and the planet is essential to accelerate change, but it’s complicated. Which metrics to use ? Should we rely on data from the companies themselves or do we make our own assessments? How do we avoid green washing and measure the real impact of a company ?
Solution
In 2018, Impaakt launched a peer-review platform to measure the true level of sustainability of major companies worldwide. Thanks to ratings and analyses made by the +20’000 certified community members, they’re building company scores with the goal to create the ultimate resource of objective, quality impact information for investors and consumers.
Impact
Since 2018, 40’000 people joined the Impaakt community. 400k ratings have been made covering the impact of over 1500 companies.
Goblis
Problem
Africa consists of almost 21% of the world’s farmable land, yet farmers are producing dramatically less than in other parts of the world. Most smallholder farmers have land but they are lacking the proper structure, technology, resources and guidance, and access to capital in order to drive profitability.
Solution
Meet Apollo Agriculture, a tech company that empowers small-scale farmers to increase yield and profits. For a given crop, they design a bundle, which notably includes seeds and fertilizers, customized advice, and a yield insurance. Most importantly, this bundle is delivered as a loan, allowing farmers to receive resources at the beginning of the year, and only pay when they’ve generated the returns on their harvests.
Impact
As of June 2022, about 100k farmers have joined the platform, along with over 1k retailers and 5k agents spread across the country. On average, Apollo customers increase production by up to 2.6 times. By the end of 2022, the start-up plans to double its customer base and introduce new products.
Sanergy
Problem
Cities are growing exponentially, especially in emerging economies, and it only worsens the problem of poor waste management. In Nairobi, over 2k tons of organic waste is disposed of every day in open dumps or landfills. This directly contributes to a rise in CO2 emissions, an increase of polluted waters, and consequently, health issues within communities.
Solution
Sanergy transforms the way booming cities manage their waste, turning organic and sanitation waste into high-quality agriculture and energy products. They safely collect 150 tons a day of organic waste from municipal, commercial, sanitation, and agricultural sources across Nairobi.
Impact
Sanergy removes over 50k tons of waste every year from Nairobi. In the next 5 years, they expect to collect 1mio tons of waste annually, benefiting 50k farmers and offsetting half a million tons of C02. They're currently the largest producer of organic fertilizer and insect-based protein in Kenya.
Mazi
Problem
In Nairobi, roads are heavily congested and lack proper infrastructure. As cities expand, the demand for traditional motorbikes, or “bodas”, is increasing rapidly.
However, motorcycles pollute about 10x more than SUVs. And as of now, not many sustainable alternatives exist.
Solution
Meet Mazi Mobility, a start-up whose mission is to drive smart, efficient, clean, and shared forms of mobility in East Africa. The company assembles electric motorbikes and has built several electric battery swap stations located at strategic points across the city. It takes 30 seconds to perform a swap.
Impact
On average, Mazi bikes are about 50% cheaper to operate and maintain compared to traditional ones. Mazi expects to onboard 2k users by 2025, resulting in the mitigation of 7 metric tons of CO2, saving up to 2mio USD.
Apollo Agriculture
Problem
Africa consists of almost 21% of the world’s farmable land, yet farmers are producing dramatically less than in other parts of the world. Most smallholder farmers have land but they are lacking the proper structure, technology, resources and guidance, and access to capital in order to drive profitability.
Solution
Meet Apollo Agriculture, a tech company that empowers small-scale farmers to increase yield and profits. For a given crop, they design a bundle, which notably includes seeds and fertilizers, customized advice, and a yield insurance. Most importantly, this bundle is delivered as a loan, allowing farmers to receive resources at the beginning of the year, and only pay when they’ve generated the returns on their harvests.
Impact
As of June 2022, about 100k farmers have joined the platform, along with over 1k retailers and 5k agents spread across the country. On average, Apollo customers increase production by up to 2.6 times. By the end of 2022, the start-up plans to double its customer base and introduce new products.
School of Humanity
Problem
Most education models still follow principles that emerged in the 19th century. The traditional way of learning is very much memory based and doesn’t necessarily consider all the different types of intelligence that exist. There’s very little diversity in terms of learning models, and as a result, many schools fail to adapt to all the different kinds of learners.
Solution
Meet School of Humanity, an online high school that seeks to disrupt current education systems, by empowering students to develop some of the most in-demand skills and mindsets in the emerging workforce, through challenge-based sessions focused on global problems.
Impact
As of June 2022, School of Humanity has mentored over 150 learners, across 25 countries, with an educator-learner ratio of 8:1. SoH has received financial and operational support from Education in Motion (EiM), an education provider behind some of today's most forward-thinking schools around the world.