Author: Rachel Williams

NAIROBI, Kenya — Kenyans are known worldwide for running, but this reputation has brought minimal income to the country. Enda is a Kenyan running shoe brand that hopes to solve this. Enda shoes have the potential to increase the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), grow social progress and sustainability. In 2015, Weldon Kennedy and Nava Osembo-Ombati launched a Kickstarter campaign to jumpstart social change within Kenya’s economy, through empowerment and ownership. The local government, development experts and the Enda team believe the untapped market of buying from Kenya, rather than giving, could impact rising poverty rates. On the running shoe’s sole,…

SAN DIEGO, California — It’s a simple equation for farmers. A lack of resources results in labor shortages, which manifests into under-cultivation, poor harvests and loss of income. Yet across Africa, affordable tractors for small farmers prevents improved farm productivity. Hello Tractor is a low-cost uber-like tractor lease initiative designed for small farmers to utilize specific attachments for different crop varieties and farm productivity stages year round. A GPS antenna mobilizes Hello Tractor into tracking usage and gathering data on location and market trends. Farmers can request, schedule or prepay for Hello Tractors on its booking system with a tap…

SEATTLE — A single mosquito bite plumped with malaria causes your head to pulsate, a fever to ignite and your bones to weigh a ton. Your body is covered in sweat and shutters with shivers. Female Anopheles mosquitos are the most lethal, blood-sucking animals around the world. The bite is almost stingless, where its prey rarely detects the bite. Mosquitos have a hollow needle attached to their mouths, called a proboscis, where they sip out of your skin like a straw. There are 47 sharp, jagged edges attached to the proboscis. In 2015, 438,000 people were killed by mosquitos, and…

Nigeria — Registering a business in Nigeria, the legal process of which takes roughly 90 days, complicates the lives of African business owners. In turn, Africa’s economy as a whole has suffered. According to The World Bank’s Doing Business report, the largest economy in Africa ranks 169th out of 189 countries; Nigeria ranks 39th. Three female Nigerian lawyers started an online service, DIY Law, to overcome the obstacles for African business owners such as excessive regulation, complicated trade structure and murky import and export regimes. Odunoluwa Longe, a strategic developer at DIY Law, aims to serve Nigerian businesses, particularly small…

KAPTUMO, Kenya — In Kaptumo, female farmer and mother Clara prepared her two cows for milking. She noticed one of them struggled to stand up that morning and for three days thereafter, so she used a digital exchange platform, or short message service (SMS), called WeFarm to find a solution. Within 10 minutes, a WeFarm member who had the same problem responded to Clara’s message with a solution. She was told to feed the cow calcium-rich and phosphorous feed because her cow had a mineral deficiency, which made the cow’s bones weak. Another farmer suggested Clara start to grow a…

KIGALI, Rwanda — After Rwanda’s genocide of 1994, the presence of telecom companies has grown exponentially. The minister Jean-Pierre Nsengimana is jumpstarting tech companies to inspire the investment of large multinational companies in the region, which has led to a rising international hotspot in Rwanda. Rwanda is one of the fastest growing economies in Central Africa with a GDP growth of around 8 percent per year between 2001 and 2014. Toward the peak of 2012, accessing Gmail was a difficult task for most internet users in Rwanda. Today the country’s capital, Kigali, has the availability to stream movies or video…