Its been a pretty crazy week. So much has happened that I am not even sure where to begin.
In short my trip to Tanzania was amazing. AMAZING. I love Africa and I fell in love with Stone Town in Zanzibar and told David if there was an African city I would move to willingly it would be Dar Es Salaam.
There is just too much info to cram into one post so I am going to start with the purpose of the trip and talk about the three Coca Cola initiatives we saw. None of these initiatives are about Coke handing out money or donating portions of their sales to a charity or selling. Each initiative is about sustainability and enabling the people involved to grow and improve. Ultimately what they are doing is teaching people to fish rather than just giving them the fish.
This project is a colloboration between CocaCola, USAID, The Global Fund and the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation. CocaCola shared their expertise and experience in reaching the most rural parts of Africa to help the Medical Supplies Division (MSD) of Tanzania do the same with their medicines, which is where the name for the project comes from – the aim is to reach the last mile. Coke has a team of experts who work closely with the MSD to improve the distribution of medicines, streamline their procurement process to ensure that no medicine is wasted because it past its sell by date before it could be delivered. This is a really great initiative that is saving lives and making positive contributions to rural areas of Tanzania.
A lot of Cokes initiatives involve empowering women. The 5by20 project is made up of women who touch the Coke value chain in some way. It could be the fruit pickers who pick the fruit used for the concentrates, the scavengers who collect old coke bottles and make jewellery or the women who actually sell coke. These women are identified and then offered classes in business, mentorship and financial services to assist them in growing their businesses. One of the projects we visited was this market place where women run these little stalls, they serve meals and sell Coke products.
They have these solar panels that provide the stalls and coolers with power.
We then met Lilian who is an Official Coke Distributor. She has been with Coke for 10 years and has experienced some personal challenges over these 10 years but she has still managed to do exceptionally well. Her whole story is over here.
All the women we met who work with this project are extremely proud of what they have acheived. It is a really great project because it not only improves their lives but that of their community as well.
This was the main initiative and the one I think the Coke team who were with us on the trip were most proud of.
The Ekocenters were designed around shipping containers and are little kiosks that almost become the city centre in the villages they are in. The village we visited was 3 hours outside of Dar Es Salaam, so very much in the middle of nowhere.
This ekocenter is the only source of power in the village and it uses solar power. The kiosk does not only sell coke but a range of other necessities and also has a panel with power points where things like cell phones can be charged.
It is a little strange seeing these ekocenters in villages like this because life is still so rural and then these centres have computers, printers and the internet.
These ekocenters were actually piloted in South Africa (did you even know that? I didn’t) and are currently in Ethiopia and Rwanda as well as Tanzania.
All three of these initiatives are having a positive impact on the communities they touch and every person we spoke to who was involved in the projects is really committed to making them work and very proud to be a part of them.
While this trip was sponsored by Coca Cola, we were not asked or paid to write about the experience. The opinions and thoughts in this post are my own.
One Response
I like the idea of solar power. Sounds very interesting.