By the Lionesses of Africa Operations Dept
One of the things we all learnt in 2020 was what was meant by the ‘R’ number - the rate at which a sick person will pass on (in this case) COVID-19 to others. According to ISGlobal the average ‘R’ for an infected person with CV19 is around 2.5 in each 5 day period of incubation. An ‘R’ of less than 1 is good because it means that the number being infected is growing smaller, but over 30 days will still infect others, and thanks to the brilliant Visual Capitalist looks something like this…
As the ‘R’ rate rises above 1 so the number of people infected rises, like this:
Move the ‘R’ rate up to what is considered to be the average of just 2.5 and you begin to see the globe’s serious problem:
Note that Day 5 are the ones only directly infected - Day 30 is the total that have been infected through these others!
The first graphic featured this week is ‘Patient 31’ from South Korea (an actual patient) who, in Feb 2020, came into contact with 1,600, and over 5,000 people at her local Church who then caught CV19 from her two hour visit - that was all it took…and when South Korea showed this, the world woke up (article here).
This exponential rise in infections as ‘R’ moves above one is scary but shows clearly the huge impact a small increase in that number makes! So how if we change this around to looking at how good can be brought to people. Change the ‘R’ number to an ‘I’ number for ‘Impact’? Can one person really change the lives for better in a multiple of 1,160 as with ‘Patient 31’?
Yes is the simple answer to that!
Amongst our incredible membership we have are such obvious candidates as the inspirational Essma Ben Hamida. Starting with US$10,000 and 2 ‘employees’, (herself and her husband), over the past 25 years US$2.5 billion has been disbursed to a total of 900,000 borrowers from her micro-finance company. Today, she employs 2,000 people, 70% of them university graduates and 50% women - just imagine for a moment the people, the families, the children, the communities this Lioness and her loans have touched, helped and uplifted. Just in the way the ‘R’ number exponentially grows, Essma’s ‘I’ number has created a massive multiple of Impact.
Now that’s Impact worth shouting about!
Temie and Christelle we have written about many times here, so they will forgive us (we are sure) if we do not dwell, but just point out that by looking at ‘Patent 31’, just imagine the multiple that these two incredible Lionesses have brought to their countries in saving lives through Blood and Water deliveries.
Impact is central to all that we as Lionesses do, big or small, yet we do not measure it. It is simply not on our minds to measure this, as Impact is simply part of our DNA, it is automatic, it is like life and breathe itself, yet measure we must if we are to be noticed by funders and increasingly, international supply chains. Development organisations measure impact and so for those Lionesses who have already had interaction with the Development world they are beginning to realize that they have to produce numbers and data showing their Impact. It is important to measure, so that such essential SDG’s don’t fall into the trap as seen with ‘Green-washing’ where companies and financiers push something through with a Green tag in spite of it hardly being ‘Green’. But what data and what Impact?
Impact has many different meanings for so many different people. The starving child sees the impact in a discarded apple in the same way as someone in the UK views a food bank and sees the weekly needs; as a young girl or boy just graduating from High School sees a much needed job as a way of supporting their family; as a woman who has previously had to walk each day 3 hours to gather the daily water views a visit from Christelle and her team at Water Access Rwanda; as… we could go on and on, but ‘Impact’ is clearly different for almost everyone.
The International Development Community brought in the Social Development Goals (SDG’s) to replace the Millennium DG’s (MDG’s). Each SDG has its own particular impact criteria and for us Lionesses, the SDG5 is the main one (although each Lioness may have her own - plastic recycling and water for example). But for SDG5 which covers all of the Lioness membership the 2X Challenge has a very good guide to what they see as important for their funding to consider in order to tick their Impact box:
Well that was easy! 100% of our >1.1million membership pass almost 100% of those tests, yet we only need one in order to be recognised as having impact, so we all pass by a significant margin. Yet almost daily, we in the Lionesses Den have calls from Lionesses looking for funding, and if a Bank with its tough risk and credit tick boxes (often wrapped loving around that warm blanket (for them) called ‘collateral’) are unable to lend, then the obvious next call should be to the development organisations.
So why, for SDG5 and the development world, are the above criteria important? Amongst the huge inequalities that are well documented and have to be solved, it is also well recognised that women led businesses drive deep community development through wider employment and carefully thought out supply chain support. That significantly multiplies the impact to communities in the same way that ‘R’ multiplies above. As we always say, if you are going to build Africa through business, build it with Lionesses.
Measuring is one thing, but you have to ‘walk the walk’, not just talk, and this is where Lionesses roar. In a recent Lioness Weekender edition, Melanie interviewed one of our incredible ‘100 Lionesses’, Margaret Hirsch. Amongst other numerous occasions of uplifting people - “In 1994 Hirsch’s decided to empower their drivers, so the company sold their trucks to the drivers at a low price over an extended period. The ripple effect of this was that more than 20 delivery businesses have started up over the past 21 years, and these delivery businesses now employ more than 800 people.”
Today, where the last mile delivery is suddenly THE issue, these many businesses were without doubt in the right place at the right time with an anchor client, all thanks to the foresight of a true Lioness.
We touched on this with Kevine Kagirimpundu founder and CEO of the incredible shoe company UZURI K&Y, (they ship internationally btw) when she asked on LinkedIn, how one measured Impact. As an employer she recognizes that not everything is about hard work during the hours 9-5, but fun and time to enjoy one another’s company is important and this builds so much more for both the employee and the company. Implication being that Impact is more than just money in the pocket, but and especially during CV19 where mental health for all needs awareness, perhaps some sunshine at work in the form of a non-rigid work environment would, could or even should be considered - Impact.
Here was her recent post on Instagram - what do you think?
“It has become my hobby…”. If all your employees came into work with such a smile on their faces and especially during 2020 - now that’s Impact!
In all of this rush to measure Impact and SDG metrics, we must at all times remember this human aspect. For all Lionesses, this is not a numbers game, this is in their DNA. As we see from the examples above, Impact can be large or small, can affect one or many, but what is important is that we do it, exactly because the multiplier effect is huge.
If you can touch just one with your kindness and uplift them with your training, knowledge and opportunities, they will touch another and another… As with all our incredible Lionesses mentioned here and all our inspirational >1.1 million members across Africa and the Diaspora, this is Impact. 2021 is our year of Impact, where the true and essential impact that women led business have with their local communities across the globe, must and will be recognised and celebrated.
We are in the right place at the right time.
However big or small, let’s continue being the difference
and
Roar Together!
Stay safe.