Kenya Revisited

The author, a business management consultant and lecturer and teaching fellow at the University of Haifa, travelled to Kenya on behalf of the Golda Meir Mt. Carmel International Training Center to give an income-generating project on-the-spot training course.

It was good to be revisiting Kenya again, even if one arrived once more, as per usual, in the middle of the night! At the Nairobi airport to meet me this time was Meirav Eilon Shahar, the current Second Secretary of the Israeli Embassy in charge of MASHAV affairs, and her husband. Before I knew it almost I was at the hotel, had snatched a brief few hours sleep before meeting the Ambassador in the morning, and was on a plane once more, this time aboard the February 3rd internal afternoon flight with Meirav on down to Mombasa on the coast where I was to conduct my current on-the-spot training course.

It was the fourth time now that I travelled to Kenya to conduct an income-generating project (IGP) training course on behalf of MASHAV's training establishment in Haifa - the Golda Meir Mount Carmel International Training Center, known popularly as MCTC. In 1995 and 1996 I had been team leader conducting IGP courses for the Kenya Institute of Management in Nairobi, and having already served as chief instructor on a 1994 on-the-spot IGP course given for the Coast Development Authority (CDA) in Mombasa - here I was again in February 1998 in charge of the current training course to be given for the same authority on the subject of the organization and management of income-generating projects.

In Mombasa, the familiar figure of Hemed Mwabudzo came to meet us at the airport. The energetic Hemed, who served as personal assistant to the Managing Director of the CDA and had been the coordinator of the previous MCTC on-the-spot course in Mombasa 1994, had since graduated from the 1996 microenterprise course given at MCTC in Haifa and was to act now as principal coordinator for the current course. It was a relief to know that the many and various local technical and administration arrangements relating to the running of the latest course were to be in his capable hands, "Jambo" (hello), I said to Hemed in my basic Swahili; "Shalom," he replied in fluent Hebrew!

At my Mombasa hotel that Tuesday evening I held an orientation meeting with Hemed and with the Second Secretary in attendance. From my previous visits to Kenya I was well aware of how vital the informal small business sector was to the forwarding of Kenya's economy and to the raising of the standard of life of its people. (There were indeed far too few jobs to go around, and salaried employment, whether now or in the immediate future, could not nearly provide the solution.) But the small business sector, and its expansion, so vitally required, had to be based on sound lines - hence the importance in conducting training in the techniques and skills needed for the organization and management of income-generating projects.

The training and skills to be acquired by the participants in the course about to be started could both be used later in practice and passed on to other would-be entrepreneurs in Kenya, thus gaining the considerable advantage of a snowballing multiplier effect. As for the host organization, the Coast Development Authority, that authority had been playing, I knew, a seminal and influential role in the development of the coastal province of Kenya and the peoples of its region.

The current IGP training course to be conducted for the CDA was the second such course to be given for it by MCTC. From an Israel international cooperation point of view it was considered important that some of the previous Israeli course trainees living locally should be associated with the current course taking place, but as trainers now, and in the capacity of assistant facilitators. Present at this orientation meeting then, for part of the time, were two of the designated assisting graduates, Ms. Lucy Lau and Ms. Mary Stevens, as too an American volunteer currently working with the CDA and who would also lend assistance on occasion as required.

The two-and-a-half-week training course which started on Wednesday morning, February 4th, held its official opening ceremony that same evening at the Bandari College in Mombasa before an audience of some 40 persons, including the local press. The main speech at the ceremony was given by Professor Juma Lugogo, the Managing Director of the Coast Development Authority, while Meirav Shahar, the Second Secretary, brought greetings from the Embassy, and I myself from MCTC.

The 22 men and women who completed the IGP course possessed considerable practical experience, for example, in running youth and women's groups, and local non-governmental community-based organizations, or were field workers with the CDA. Moreover their enthusiasm and motivation was also a major positive contributing factor to the course.

Just as well perhaps, since the course was intensive into the extreme! Participants had not only to listen to and participate in a large variety of classroom lectures and exercises on business and its management throughout the course, but also to form themselves into separate business groups and actually simulate the setting up and running of a real life business enterprise as part and parcel of their activities on the course.

Indeed, this combination of the practical with the theoretical proved once again the special and dynamic feature of the MCTC IGP training courses.

From 8.30 in the morning until 6.00 p.m. in the evening, the participants were immersed throughout the course in gaining, improving and implementing their theoretical and practical knowledge of a full "package deal" of techniques and skills required in the setting up and running of business projects. At the start, participants went out to town to conduct a market survey aimed principally at gaining ideas as to the type of product it would be worthwhile for them to produce in the course. Back in the classroom the trainees formed themselves into separate business groups, clarified their intended project product or products, decided on the formal nature and type of the business they intended to set up, conducted feasibility studies and applied to the bank for loans.

On receipt of loan finance from the bank, added to the financial contribution put in by members of the individual business group, the groups then set about purchasing, producing, marketing and selling their products, on the way engaging in ancillary business operations such as organizational management, storeskeeping, bookkeeping, costing and financial reporting.

The three business groups formed - one a partnership producing ornaments from beads, the second a limited company manufacturing brooms from bundles of wood, and the third a partnership making tablets of soap - heard not only lectures from myself, but also from invited local lecturers on subjects such as basic accounting, institutional services for small enterprises, and government policy towards enterprise promotion. Classroom discussion was brisk, and classroom exercises undertaken with a will.

But the pressure was mounting not only on the participants, but on myself and the sore throat I was getting from constant speaking! It was thus a great relief when my talented colleague Janet Gino, a visual arts expert, joined us as co-instructor on the course in its second week and delighted the participants with talks on such unusual related and interesting subjects as "creative thinking" and "product development" accompanied by a cinema length demonstration of photo slides. Under Janet Gino's direction publicity and promotion work of all groups took off at great pace, product presentation display was improved and moves were soon in force getting ready for the participants' exhibition to be held at the end of the course.

All groups, as expected, had been making mistakes as they went along, but the main point was that they were learning from their mistakes. Moreover, though visibly tired from their sustained efforts, all three groups finished up their simulation exercises with satisfying profits - that was over and above money paid to the members as workers in their group enterprises!

The course and its ancillary activities finished up with a strong spurt. After visits to local enterprises in town, participants attended a public lecture given by myself before a large audience on Thursday evening, February 19th, at the Polana Hotel on the subject of "Better Small Business Management - An Israel Approach," were present at a local Shalom Club meeting the same evening, presented oral reports the following morning on their group enterprise simulations and received course certificates from Israeli Ambassador Menashe Zipori at the closing ceremony which followed.

Undoubtedly adding to the attraction of the public lecture and the televised closing ceremony was the very professional exhibition of participants' group work and packaging display tastefully set up and presented under the capable expert hand of Janet Gino. Pride and satisfaction with their display was very noticeable in the eyes of the participants.

There was much satisfaction too on the side of the instructors. Though they had sympathized with the participants who had been critical of the fact that too much pressure had been put on them, the fixing of the duration of the course had been outside of the instructors' hands.

At the end too, the trainees also realized that the pressures which had been put on them had been justified in achieving what they called the business "package deal" within the time set, while the participants as a body stressed how important the course had been for them personally.

On its part the host institution rated the course as an "outstanding success" and intimated that it had achieved the outcome from it exactly as expected. Moreover, following its conclusion the CDA reported that it now had a pool of over 40 practical entrepreneurship trainers to spread their knowledge onwards within the coast province.

Kenya revisited - My three weeks there on behalf of MASHAV flew by, but the Shalom Club meeting reminded me of the close affiliation with Israel. Somewhere I had found time to visit the Women's Network Center in Mombasa and to address the executive committee of the local Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Rains locally had been continuous for weeks before we came, people were constantly talking of the "El Nino" weather effect, and power breakdowns and flooded streets provided a background to our efforts. The finish-up was a whirl - goodbyes to our hosts, on the plane to Nairobi, and then once more on the plane to Israel, and home before one knew it.

Kenya revisited - Looking back, it was a tiring but most satisfying experience; and one reaffirming one's belief in the value of Israel's program of international cooperation.

Branch Report - Mombasa, Kenya

In the summer of 1994, and at the time of the conducting in town of a MASHAV on-the-spot training course on income-generating projects, a branch of the Shalom Club in Mombasa had been set up. Of late, the club's activities had been dormant (possibly due to the marriage in the interim of its chairperson).

Against such background, and utilizing the occasion of the conducting of another Israeli IGP training course in town in February '98, opportunity was taken to revive the affairs of the local club.

Accordingly, Israeli course graduates living in the Mombasa area were now contacted on the matter and the get-together meeting of the Shalom Club members in the presence of the Israeli Ambassador took place on Thursday evening February 19 at the Polana Hotel in central Mombasa. (The meeting was held shortly after the conclusion of the public lecture given at the same venue that evening by the visiting Israeli consultant, Raymond Renford.)

Including the Ambassador, the two visiting Israeli IGP course instructors, and participants of the current training course being conducted (who would be graduating on the morrow and so became Shalom Club members themselves in their own right), some 35 people were now present at the Club meeting.

Such audience included ten past Israeli course graduates, among them Lucy Lau, graduate of the microenterprise course at the Golda Meir Mount Carmel Training Center in Haifa in 1994, together with Mary Stevens and Josephine Rondo, graduates of the IGP on-the-spot course in Mombasa in the same year. Hemed Mwabudzo, the energetic coordinator of both the 1994 and 1998 on-the-spot courses given in Mombasa, was there in his capacity as a graduate of the 1996 MCTC Haifa microenterprise course, while others at the get-together who had graduated from training courses in Israel between 1996 and 1998 were Fontus Mngonei, Florence Githae, Emanuel Kaheso and Masai M. Masai. Also present were Abdallah Lugogo, a graduate of the course given at the Israeli agricultural experimental farm at Kibwezi, Kenya, in 1997, and Elvina Mutua, a graduate of a Mount Carmel training course in Haifa in 1976 (!). Each such graduate introduced himself or herself and spoke briefly about his or her "Israel connection."

Israeli Ambassador Menashe Zipori gave an inspiring address to the assembled club members and drew their attention to the many training courses which MASHAV has on offer, telling them not to hesitate in putting forward names of candidates who would seem to them suitable for such courses. The two visiting instructors from MCTC, Raymond Renford and Janet Gino, also brought to the graduates nostalgic memories of Haifa and of their time in Israel generally.

Lucy Lau, who acted as chairperson for the meeting, was appointed by acclamation to serve as club coordinator pending the holding of formal elections in due course.