All For Africa Program
About All For Africa A4A
History and Mission
Year is 2006 : Palm Oil prices start to rise. Projected population growth in Asia and Africa are some of the main factors that are expected to further impact the future oil palm prices. West and Central African countries have aging and low yield oil palm farms. Supply does not keep up with demand and many of these countries end up importing palm oil from Asia (mainly Malaysia) in order to satisfy demand.
Herakles Farms, a large scale agricultural project aims to develop new, high yield oil palm farms that would deliver low cost, high quality palm oil to the African continent.
It's mission is multi fold:
1.To bring back palm oil to West Africa where it originated from, keep prices affordable within the region and charge a premium for excess demand exports outside of Africa.
2.To create long term jobs and start developing infrastructure that would lead to further foreign investment
3 To give back by creating a self sustaining corporate responsibility program which they call All For Africa
All For Africa business model is simple but powerful. A 5% portion of the Herakles land is allocated to A4A . A4A is responsible for clearing the land, purchasing and planting plant oil palm trees at its own expense. Once the trees reach maturity the Herakles will help A4A collect the fruit, refine the oil and sell it on the market at no extra cost.
100% of the sale proceeds go to A4A. The average lifetime of an Oil Palm tree is 30 years and it yields fruit for about 25 years. This arrangement allowed A4A to benefit from a consistent stream of revenue for at least 25 years.
Palm Oil Prices 2006- 2014
Largest Palm Oil Exporters 2006
The GIVING problem:
Giving is easy. Consistent giving is hard. Most non profit projects fail because of lack of funding.The biggest problem that long term, high impact non-profit projects face (education, health) is that they are completely dependent on outside donations year after year. As such, they are sensitive to the whims of their donors and economic downturns. Long Term Planning is impacted by fundraising uncertainty. Social Entrepreneurs split their time resources between doing and fundraising which often compromises the quality of both activities.
The AFA solution:
A4A was in an unique position to provide sustainable long term economic stability to education or healthcare non-profit projects.
My role at A4A is two fold:
1.Identify and pursue short term and long term projects that have high potential of success. Success is a function on 2 variables each carrying a different weight.
Scope
Motivation & Leadership
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Project Motivation & Leadership- 45% are the project leaders involved in the community where they developing the project? What is the motivation for developing the project? What demonstrated measures of accountability exist in the community?
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Project Scope- 55%While we recognize that aid is needed in a wide variety of scenarios, A4A focus is on projects that offer community benefits that focus on long term community development and not immediate relief. Projects of interest focus on education, health and infrastructure (grinding mills, water wells, small business micro loans
2. Monitor project implementation & mentor and advise Social Entrepreneurs and Project Leads to ensure Project Success
Examples of Projects sponsored:
Short term:
Burkina Faso- Community grinding mill in collaboration with the University of Paris, Public Policy School
Ghana- water wells in collaboration with Charity:Water
Long term:
DRC- School for girls- Malaika.org
Coming Soon
Non Profit Learnings:
Gauging Genuine Project Manager involvement. WHY are you doing this?
Why we should run NonProfits like for profit businesses