Sawa Energy empowers East Africa’s small and medium businesses by reducing electricity pricing and volatility. Sawa Energy builds, owns, and operates solar systems for their clients, enabling them to go solar and save money without any upfront costs.

Jordan is an active entrepreneur and investor in the climate tech space. Most recently, he led the restructuring of East African Power, supporting a $10M capital raise for projects across the region. He has advised and invested in energy startups across North America, Europe, and Africa. 

Doreen Ndishabandi is the Chief of Staff and Director of Government Relations for One Acre Fund,  Rwanda.  One Acre Fund supplies smallholders farmers with the financing, training, and market support they need to increase their yields and generate a gain in farm income.  Globally, One Acre Fund employs more than 8,500 staff who serve more than 1.3 million farm families each year, with an additional 1 million households reached through private and public partnerships. 

In her first four years at One Acre Fund, Doreen oversaw One Acre Fund’s country-scale engagements and partnerships with the Government of Rwanda, as well the program’s policy & partnerships, communications, and legal and compliance portfolios. For the last two years she has focused on two areas of organisational strategy: systems change impact and People. One Acre Fund’s systems change strategy aims to transform agricultural systems by leveraging the enormous existing potential and years of close partnerships with governments and private actors to address current market failures, advocate for farmer-centered policy change by elevating direct farmer voice, replicate systems-focused interventions that are backed by real evidence, and ensure a more gender-equitable agricultural system. Doreen is also overseeing the Rwanda program’s increased investments in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which in the past year has seen an overhaul of our leadership structures as well as equity-driven changes to our performance management and compensation and benefit systems. 

Doreen is a 2018 Skoll Foundation and Mastercard Foundation Emerging Leaders Fellow and an Opportunity Collaboration Global Skoll Foundation Fellow. Prior to joining One Acre Fund, Doreen worked on Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (MNCH) in Belize and has previously worked with the World Justice Project, the Supreme Court of the Republic of Rwanda, and Youth Action Africa. Doreen attended Tufts University and has a B.A in International Relations.

Arun is a Kiwi-Indian entrepreneur living in Kigali, Rwanda.  He co-founded Hence, a tech startup that is helping to create a fair, efficient and transformative knowledge economy for people everywhere, initially by bringing data to the way companies work with their lawyers. Arun  also helped set up the Rwandan Mathematics Olympiad Program, working with the top mathematical problem solvers from across Rwandan high schools.  He believes that talent is universal but opportunity is not, and is striving to fix that.  He loves learning about and discussing mathematics, education, technology, data, talent and much more!

Arun and his team have recently been getting a lot of traction from a funding announcement covered in TechCrunch.  Check it out!

You can reach Arun on LinkedIn and learn more about him and his co-founders here. 

Sarah is a lawyer who advises developing country governments on laws, policies, contracts and treaties relating to responsible investment, particularly in agriculture.  Sarah is based in Rwanda where she worked for two years as a legal advisor to the Rwandan Ministry of Trade and Industry providing legal and policy advice on investment, competition, trade, industrial policy, intellectual property, and other areas of economic law.  Sarah has also worked as an embedded legal advisor to the Samoan Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Labour.  She now works for a think tank called the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

This episode was  recorded on 6 January 2020 at the Posner Center for International Development in Denver, Colorado.

 Emily Karol is the Senior Manager of Fund Development with iDE.  Emily first joined iDE in the Digital Media Manager role curating iDE's presence online to engage supporters and reach new audiences. In 2019, she transitioned to the Fund Development team where she helped launch iDE's Corporate Partnerships program and "100 Farmers" Legacy Society.

Chris Nicoletti is the Senior Director of Impact and Analytics with iDE.  Chris leads iDE’s global measurement efforts, including rigorous impact evaluations, designing and implementing efficient management information systems, and effectively communicating data and results. He first began working with iDE as an economics graduate student, conducting an impact evaluation of iDE Zambia’s RPI program for his Master’s thesis in Agricultural and Resource Economics from Colorado State University.

Learn more about iDE at their website.

Roy Joseph has a degree in Economics  from University of Delhi and worked in Management Consulting in New Delhi.  Roy moved to Rwanda to work with Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) on Tuberculosis and has worked closely with governments in East and West Africa to scale up Tuberculosis access programs. He has also helped design and implement health programs in Malawi, Kenya and India;  incorporating new digital technologies to aid in finding people with Tuberculosis.  Roy is pursuing a Master's degree in Public Policy with a focus on International Development at Harvard Kennedy School.

Find Roy on Instagram @royjoseph18
Learn more about the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI) at their website

Dr. Iwona Bisaga is a Research Associate at Loughborough University on the Modern Energy Cooking Services Programme where she leads research on humanitarian energy access. Prior to that, she was a Research Associate at University College London where she worked on resilient recovery of displaced communities in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. She also worked with Chatham House- a UK international affairs think tank, where she led on the harmonization of humanitarian energy access indicators.

Iwona completed her PhD at University College London on energy access through decentralized solutions with a focus on off-grid solar energy in Rwanda. She then went on to head the research department at Bboxx- a provider of off-grid energy systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-East Asia. Having worked at NGOs in Madagascar and Ecuador, and at Engineers without Borders UK where she managed energy access and water, sanitation and hygiene programmes globally, she has a diverse experience cutting across non-profit, private and policy sectors, and academia.

Join Meg as she sits down with Isreal Bimpe to discuss his work with Zipline - a high-tech, on-demand national drone delivery service that provides medical supplies to rural health facilities.  From blood and bull semen flying through the sky, to the role of governments in development, and the criticality of African youth empowerment, this episode is sure to kickstart conversations around innovation and how to "debunk" commonly-accepted development practices.

Israel is Director of Africa Sales and Customer Success at Zipline. Israel previously led Zipline’s global partnerships with multilateral organizations and UN agencies, and prior to that  he led global engagement on integrating public and private medical product supply chains, and also led Zipline’s engagement with the government of Rwanda, including integration in the healthcare system, and regulatory compliance and reform to integrate the national airspace.

Meg sits down with David Spielman, a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute.  He joined IFPRI in 2004 and is currently based in Kigali, Rwanda, where he leads the Rwanda Strategy Support Program.  David’s research agenda covers a range of topics including agriculture and rural development policy; agricultural science, technology, and innovation; plant genetic resources and seed systems; agricultural extension and advisory services; and community-driven rural development. From 2010 to 2020, David was based in Washington, DC, where he led IFPRI’s research theme on science, technology, and innovation policy. From 2004 to 2010, he was based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, where he contributed to IFPRI’s work on strengthening agricultural innovation systems. Earlier in his career, he worked on agriculture and rural development issues for the World Bank (Washington, DC), the Aga Khan Development Network (Pakistan), and several other organizations. David received a PhD in Economics from American University in 2003, an MSc in Development Studies from the London School of Economics in 1993, and a BA in International Relations from Tufts University in 1992.