COSAD 2nd Annual Dinner for Tanzania's Community Development Efforts. February 2010

Dear friends of COSAD!

It is down to seven day only! I am pleased to bring you some very specific details of the COSAD 2010‘Night of Inspiration' Programs: It is another amazing night for COSAD! We are all overwhelmingly excited for the coming Friday February 26 2010 (Starting at 6pm) at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth, Minnesota

It is all set for you! Please see More at www.cosad.org

Once again, COSAD is bringing you an inspiring event with great program all brought to you in one evening! Your $25 will not only get you a delicious meal, but a night you will remember -- one filled with global entertainment, inspirational speakers, a silent auction with items ranging from Tanzanian coffee, a rare delicious blend produced from coffee beans grown in the slopes of the highest mountain in Africa, Kilimanjaro and along the shores of the largest Lake in Africa, Victoria, to authentic African carvings, drums, clothes and artifacts to time-share exotic vacations and more!

Above all, come and hear what COSAD has done in the past year because of our partnership with you!

Very special thanks for our main sponsors this year, our dear Friend Sue Johnson & Friends of Bukoba’s Bruce Lane Johnson Library and Community Resource Center and Mount Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth, Minnesota.

If you cannot make it, we will appreciate your support to COSAD. Please donate online at: www.cosad.org

I look forward to meeting you!

Smart Baitani, Executive Director

Smart@cosad.org | 612 227 0065

COSAD Mission:

To build partnerships that create community development through the support of projects involving micro-enterprise, health, education and culture.

COSAD Vision:

Empowering Tanzanians to get out of poverty, one community at a time.

COSAD Supporter Wins USAID’s African Diaspora Marketplace Competition!

Peter Drucker, one of the greatest management gurus of this century, summarizes so succinctly what UZA-MAZAO is all about: “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business enterprise has two-and only these two-basic functions: marketing and innovation…all the rest are cost”.

Uza-Mazao^TM which is a Swahili word for “sell your produce”, is quickly becoming Africa's biggest, best-deal, 24/7 market in a mobile phone. It creates a marketplace via Short Message System – SMS text messaging to bring unprecedented levels of efficiency to buyers and sellers of crops, farm produce, livestock and livestock products.

Dr. Raymond Rugemalira’s UZA-MAZAO (http://www.uzamazao.blogspot.com) is a revolutionary idea that covers the two basic function of any business endeavor: Market and innovation. The innovation aspect is equally unprecedented as the marketing aspect for the rural farmers. Despite the fact that traditional communication infrastructures are nearly non-existent, there is a ray of hope through the resurgence of the use of cell-phones. COSAD (Community Solutions for Africa’s Development) (www.cosad.org), last year found that there is, at least, one cell-phone in every three households in the communities of Izigo, and Kangabusharo in rural Bukoba, Tanzania, where we are currently supporting farmers and women through our popular program: One Women One Goat. One Woman, One Goat, OWOG is a COSAD project under its core program named TACE (Tanzania Community Enterprise) initiative which was designed to create economic opportunities in rural Tanzania using market-based, micro business approaches to promote income-generating community projects.

UZA-MAZAO will solve the biggest puzzle in enterprise development in the rural areas that continues to be the challenge: Market. Currently local farmers in rural areas in Africa face daunting challenges beyond production of their crops. Even existing social enterprise and micro-lending programs have not done a good job in creating awareness on the role of the market and have not succeeded to close the huge gap between local producers and market access which is largely due to the lack of trade infrastructure and trading networks. Market is king. UZA-MAZAO is guaranteed to be the preferred partner of everybody engaged in the rural micro enterprise development. COSAD wants to take a faster track. The meeting is scheduled in early March in 2010 in Silicon Valley, California with the founder Dr Rugemalira and COSAD Executive Director to discuss sole representation in Tanzania!

COSAD being an organization that works with farmers and micro entrepreneurs in the Northwestern part of Tanzania will greatly provide an avenue for farmers ranging from goat owners selling their milk, organic farmers, to micro enterprise groups to have their market information on their figure tip. In addition, the most recently forged relationship between COSAD and the Tanzania Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture (www.tccia.com), the largest trade industry in the country puts COSAD on the front seat on the matters related to linking Tanzania’s private enterprises with local, regional and international market.

P.S. The African Diaspora Marketplace Competition was organized by USAID and Western Union. Out of 733 entrants 58 were chosen as finalists and out of these only 14 were chosen as winners and were awarded grants. Uza-Mazao^TM was among the 14 winners.

By Smart P. Baitani, Executive Director, COSAD Inc (www.cosad.org)

COSAD Mission:

To build partnerships that create community development through the support of projects involving micro-enterprise, health, education and culture.

COSAD Vision:

Empowering Tanzanians to get out of poverty, one community at a time.

No Money No Growth!

The Role of Capital in Community Enterprise Development

Summer Reflection From Smart P. Baitani, COSAD Inc.

October 2009

Last summer, when I visited New York, Sean McNamara, founder of Intrade.com and a COSAD Board member and chair of the Board’s executive committee gave me a copy of a book which I consider to be one of the most relevant books about Africa called “Dead Aid”. For some of us who have been who have been consumed with an insatiable desired to promote the book clearly provides a key answer to a fundamental question: “How do we turn our chronically-depressed communities into an inspiring miracle of dazzling economic growth?”

Answer: “The determination of Africans, and genuine partnership between Africa and the rest of the world, is the basis for growth and development”.

When I think of the best example of self-determination of the people of Bukoba, what comes to mind are a handful of hard working young entrepreneurs who put in over 70 hours a week to support their families and make a difference in the communities. What would be a genuine partnership to such persons?

Most people we are supporting in Bukoba, Tanzania are talented, entrepreneurial, and creative. Their values and dedication to community and family are the same as ours. They just need to be connected to the global community and supported by people like us. Tanzania is endowed with vast resources and strategically located to potentially become the hub of economic success.

Yet these hard working young men and women are among the 2.5 billion people in the world who have no access to financial services. Library of evidences have shown that better access to financial services can fuel economic growth through increased investment in small and medium enterprises.

Working men and women, like Habakkuk Ngaihywa, a iron window maker and Grace Kahindoa, owner of a tailoring shop (who will train the “Sewing Singers”), are among the members of the 26 community groups which are a part of COSAD’s TACE (Tanzania Community Enterprise Initiative). In the last 5 years since these groups were first identified, only two groups have been given a $1000 each as part of the Mount Olivet’s annual benevolent fund. In other words, it will take over 20 years to give each group a $1000.00. For a person like Habakkuk who badly needed investment capital of around $25,000.00 to buy equipment , the $1000 per group is only a skin dip experiment, in his own words, designed to “make us feel good without solving the fundamental problem” of creating sustainable solutions to poverty.

TACE is an innovative market-based micro-enterprise model, which focuses on harnessing the social capital of community groups to build successful businesses toward sustainable economic development. Identifying the values and the strengths in the group as well as well as the potential its members is critical, but is only half of the equation. Providing tools, in terms of capital, training and market access is another part of the equation. The later requires a genuine partner beyond COSAD.

The partnership between RISE (Resources and Innovations for Social Entrepreneurs) and COSAD’s TACE is another testimony of creative partnership which will provide unprecedented access to innovative financial services to thousands of hardworking Tanzanians. RISE was designed to provide a more robust financial services that put into consideration critical business paths to growth and sustainability, including: cultural knowledge, marketing, business management training and great application of financial technology.

The RISE Fund seeks to accomplish to fundamental goals. These include:

a) connect successful local businesses with no access to growth capital with Social Capital Ventures whose principal business is to make loans to support mission-oriented, socially conscience, community-based projects, and

b) assist loan recipients with marketing and business strategies and supervise the Social Capital micro-loans under condition of preferential hiring of marginalized groups, as part of onsite TACE training to become future business owners themselves.

For More Information, Partnerships or Support, Please contact us:

Smart P. Baitani, Executive Director

COSAD, Inc. 4624 Hillsboro Avenue North Minneapolis Minnesota 55428

Tel: 612.227.0065 Email: smart@cosad.org Website: www.cosad.org

COSAD Mission:

To build partnerships that create community development through the support of projects involving micro-enterprise, health, education and culture.

COSAD Vision:

Empowering Tanzanians to get out of poverty, one community at a time.

WHAT HAPPENED TO TANZANIA?!

Well, Well, I am back...

I posted a note in my Facebook that I am taking a two-day self-imposed solitude. In fact it wasn't, or I should say it isn't a solitude. I am talking with someone, actually many...They call them authors. I am working on my final Echoing Green thing which is posing more excruciating challenges than I anticipated. Thanks to God my last name is "Baitani" which means "perseverance", otherwise I was about to give up.

Talking about authors, the only reason I came here against the promise I made to myself that I wont go any website other the http://www.echoinggreen.org/ are the disturbing data I have been reading about Tanzania since I started tackling Echoing Greens tough questions. Not that I wasn't aware of the situation being dire in most rural communities in Tanzania, but because I did what I call "comparative political economy" among African countries and I got so mad just about every Tanzanian who can do a dent to make things a little better, including ME! I mean all of us---Tanzanians with access or with opportunity to do something, however small. So I have a question for all of you my brothers and sisters who have ACCESS and POWER (Tanzanians, mostly, and yes including politicians):

How do you feel, what do you think when you read this prominent World Bank Statement:

"After four decades of Independence Tanzania remains one of the 10 poorest countries in the world"! (The Wold Bank)

Tanzania? With all its tangible wealth? With all its impressive cultural vitality and creative human capital?

That means some countries that have been bogged down by wars from, well, inceptions are far better than Tanzania(the average per capita GDP of Sub Saharan Africa is $500; Tanzania is $267....And you don't want me to post some household data here....! You would think I am making up the numbers!)

My good friend Albert Einstein said "The Value of a man resides in what he gives and not what he is capable of receiving"

Talk me down, Anyone?

I happen to believe that it is not just by our actions alone that we will be judged against, but by our SILENCE as well.

Ok, no more macro economics, they tend to be more political than micro. (very few care about micro-stuff!!). I promise, after I get an answer I will stick to the micro....strictly to the community stuff.

Happy Weekend!
.../smart