How the rich are taking social duty to next level
With a desire to leave a firm legacy, a section of the rich are increasingly engaging in innovative projects that are transforming the society
What you need to know:
A look into Kenya billionaires’ world
- French billionaire Xavier Niel’s extraordinary school in France could perhaps provide crucial safety nets for a majority of Kenyan students who fail their exams but are gifted in other fields.
- The question is whether Kenya’s super rich are philanthropic enough to take up immense challenges that require huge resources to accomplish.
Kenya’s corporates scene has often been characterised by corporate social responsibility (CSR) in community projects while others, through their foundations, have been offering scholarships to a limited number of students.
However, individual offers from Kenyan billionaires towards socio-economic initiatives, on a mass scale, are almost non-existent. Yet the country has its fair share of billionaires. The Knight Frank’s annual Wealth Report put the number of dollar millionaires in Kenya at 8,962 in 2015 up from 8,760 a year earlier.
The report shows that 10 Kenyans joined the billionaires’ club — meaning their net worth rose to more than $10 million — pushing the total number of billionaires in the country to 462.
In 2015, Kenya had one dollar billionaire — Sh100 billion — and 16 with more than Sh10 billion.- Rich Kenyans have always held their wealth in secret, while others have climbed to the top wealth echelons through corruption or other dubious transactions. Under these circumstances, these people will find it hard to engage in projects that transform the society.
Imagine a school without teachers, no books, no tests or exams and no exit timelines. All that makes the school what it is are computers and Internet.
Here students, who pay no fees, are called innovators. They swap ideas with graduates from top-of-the league universities like Stanford or MIT. What is intriguing is that some of the students dropped out of high school.
Welcome to the École 42 in France, a brainchild of French billionaire Xavier Niel.
The school does not care about a student’s academic or social background; it’s more interested in self-motivated individuals who could be challenged in conventional classwork, but more importantly are naturally innovative. The only other requirement is to be between the age of 18 and 30.
Mr Niel pumped Sh10.8 billion (€100 million) in the school as his personal way of giving back to the society by empowering French youth.
Mr Niel, the founder of internet service provider Free, believes the institution’s future operations will be sustained through the alumni goodwill.
Some 1,000 students are admitted yearly, after passing through a vetting process.
“We have seen dozens of high school dropouts who passed through here ending up being absorbed by top companies or setting up their own start-ups,” said Mr Nicolas Sadirac, the school’s director and a holder of PhD in Physics from Stanford.
He reckons that business honchos, corporate captains and government mandarins in other countries like Kenya could well cement their legacy by directly pouring a portion of their huge resources into such initiatives as a socio-economic empowerment tool.
Mr Niel’s school recently opened operations in South Africa after a group of companies pooled resources and asked Ecole 42 to operate the institution with students paying no fees.
The way to go
The concept aims to ensure that students exchange notes, and learn from each other, besides making good use of the internet through collaborative projects.
The officials at Ecole 42 believe theirs curriculum-free concept is the way to go because the ICT landscape keeps changing daily, limiting learners in traditional school setups that depend on fixed syllabus when things should be fluid.
“The no-teachers approach makes sense, as nearly anything you need to know about programming can now be found for free, on the Internet. Motivated people can easily teach themselves any language they need to know in a few months of intensive work,” said Sadirac.
Another investor who is keen to cement his legacy in the social responsibility realm not only in America but also in Kenya is Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen who through his private firm, Vulcan, has set up 10 small-scale solar plants in Kenya’s remote areas.
Company officials last November said that Mr Allen wanted to use the power projects to demonstrate business viability of rural mini-grids to investors, empower communities and trigger interest among businesses to invest in off-grid power solutions.
“He was not getting into this to make a profit, but to improve living conditions in Kenya’s Samburu and Kajiado areas through impact investing,” said Vulcan programme officer Courtney Blodgett.
His will be a legacy of a trailblazer who pioneered the concept of power micro-grids as the cheapest and shortest route to lighting up off-grid households in Kenya.
Allen’s Microsoft-cofounder Bill Gates has also been keen to leave a mark in Kenya’s healthcare and agriculture – knowing very well that demand for food is rising as the world’s population explodes.
Apparently, Mr Niel’s philanthropy will not stop at the 42 school. The billionaire has again channelled Sh27 billion (€250 million) towards constructing a tech start-up campus, Station F, billed to be the world’s largest with a capacity to host 1,000 start-ups.
The complex is set to go operational this year.
“The start-ups will pay a little cash just to enable us break-even,” said Roxanne Varza, the complex director.
“They will be required to step out to pave way for others once their operations and revenues grow.”
Kenya’s Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) had similar plans but never took effect. The Fund had planned to transform youth empowerment centres into office space to be leased to budding entrepreneurs at subsidised rates.
“We plan to refurbish and equip these centres with office facilities including computers and the Internet at a cost of Sh1 billion to spare young entrepreneurs the hassles of securing office space,” the Fund’s officials said earlier.
The 157 centres were established by the then Ministry of Youth Affairs in 2008 to boost growth of start-ups alongside talent-nurturing among young people.
Share services
In the arrangement, young people would pay for office space at subsidised rates which would see them share services such as communication and addresses to reduce traditional office costs mainly rent and utility bills.
Previous wealth reports on Kenya’s super-rich have in the past named President Uhuru Kenyatta’s family, former President Moi’s family and former Cabinet minister Nicholas Biwott.
Business moguls who have been named in past wealth reports include Vimal Shah, Chris Kirubi and Manu Chandaria.
These reports have invariably warned of a growing gap between the rich and the poor in many countries.
“The increase in the number of dollar millionaires could indicate a worsening inequity yet communism is dead and capitalism is thriving. Philosophers and economists should give us an alternative system,” said X N Iraki, a lecturer at University of Nairobi’s Business School.
The International Monetary Fund has identified better access to education, health care and well-targeted social policies as factors that can help raise the incomes of the poor and lower middle class.
