Self empowerment through innovation: The Acumen Fund

After reading the article “The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid” I was struck by the themes of self empowerment to drive innovation rather than trying to simply pour aid into a community in order for it to improve.  The reason for this could be that the East is often contrasted to the West as being less individualistic and more community oriented. Hailing from South Asia, I was always taught to give and share. My grandmother, in particular, frowned upon turning even a single begging hand- no matter how many glittering gold bangles the hand may be wearing. As such I would like to share a similar initiative of empowerment started in Pakistan by the Acumen Fund, one of the key organizations to recognize this problem.

The Fund believed in sustainable welfare, and not just free aid- its innovative approach led it to success in many countries, including Pakistan. As per the reading’s suggestion, the Acumen Fund brought together the public and private sector in order to realize its potential to change Pakistan’s poverty landscape.

Following IFC’s model of ‘localizing’ and ‘enabling’, the Fund’ initiative of Jassar Farms is a way of helping the large dairy industry of Pakistan. According to the website, “Milk is the largest and single most important commodity within Pakistan’s livestock sector. Yet more than 75 percent of livestock owners are poor farmers who own less than four cows, and most struggle with low milk productivity. On average, it takes five Pakistani cows to produce as much milk as one cow in the U.S. or Europe.” (http://www.acumenfund.org/investment/jassar-farms.html)
The innovation that they have brought is to artificially inseminate the cows to improve breeds, and thus increase milk yield.

Thus, adopting a bottom up approach and targeting a differentiated local sector of the industry, the Fund has enabled multiple actors along the livestock supply chain to improve their living conditions through acting and enabling. However, the question remains that without foreign assistance, how more of these technological innovations can come about in a localized context, and how much impact they can have given the regulation and resources in South Asia.