Social Entrepreneurship, and a New Model for International Development in the 21st Century

In the last decade or so, there has been a growing interest in an area that researchers are calling social entrepreneurship. This paper describes the structure and process of international development in Africa from the perspective of a social entrepreneur. It begins with a review of the latest concepts in social entrepreneurship, a movement spearheaded by individuals with a desire to make the world a better place and then compares how the development model of social entrepreneurship is different from the model used by large development agencies such as the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). An entrepreneurial bottoms-up structure, however, is not sufficient in itself to address development issues. A new approach to problem solution must consider how people in developing African countries affect social change in order to allow the social entrepreneur to focus on achieving results in the most cost-efficient manner possible. The authors address the opportunities and challenges faced by social entrepreneurs as they attempt to affect large-scale social change within African countries. These challenges and opportunities are organized in four distinct categories, and are situated within the context of maternal and child health in Tanzania and Cameroon. They are: 1) the identification of unique healthcare problems from a local perspective in addition to an overall national perspective; 2) the development of operational systems and the aggregation of needed resources to address the unique local health issues; 3) the information, communication, and healthcare related technology to facilitate the solution of the problem; and 4) the political and cultural issues that militate against the efforts of the social entrepreneur to address the first three challenges. The result of this study is a unique development model that allows the social entrepreneur to address each of the various opportunities and challenges while at the same time building capacity and sustainability within the African context. The model has at its core an international group of equals, called the client consultant system infrastructure (CCSI). The recurrent interaction among members of the CCSI leads to the emergence of a collective mindset among its members and between the CCSI and its environment, both African and Western, and becomes the key to bridging the barriers between the social entrepreneur and his/her African partners. The study describes the structure of the CCSI and the way that it is situated within the African and Western contexts. It also discusses the various processes at work within the model, including structural coupling, participatory action research, and penetration and interpenetration. The authors also use examples from their work in Tanzania and Cameroon to illustrate the operation of the model.