User:Alecpetros/sandbox

Intro:

Andy Kristian Agaba (born 1979) is a speaker, entrepreneur, photographer, and impact investor from Uganda. He is the founder and CEO of Hiinga, a faith-driven impact investing fund that works in East Africa, providing debt and equity investments to entrepreneurs, as well as loans to Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). He is an African anti-corruption idealogue who espouses that government aid in most countries fuels corruption because of lack of accountability, and should be channeled to private enterprise instead, but believes that aid is necessary for the most vulnerable and in extreme situations such as hunger and war.

Background and Education:

Andy was born and raised in Bushenyi, a village town in western Uganda. Two weeks before he was born, his father was murdered, which left his mother to struggle as a single mother living in extreme poverty. They had no running water or electricity, and his mother struggled to pay for her children’s school tuition. When Andy was twelve years old, his mother took out a loan of $35 to start a roadside tea café, selling chai (tea), chapati (flatbread), and mandazi (donuts). She used some of her savings from the café to buy pigs, which she raised and bred to sell to make more supplementary income. From her example, Andy learned the value of entrepreneurship.

Andy studied to become a part of the top 1% of his country in order to earn a full-ride government scholarship to attend a university. In Uganda, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Government from Makerere University. From there, he moved to the United States and attended Lancaster Bible College, where he received a Master’s Degree in Counseling Psychology. Later, he attended Harvard on a full-ride scholarship, where he received a Master of Public Administration (MPA), Policy and Management, concentrating on Business and Government studies. While at Harvard, he was an Edward S. Mason Fellow for Public Policy and Management, a Gleitsman Fellow for Social Change at the Center for Public Leadership, and completed two incubation residencies at the Harvard Innovation Lab.  Work History:

In 2012, upon graduating from Lancaster Bible College, Andy founded Hiinga as a micro-lender to farmers. In the first year, thirteen families were given loans. The following year, over 1,200 loans were made, serving almost 2,000 farmers. Upon graduation from Harvard, Hiinga pivoted from the microfinance model to concentrate on funding small and medium entrepreneurial ventures with the hope of creating jobs for millions of unemployed Africans. Hiinga has a goal of directly supporting more than 100,000 jobs, which will directly impact the lives of upwards of one million men, women, and children, by the year 2020.

Hiinga’s impact investing model focuses on providing capital and mentoring to operating companies in the agribusinesses, manufacturing, education, and healthcare sectors. While they exited microlending, they still provide capital to financial services companies to reach “last mile” entrepreneurs through a “fund of funds” model, where they benefit thousands of borrowers and provide loans to small and medium entrepreneurs, providing them with means of growing the company and generating employment. Their “fund of funds” model is a pooled investment fund that contains different underlying portfolios of other funds.

Social Enterprise:

In 2015, Andy and his wife Sonya began another venture through the Harvard University Innovation Lab. Bantu Coffee, a social venture that sells high-quality coffee and invests much of the profits into coffee farming communities mostly in Uganda. Currently, the coffee is sourced in Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and South America, and is sold to United States consumers. Bantu Coffee operates using a subscription model, and a year-long subscription directly translates into 52 trees given to farmers in East Africa. The company focuses on microfinance, and provides coffee farmers with crops to plant and teaches them skills so as to farm their land more effectively. It creates a new economy and provide new economic opportunities for coffee farming families. About his success, Agaba said “Right now, I am living my mother’s dream: To have the education that she never did. She never even got to go to primary school, and here I am.”

Andy and President Paul Kagame of Rwanda:

While in graduate school at Harvard, Andy met President Kagame in Rwanda. He led a delegation of nearly 30 students from Harvard University and MIT to visit President Paul Kagame to learn about governance, business, and Rwanda mountain gorillas and tourism opportunities. Since that time, Andy and President Kagame have become friends. In February 2019, Andy through Hiinga, hosted President Paul Kagame at an event in Ballantyne, Charlotte North Carolina with American business men and women. Republican Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina spoke at the event of 400 people. Hiinga chairman Brett McDonough, Casey Crawford, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end and Movement Mortgage CEO, and Frank Harrison, CEO of Cocacola Consolidated were guests at the event. Others included Jennifer Roberts, the former Mayor of Charlotte, Steve Green, President of Hobby Lobby, Greg Lernihan, Impact Investor and co-founder of Convergint Technologies and Doug Lebda, founder of Lending Tree.

Current Involvements:

Advisor and Mentor for the MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship. Advises Rwanda on Trade and Investment. Comments have appeared in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Harvard Gazette, Boston Innovation, and The Huffington Post. Entrepreneurship Fellow at Praxis. Resident Entrepreneur with the Venture Incubation Program with the Harvard Innovation Labs. Frequently speaks on social innovation and economic development at conferences, churches and universities including MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and Messiah College. Gleitsman Leadership Fellow for Social Innovation at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University.

Publications:

The Case for Kagame’s Third Term in Rwanda – The Washington Post (Aug. 3, 2017) Without a Value System, Uganda is Drifting into a Chaotic, Bleak Future – The Observer (May 10, 2017) Is Microfinance Losing Its Appeal? – The Huffington Post (Aug. 16, 2013) Changing Intelligence Dynamics in Africa – University of Birmingham (2009) The General Performance and Systems of Intelligence Bodies in the Great Lakes Region – University of Birmingham (2009)

References:

Agaba, A. K. [Andy Kristian]. (n.d.). Posts [LinkedIn page]. Retrieved May 30, 2016 from https://www.linkedin.com/in/andy-kristian-agaba-77041029/. Our Team. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://hiinga.org/our-team/. About Us. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://hiinga.org/about-us/. Andy Agaba – Ugandan Entrepreneur and Social Innovator – Diaspora Innovate Award Recipient 2015 Edition (2015). Retrieved from http://www.ugandandiaspora.com/andy-agaba-ugandan-entrepreneur-and-social-innovator-diaspora-innovate-award-recipient-2015-edition. Powell, A. (2015). Coffee with a cause. Retrieved from https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/11/coffee-with-a-cause/. Vanni, O. (2015). Bantu Coffee Uses Sales to Invest in African Farmers. Retrieved from https://www.americaninno.com/boston/2015/11/04/bantu-coffee-sustainable-free-trade-coffee-startup-invests-in-developing-countries/. Andy Agaba // Hiinga. (2018). Retrieved from https://journal.praxislabs.org/andy-agaba-hiinga-3c8e700d7a14. Agaba, A. (2017). The case for Kagame’s third term in Rwanda. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2017/08/03/the-case-for-kagames-third-term-in-rwanda/?utm_term=.9a2d20db10ec. Agaba, A. (2017). Without a value system, Uganda is drifting into a chaotic, bleak future. Retrieved from http://www.observer.ug/viewpoint/52792-without-a-value-system-uganda-is-drifting-into-a-chaotic-bleak-future.html#comment-4975. Ndaba, O. & Agaba, A. (2013). Is Microfinance Losing Its Appeal? Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/is-microfinance-losing_b_3763868. Africa, S., Kwadjo, J.,  Jackson, P.,  Boinett, B. W.,  Agaba, A.,  Pulkol, D.,  & Laurie, N.,  (2009). Changing Intelligence Dynamics in Africa [PDF file]. Retrieved from http://www.ssrnetwork.net/documents/Publications/ChangingIintelligenceDynamicsInAfrica/ChangingIntelligenceDynamicsInAfrica.pdf.

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