Who pays?
February 4, 2010 by Simon Berry
This tweet is a great starting point for a blog post. Thanks to @gentlemandad for posting it. I think it was in response to yesterday’s ColaLife principle: promoting micro-enterprise post where I made the case for Coca-Cola distributors to be paid for the safe delivery of AidPods.
The short answer is ‘I don’t know, it depends’. But the considered response is:
Although this is obviously a significant consideration which will have to be addressed, this is not the place to start. The starting point is the fact that 1 in 5 children in developing countries die before their 5th birthday and the majority die from preventable causes. The next question is ‘What should be done about this, if anything?’. If we agree that this is just not acceptable in the 21st Century, then the question turns to, ‘What can we do with the resources available to have the biggest impact?’.
Having got this far you need the most cost-effective means of doing everything: procuring the drugs; training the health workers; running awareness raising/training campaigns, distribution and so on. When it comes to distribution, especially to more remote areas, it will NOT be cost ineffective to set up a dedicated distribution system and maintain it. Piggybacking on existing distribution networks, like Coca-Cola’s, is going to be far more cost-effective, by an order of magnitude, even if you make micro-payments to those who undertake successful delivery.
ColaLife principle: promoting micro-enterprise
February 3, 2010 by Simon Berry
Image credit: Tielman Nieuwoudt
A key reason why Coca-Cola’s distribution network is so good in Africa is that there is money to be made by everyone involved in it. And those that make money from taking the bottles that ‘last mile’ are some of the poorest people on the continent. So giving a financial reward for the successful delivery of an AidPod will:
- Put money in the pockets of some of the poorest people in Africa;
- Help ensure that the ColaLife system is sustainable;
- Help deter corruption and mis-use of the distribution mechanism.
For these reasons we will develop systems to give a financial reward to those who deliver AidPods and those who act as receiving agents. We think that mobile phone based systems will provide the mechanism to support the confirmation of delivery and the payments this would trigger.
ColaLife principle: local determination
January 31, 2010 by Simon Berry
A key principle of ColaLife is local determination of how the ColaLife opportunity is used in each location. I believe that this will be key to the sustainability of ColaLife. ColaLife must strengthen the existing public health infrastructure, not undermine it. This is a slide I use to explain this during the presentations I am giving at the moment.
The ColaLife model can be split into three elements. At the core we have a distribution mechanism - AidPods in Coca-Cola crates - which would be replicable across the whole of Africa. 80% of all the Coca-Cola produced in Africa is sold from bottles and crates of this size. In July 2008 The Economist reported that Africans buy 36 billion bottles of Coke a year. That’s an average of more than 30 bottles per person! So this is a formidable distribution channel and an incredible offer if Coca-Cola were to support it.
The plan is that this distribution mechanism would be offered across the whole of Africa to those with the long term responsibility, in each locality, for public health. This would normally be a range of partnerships between NGOs and the Government of the country. It would be up the Goverment/NGOs in each locality to decide whether they want to make use of this opportunity and if so, how to use it. Coca-Cola would be likely to put certain conditions on the use of this channel eg maximum weight per AidPod; maximum number of AidPods per crate; and content would be restricted to ’social products’.
On the input side, the local public health infrastructure (Goverment/NGOs) would decide what should go into the AidPods. This will vary from place to place and from season to season. Crucially, it is not up to Coca-Cola or ColaLife to say what goes in the AidPods. This needs to be determined by those with the long term responsibility for public health in a particular area.
It would also be the local public health infrastructure (Goverment/NGOs) who decide what happens to the AidPods when they reach their destination. The contents might be put on the shelves of the Coca-Cola retailer and sold. This would obviously depend on the nature of the social products involved. They may be collected by a community health worker and used to support a community health programme. The AidPods might contain diarrhoea treatment kits for new mothers and be collected by traditional village midwives or the local clinic. I am sure that there are many other options but the local health experts will be the best people to decide.
So, the roll-out of ColaLife, following successful trials, will empower the public health infrastructure in any particular locality. Not undermine it. And in remote areas it will provide a distribution mechanism that would be uneconomic to provide in any other way.
Fortunately, this principle is compatible with the position Coca-Cola would want to take. They would not want to put themselves in a position where they could be accused of meddling in areas beyond their areas of expertise or of undermining local, often fragile, public health infrastructure.
ColaLife presentation at TEDx London - Part 1 and Part 2
January 27, 2010 by Simon Berry
OK, I obviously need to polish my presentation techniques but for those who couldn’t be there, here is the presentation of the ColaLife story at the inaugural TEDx London event on 4 November 2009. Any comments?
New online campaigning handbook features ColaLife
January 17, 2010 by Simon Berry
This is a very accessible guide to online campaigning written by Jonathan Simmons and Amanda Prosser at publiczone. It’s just 30-odd pages with 11 top tips and features ColaLife as a case study along with Airplot!, the Atheist Bus and Blog Action Day. You can download the book from the publiczone website.
What others are saying about ColaLife- ColaLife on Flickr
-
Auto-translation
.gif){kind=small}
