About Us
Beginnings
The seed that grew into Burro was planted almost three
decades ago, when Whit Alexander spent his junior year abroad studying at
the Université Nationale de Côte d'Ivoire in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. During
that time—and for several years after college when he worked as a
consultant on various USAID and World
Bank funded projects throughout West Africa—Whit began to see
many unmet business opportunities. While countless volunteer organizations
were working hard to develop innovative ways to better meet daily needs in
Africa, virtually no one was building sustainable businesses around these
innovations. No one working seriously on poverty alleviation seemed willing
to make the leap and treat very low-income consumers with the respect
accorded more wealthy consumers the world over.
But in some parts of the world, that was changing. In
Bangladesh, economist Muhammed Yunus was developing his micro-finance model
into the Grameen Bank lending small but crucial
amounts of money to the rural poor so they could build businesses of their
own. Grameen has now lent more than $6 billion to poor families and serves
as a model for enabling micro enterprises in the developing world.
Soon other experts were weighing in on the subject of
developing world entrepreneurship. The most influential voice was that of C.K. Prahalad, the Indian-born University
of Michigan business professor who wrote a seminal book called The Fortune at the Bottom of
the Pyramid. Prahalad argued that Westerners needed to stop
pitying the poor as victims and start respecting them as value-conscious
consumers and small-scale entrepreneurs. He defined the bottom of the
economic pyramid as those earning less than two dollars a day—some four
billion people worldwide.
Meanwhile, Whit left Africa in 1987 to pursue a successful
business career and raise a family at home in the United States. But in
2008, after selling his most recent entrepreneurial success, Cranium, he revisited his dream of
creating a new type of enterprise in Africa.
That same year, Bill Gates addressed the Davos World
Economic Forum on the subject of what he called "creative
capitalism." In his speech, Gates
called for businesses to develop innovative products that would serve
consumers on the lowest rung of the economic ladder. He pointed out that
charity wasn't enough to lift people in the developing world out of
poverty. They needed the power of the marketplace to invent solutions that
would improve their lives. "Sometimes market forces fail to make an
impact in developing countries not because there's no demand, or because
money is lacking, but because we don't spend enough time studying the needs
and limits of that market," said Gates.
Whit saw that addressing some of those market limitations
would require building trust in a new kind of brand that would focus on
enhancing low incomes and providing better value than existing offerings.
Better solutions to the daily challenges of living on a buck a day would be
new and different. New solutions require thorough explanations, and who
better to provide them, thought Whit, than an expanding network of trusted
Burro resellers who would travel the last miles to even remote villages,
offering Burro's quality goods and services at affordable prices,
empowering low-income consumers to do more with their lives. Following
months of further research into the market, Whit founded Burro in Ghana
with this vision in September 2008.
Values
It might seem strange to talk about treating customers like
grownups. But for many poor Africans, being treated with dignity and
respected as valued clients is a new idea. We don't assume to know more
than our customers, or know what's good for them. Because we are not giving
them anything for free, we need to listen carefully to what they want, and
then follow through, day after day.
Burro's core values are Respect, Innovate and Empower. We
instill these values in our partners, employees, and resellers, who
practice them every day—whether in the office, driving down a rutted dirt
track, or sitting under a mango tree in a remote village waiting for the
rain to break.
Respect |
Innovate |
Empower |
We respect our
employees, resellers, partners, and clients, treating them always like we
too would wish to be treated. We are honest and make no claims for our
products or services that we cannot deliver. We respect the varied
beliefs and traditions of our clients and assume always that they too are
honest and hardworking people. We dignify our clients by listening
carefully to them; if they have a problem with a Burro product or service
we will strive to make it right for them. |
We are still
learning, and we always will be. We never stop looking for better
products, better services, better ways to run our business, and, most
importantly, better ideas to help our clients to do more with their
lives. We share ideas as a team, and we share in our success. When we get
it right, clients adopt Burro innovations and improve their own
productivity, allowing our employees and resellers to earn more money,
fueling Burro's continued growth. |
Our motto is
"Do More," and we take that seriously. Whether it is providing light
for a child to do homework or making it easier for a rural family to keep
their vital cell phone link fully charged, Burro is about empowering
people to do more in their day-to-day lives. Most of our customers have
extremely limited resources, so buying something that doesn't work or in
some other way fails them is a major setback. Burro will only offer goods
and services that help people live better, more productive lives, and
Burro stands behind those offerings one-hundred percent. |
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