Shaka Robert

Shaka Robert is boosting rural economic development by developing a model of professional volunteerism that channels energy and ideas into eradicating poverty.

Shaka is creating new roles for university-educated professionals to drive economic development programs and help eradicate poverty in some of Uganda’s most impoverished and disenfranchised communities. He recognized that the large and growing base of Ugandan professionals represented an untapped resource that could be brought to the service of impoverished rural areas where most government programs have proven ineffective. Shaka’s idea is built on a virtual platform that connects skilled professionals with rural farming communities to collectively improve productivity and incomes on farms, and address a wide rang of rural development issues. Shaka is careful not to impose experts’ ideas on rural communities.

In fact, the platform is built to analyze challenges farmers are facing and to channel expertise towards ideas and strategies that are locally born and that can be implemented using local resources. Each issue drawn from the community-defined priorities is then debated online. The participating professionals examine the gaps in processes and structures and identify areas where they could intervene. They then devote part of their holiday time to live and work with farmers’ groups to implement the suggested interventions. In its initial phase, Shaka’s program has already reached thousands of farmers and their families and successfully influenced professionals to pursue roles in community development. The platform increasingly welcomes the participation of a global audience.

Each year, the government of Uganda invests millions of dollars to educate students in universities across the country and develop a highly skilled labor force that will lead the social and economic development of the country. More than ten universities churn out thousands of professional graduates into the job market. However, these improvements have had little impact on the lives of Uganda’s rural poor and the government continues to struggle to deliver basic social services to the rural areas where nearly 80 percent of the population lives. In the case of agriculture for instance, cooperative movements collapsed when government liberalized markets in the early 1990s. This policy of public non-intervention exposed rural farmers to market forces they could not cope with. As a result, poverty levels among rural farmers have increased over the last two decades and levels of literacy and health have dropped below the national average. This is despite the fact that each year over 500 agriculture professionals graduate from Uganda’s public universities.

Only a fraction of Uganda’s highly skilled graduates get opportunities for meaningful employment. As such the competition for these few slots is fierce, and keeping the jobs requires consistent positive reviews. Among this group success is also defined largely by the amount of wealth one can collect and his or her ability to afford luxury. Although studies show that professionals have a good understanding of the problems facing the communities in which they live, they remain complacent about improving community welfare. Even in the cases where the guidelines for public service are established by the professional associations, they are rarely followed. The Uganda Law Society, for instance, has clear guidelines that require each lawyer to provide a portion of his or her time each year for pro bono services. However, pro bono legal services are extremely difficult to come by.

It is ironic that government investment in building a skilled labor force has been successful in some areas while it continues to struggle to deliver basic services to the majority of the population. Statistics on the quality of life paint a grim picture: economic development programs have had little impact over the last twenty years and 80 percent of Uganda’s population continues to live below the poverty line. Population growth is on the rise against diminishing public services. In a desperate attempt to survive, there is increasing pressure on the environment due to harmful farming practices. Health programs have broken down, malaria is still killing an African child every thirty seconds, and over one hundred thousand Ugandans die from HIV/AIDS annually. Rather than continuously looking for international aid, it is time for Uganda to channel its own resources and expertise towards solving these deep problems.

In 2001, while working at the Center for Disease Control in Uganda, Shaka realized that he and many of his professional colleagues had extra time in their work days and work weeks that could be used to discuss solutions to the problem of economic injustice faced by so many millions in Uganda. In 2002 Shaka founded the Brain Bank/Ideas Factory as a repository for local and foreign professionals to share ideas and expertise that could enable rural development and fight poverty.

Although the ideas factory was very successful in building knowledge and developing solutions across a variety social and business issues, Shaka saw that the real value of such a network would be to leverage the expertise and knowledge into practical solutions for rural development. In 2004 Shaka added a component that began matching rural community needs with relevant professional skills. Shaka started in the Butaleja district in eastern Uganda, whose population of 250,000 is made up of mostly smallholder and subsistence farmers. With virtually no access to market information, and often subject to manipulation, these farmers have limited opportunities for improved earnings from their livelihoods.

From the onset, Shaka did not want to impose “expertise” on the farmers. Rather he began by identifying local farmers’ enterprise groups. These functional self-help farmer groups, many of which were formed after the government dissolved marketing boards, acted as generators of ideas and strategies. Only at this point did Shaka convene trained professionals as consultants to facilitate the locally born efforts. Shaka recruits professionals through his Rockford Harris Group, established in 2004, which organizes travel, accommodation, field visits, and ensures an engaging learning experience. Today Rockford Harris Group manages a year-round itinerary of trips for professionals.

The field activities are organized by a steering committee that coordinates and plans community projects. The committee matches the needs of farmers in Butaleja district with teams of professionals who have relevant interest and skills. Each team then works with groups of farmers on problems such as access to market information and on matching solutions—like how to use mobile phones to acquire valuable up-to-date agricultural information. The Rockford Harris Group has connected professionals to over 100 farmers groups, each with an average of forty members.

In one example, participating professionals discovered that the old warehouses previously used by government marketing boards lay unused in Butaleja. Together with the farmers, they revived the warehouses to provide storage for farmers’ produce and initiated a program led by community leaders to reclaim and renovate all such warehouses. In total the field visit impacted nearly 20,000 people (4,000 farmers and their families), or nearly ten percent of Butaleja’s total population.

To become sustainable, Shaka has created partnerships with local citizen organizations such as the National Agricultural Advisory Services. In this way he is able to provide constant support to the farmers groups and match the skills required by constantly changing local and global market trends. The partnerships also serve his plans to spread his professional volunteerism model beyond Butaleja. In addition, Shaka is in the process of founding a business arm to raise money that can support the field visits. Taking full advantage of the skills present in the group, Shaka has developed a democratic system that allows members of his professional network to identify and bid on various consultancy jobs. They volunteer their time and the proceeds are then returned to a development fund, thereby defraying the costs of the community volunteer work.

By 2010 Shaka hopes to take the Rockford Harris Group community initiatives to the Kumi and Nakapiripit districts. He also plans to turn the Ideas Factory into a global platform for experts from all continents.

Born to refugee parents fleeing from the political turmoil in Rwanda in the 1970s, Shaka was raised in times of political turmoil in Uganda. He lost his father in the war and grew up on the war’s frontlines. His mother served in the Ugandan army and, partially because his parents were uneducated and did not appreciate the value of education, he dropped out of school when he was seven.

Shaka’s early childhood experiences created a drive in him to give back to others. Orphaned at nine-years-old, Shaka was educated on government bursaries and he always felt that he owed society for the investment it made in him. In June 2000 Shaka graduated from Makerere University, Uganda's most prestigious university, with a degree in biochemistry. However, his passion was in designing information technology systems, especially technologies that would address the challenges of rural economic development. While building his skills in this field in the United States, he was introduced to online networks of professionals that he found very valuable in building knowledge and awareness among professionals on issues concerning their communities.

Reflecting on his struggle for education, Shaka sees his example as only one among so many government trained professionals. Having been educated thanks to taxpayers’ money, he has a strong desire to pay back society. He designed the Ideas Factory and the Rockford Harris Group to mobilize thousands of government trained professionals to do the same—give back by putting their expertise to good use.