As an investment fellow in East Africa, my investment appraisals are all too often conducted in coffee shops, over Skype, or in a conference room at Grameen Foundation's Nairobi or Kampala offices.
I first met Kyle Schutter over a beer after an event at Nairobi's iHub, where I was attending the launch of a mobile phone based data service. We started chatting during the networking hour after the company's brief information session. Kyle told me he was an entrepreneur, I told him that I invested in entrepreneurs, and we got to talking.
Last week, I joined three Grameen staff for a road trip to Meru, a rural district in central Kenya and the hub of Grameen’s e-Warehouse program.
Since arriving in early September for my GF Fellowship in Nairobi, I've been volunteering on weekends through a youth tutoring program called ROCK (Reaching Out with Compassion in Kibera).When I started researching logistics for my fellowship, I was disappointed to learn that Grameen's Kenya office is not located in Nairobi's Central Business District, but rather in the suburban area of Kilimani, along Ngong (pronounced "gong") Road.
