How a Private Equity Investor Uses His Skills to Fight Poverty in Africa
Private equity investor Joe Manning has volunteered twice as a TechnoServe Fellow—first helping Tanzanian coffee farmers in 2010, then returning 15 years later with his family to support Kenyan entrepreneurs. His hands-on experience has made him a passionate advocate for TechnoServe's business-focused approach to fighting poverty.
Joe Manning, a Cleveland-based private equity investor with The Riverside Company, is a TechnoServe supporter with a unique perspective on our work. As a two-time TechnoServe Fellow, he has had an up-close perspective of our programs in the field, making him a dedicated advocate for TechnoServe’s approach.
“I support TechnoServe because I truly believe in its tagline, ‘business solutions to poverty,’ he shared. “And as a two-time fellow working with TechnoServe, I’ve been able to experience and participate in that.”
TechnoServe Fellows are business professionals who volunteer as consultants on TechnoServe projects in the field. Their contributions are invaluable, allowing teams to scale their progress in a shorter period of time.
Learning the Power of Long-Term Development
“I bought some Peet’s Coffee, and on the side of the package, it said, ‘Coffee produced in partnership with TechnoServe smallholder farmers in Tanzania.’ So the farmers I helped get access to debt facilities had produced the coffee that was in my grocery store in Shaker Heights, Ohio.”
In 2010, Joe completed his first TechnoServe Fellows project as an early professional exploring the international development world. He was based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, working within the coffee industry. Every day, he spent hours on a bus, traveling to rural coffee-growing areas to work with farming co-ops. With his help, they would develop business plans to secure debt financing for building local processing plants with advanced technology procured by TechnoServe.
While the problems he encountered were complex, the experience taught him the importance of taking a long-term approach to solving poverty.
“One of the reasons I was attracted to TechnoServe was that their Tanzanian coffee program was a 10-year project,” Joe explained. “While my Fellows project lasted only six months, the broader team continued to work on it after I left. I learned that you really need to have that long-term view to make a sustainable, lasting impact.”
Just a couple of years after Joe returned home, he discovered the results of his work in his local grocery store outside of Cleveland, Ohio.
“I bought some Peet’s Coffee, and on the side of the package, it said, ‘Coffee produced in partnership with TechnoServe smallholder farmers in Tanzania.’ So the farmers I helped get access to debt facilities had produced the coffee that was in my grocery store in Shaker Heights, Ohio.”
Returning to Africa: Building Sustainable Businesses in Kenya
Fifteen years later, Joe returned for a second Fellows project, this time in Nairobi, Kenya. Since his last Fellows experience with TechnoServe, Joe had progressed in his career and had a wider skill set to offer.
“I was later on in my career and thought it would be good to break away from the U.S. business world and leverage some of my skills to benefit other individuals who have not had all the opportunities that I had been provided as I developed in my career.”
In Kenya, Joe worked on a program to grow mid-sized agricultural-related businesses to create trickle-down benefits for smallholder farmers in their supply chains. Their goal was to provide strategy consulting, growth assessment, and technical assistance to mid-sized agribusinesses, thereby benefiting farmers in their supply chains through increased purchases, training, credit, etc.
The approach made sense to Joe. “A lot of countries don’t have the right combination of resources, skill sets, incentives, and government policies to have a robust private sector economy. It’s much more difficult to start and then scale a mid-sized for-profit business in Kenya than in the U.S. Successful mid-market economy is critical to the success of the micro-enterprise market, such as smallholder farmers. To me, this approach is a great way of making a more lasting, sustainable impact in fighting poverty.”
Joe worked with three businesses during his Fellowship in Kenya: a fresh fruit juice company selling to the hospitality market, a bioenergy company, and a milk ATM company. “They were exciting businesses with talented entrepreneurs, and I valued the experience of leveraging my skills from my full-time job to work with and learn from smaller companies in Kenya,” Joe remarked.
Joe helped the businesses develop growth expansion plans, address bottlenecks, expand their product lines, develop their supply chains, and target new customers—all issues his portfolio companies deal with in the U.S. “It was really fun working with talented entrepreneurs in the Kenyan market to tackle those challenges,” he said.
Solving Unique Business Challenges
While there were many similarities to his work in the U.S., Joe explained that there were also significant differences. For instance, a major challenge for the bioenergy company was access to water, good roads, and electricity for the farm they were developing, which would be inputs to their bioenergy plant. While these specific issues are not typically a problem in the U.S., Joe’s experience helping businesses evaluate and plan around logistical and supply challenges proved useful in assessing these risks with entrepreneurs in Kenya.
He also encountered a new type of business: an ATM for milk. Joe explained, “In the U.S., I had never asked retailers about selling fresh milk via an ATM. Frankly, I never heard of this type of business until I went to Kenya.” But drawing on his experience evaluating go-to-market strategies, Joe was impressed by the planning and market research the management team had conducted as they moved from the pilot stage to a commercial rollout for the business.
Fifteen years after his first project in Tanzania, Joe said that many of the same challenges were present in Kenya, including government corruption, logistical challenges, and price sensitivity causing profit margin challenges. Despite these challenges, he recognized a common denominator. “A lot of talented entrepreneurs [are] creating new businesses every day.”
A Family Journey: Teaching the Next Generation About Global Opportunity
Joe’s personal life had changed dramatically since his first Fellow’s project in 2010. His girlfriend, who had visited him in Tanzania, was now his wife, and he was the father of four children, ages seven to 11. Instead of traveling alone, he brought his family this time.
“It was really a special experience going back to Africa after 15 years and bringing my family with me,” he said. “It presented an opportunity to expose my four young kids to international development.” Joe explained that he wanted his children to see that “there’s a big, broader world beyond the U.S.” He continued, “It was important for me to have my kids recognize how fortunate they are with the opportunities provided to them in the U.S.”
Joe also saw the trip as an opportunity to show his kids how their education and opportunities can be paid forward. “I wanted them to see that they can use their professional skills in unique ways throughout their career to help other people who don’t have the opportunities that we’ve been given in the U.S.”
The experience made a lasting impression on the Manning children, who saw TechnoServe’s work up close and experienced Kenyan culture. Joe recounts that one of his favorite experiences with his kids happened on his last day of work at TechnoServe.
“I asked the kids where they wanted to eat for lunch. Nairobi is a huge metropolitan city— you can go to a restaurant with food from anywhere in the world. But my two sons started chanting, ‘kibanda, kibanda, kibanda,’ which is a traditional local food stand where you can get a big plate of rice, beans, chapati, and sukuma wiki, for about two dollars. It was really great to hear my kids wanting to go back to the kibanda since I had many fun lunches there with my TechnoServe colleagues during my Fellowship.”
Joe says he is grateful for how their time in Kenya broadened his family’s perspective on the world, saying, “working with TechnoServe to help individuals create pathways out of poverty via their business is really important to my family and me.”
Why Business Solutions Create Lasting Impact
Joe’s up-close experiences with TechnoServe’s work in the field have made him a dedicated supporter and a believer in TechnoServe’s approach. He also commented on the quality of TechnoServe’s staff, calling them “true experts in international development… I learned a lot from them.”
“I believe TechnoServe’s approach works well because it’s focused on developing sustainable businesses and supply chains that will continue to grow and thrive and evolve far beyond the end of TechnoServe’s work. It’s complicated work, but it has the best chance of a long-lasting impact. Equipping talented entrepreneurs with the resources, networks, and expertise needed to grow and scale their businesses.”
