Last week as a part of the next stage in the Entrepreneurship Cup Competition, student entrepreneurs took the stage to pitch their venture for the Discovery Stage of the E-Cup. Representing a wide range of academic backgrounds at UVA, students brought their innovative ideas and proposals to local professionals. A total of $25,000 was awarded to winning teams to undertake or continue building on their ideas. One of the winners is Andrew Rummel, a third-year student in the College majoring in Economics and minoring in Social Entrepreneurship. He co-founded the venture, Tofali Zetu, a Tanzanian social enterprise that facilitates affordable house construction. Read more about his efforts below!

What is the problem you are trying to solve? 

This past summer, I worked at a local innovation center in Arusha, Tanzania, and worked with Tanzanian engineering students to develop innovative solutions to local issues. In this project, I had time to talk with local community members and understand the major issues stopping them from improving their living standards. In doing so, the issue of affordable housing became an evident area to be addressed. 

Tanzania has one of the fastest-growing populations in the world. Its rural population alone is over 42 million and is growing by 4% annually. The current housing supply will not meet that demand. The current Tanzanian housing deficit has been estimated at three million housing units and increases by 200,000 units annually. To make matters worse, almost 25 million people within the rural population can only afford housing for under $9,000 USD. These rural communities either cannot afford a house or rely on traditional methods of cow dung, mud, and aluminum sheets for construction. These techniques are unsustainable and require frequent maintenance and repairs. Our goal is to address this growing challenge and directly benefit the people that historically have not had the opportunity to be a homeowner. We wish to provide the opportunity to live in a safe, affordable home.

Within many rural communities in Tanzania, there are few opportunities for stable jobs and the unemployment rate is 9.3%. The average annual salary for a middle-class worker is approximately $3,000 USD and there is little opportunity for individuals to climb the economic ladder. Also, students graduating from local universities have few opportunities for jobs in their field of interest. This has resulted in low morale in the working class and students lacking the incentive to further their education.

What is your solution?

Our proposed solution is to produce interlocking earth bricks (IEBs) and brick-building machines for use in home production in Tanzania. IEB houses are generally 50% cheaper than competing building materials, such as cement or burnt clay bricks. This allows the regionally average 60-square-meter home to be produced for only $5,000 USD. We are striving to provide affordable housing to rural Tanzanians to make an economic, sociological, and environmental impact. Homes built with IEBs can therefore enhance the lives of millions of people within Tanzania and other East African nations.

We will do this by supporting and training local entrepreneurs and selling them locally-built devices to construct homes, and other buildings, using interlocking earth bricks (IEBs). Earth bricks are made by the compression of soil and a small portion of cement and then dried. The brick is molded with ridges and valleys allowing them to form connections with each other. The initial device we are manufacturing is manual and uses a lever to compress the bricks. Our business is innovative on three fronts: 1) the machine will be built locally, 2) the machine is durable, mobile, and affordable, and 3) our business support system increases the probability of implementation and successful use.

The company has been named Tofali Zetu, which means “Our Bricks” in Swahili. We intend to build communities, not just buildings, with our bricks made and distributed locally in the community. In doing so, we are not exploiting the community, but rather augmenting it, and we can make a portable and high-quality machine that can be sold below the market price of other IEB machines. After-sale, we continue our relationship with customers through education to ensure that they maximize their purchases and gain feedback for improvement.

The machine specifically will be able to produce 7 types of molds and be portable enough to attach to a motorbike. This has not been accomplished in any one IEB product. Our machines can be moved from site to site with more ease and will be priced at 60% of the cost of competing machines produced in China and South Africa.

What is the Progress you have made so far? 

Tofali Zetu is currently finishing up Phase One and entering Phase Two of a four-phase deployment strategy. So far, we have built an initial functioning prototype out of scrap metal and demonstrated that it can make IEBs successfully. Our proof of concept was built locally in Tanzania, with two people, using a simple, shared workspace in Arusha, Tanzania. By doing so, we demonstrated that a portable and high-quality machine can be constructed in a way that it can be sold below the price of other IEB machines.

We have begun developing a mentorship team to continuously challenge assumptions, fill gaps, and take advantage of opportunities. We are working with experts in both Tanzania and the United States to mitigate risk and maximize opportunities for success. As we implement the next steps of our venture, we have sought key individuals to challenge our assumptions to consider different approaches to leverage our idea.

We have had the opportunity to also raise funds through winning competitions such as the E-Cup Concept Challenge at UVA, a local innovation competition at Twende Innovation Center in Arusha, and the Ashoka Ambition Accelerator. These funds have been used to support my partner Kulisha in Arusha to continue to make progress on our venture. Our idea has also been accepted into the Clinton Foundation Initiative University program to gain more support and mentorship for the progression of our project. 

What are you planning on doing with your winnings and what next steps will you take?

With the $5,000, we are now in the position to expand and begin producing market-ready products. We will hire additional engineers and builders to produce our machines for demonstrations in different parts of northeast Tanzania and identify the first entrepreneurs for our pilot education program. That will allow us to begin the process of building different projects and beginning to have positive impacts on the communities in rural Arusha.

We are going to continue to look toward other grants and competitions in order to gain other perspectives and resources for our venture. As we begin developing our systems of operation, we will look to leverage more resources to make deeper impacts in more communities. In Tanzania, $5,000 can go a long way, so we must ensure we make the most practical and important steps first with these funds. 

What were the main challenges and successes you encountered during your process? What have you learned?

The main challenge that we have encountered is how long progress can take to start up a venture, especially in a developing country. Finding materials, partners, and different needs to develop our venture has been quite the ride. It takes lots of patience and trust that things will get done, even if the time is double what you may expect. It has been challenging for me to learn this important aspect of growing a company. Some things happen very quickly, but others take a good long time to come to fruition. As we continue to make progress, it is a lesson that is continuing to be taught. 

The greatest success and lesson learned is the value of creating a wide range of mentors to leverage your idea and create value in ways that you alone would not have been able to. The discovery competition focuses on effectuation and the importance of getting each stakeholder to understand the idea and receive their feedback to see if the solutions are the right fit. We have been very fortunate enough to have met some incredible people to provide their unique insights on a variety of aspects of the venture. Without their help, we definitely would not be in the position we would be today and their support has helped keep the ball moving so we can develop our idea and make as much impact as possible on the people we serve. 

Also, the importance of working with the communities that we are serving is a vital lesson to be learned. From day one, we worked with local community members to identify a problem that they face and collaborate to see if different solutions may be beneficial to them. While we are the ones building out the venture, they give us the direction to allow us to find the best opportunities for success.