Mulago

Please help us find our next group of remarkable fellows for 2025. Nominations close on October 15th. For the Henry Arnhold Fellowship for environment solutions you can recommend someone with this form: https://lnkd.in/d7FmZPbJ For the Rainer Arnhold Fellowship for poverty solutions you can recommend someone with this form: https://lnkd.in/d4AeamUF All we need from you is the name, e-mail, and organization of the leader(s) you want to nominate. We'll do the rest. Thank you!

📢NEW HENRY ARNHOLD FELLOW📢 Jade Saunders and World Forest ID work on hi-tech verification to stop the illegal trade of forest products. Illegal deforestation is driven by big consumer demand for timber, agricultural commodities and other extractives. However most consumers are unaware of the environmental costs of their purchases as most supply chains are remarkably opaque. World Forest ID has created a scientific standard for the verification of plant product origins, so that illegal and unsustainable deforestation for exports can be eradicated through transparent supply chains. To do this, they collect plant samples from forests and agricultural lands worldwide, to build a reference library of unique chemical, genetic, and anatomical signatures tied to species and location. Their clients—companies, regulators, and watchdogs—use this data to identify the origins of consumer products. World Forest ID provides guidance on what to measure and how, comparing client data against their library to find matches. They share these findings with clients to help hold bad actors accountable and clean up supply chains. Jade Saunders has been the Executive Director of World Forest ID since 2022. An anthropologist by training, she comes to this problem with an understanding of the social components of law enforcement based on ~20 years of experience in forest governance, trade, and environmental crime. Previously, she served as a senior policy analyst at Forest Trends, as a strategy advisor for the UK’s ForestMind project, and had a long stint at Chatham House tackling deforestation through trade law and supply chain regulation.

📢 NEW RAINER ARNHOLD FELLOW📢 Lafiya Nigeria — led by Klau Chmielowska — enable access to safe family planning through community distributors of self-injectable contraception. Contraceptives are a woman’s right, and existing research shows that access to injectable contraceptives and counseling leads to significant decreases in maternal mortality. Lafiya Nigeria trains midwives, nurses, and community health workers to become “Lafiya Sisters,” specialists in family planning. Their team ensures that new mothers in hard-to-reach communities receive family planning counseling and access to contraceptives—like injectables—right after childbirth, empowering women to take control of their reproductive health. Klau Chmielowska has worked across sub-Saharan Africa and South America on microfinance and capacity-building projects, including the creation of a business training curriculum for over 2 million microentrepreneurs in Nigeria. Their interest in family planning led them to co-found Lafiya after a successful pilot while still a management consultant. They are also a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Policy Institute and completed the Charity Entrepreneurship Incubation Programme. Klau Chmielowska holds a degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from the University of Oxford.

📢 NEW RAINER ARNHOLD FELLOW📢 Jonathan Mazumdar and Growth Teams help governments make jobs happen. Over the last few decades, too many developing countries have had slow or negative progress in their ability to successfully implement policies. When governments are not able to implement pro-growth policies then higher-income jobs will always be few and far between. Growth Teams coach governments to solve problems that hold back firms, and as a result generate good jobs where people get richer. They help governments focus on the right, high-potential industries, identify the biggest barriers that hold back firms in those industries, and then take the right actions to unlock those constraints to economic growth. Jonathan Mazumdar is the co-founder of Growth Teams, and for over a decade has advised governments and invested in early-stage ventures across Africa and India. Prior to this, he worked on investment and industrialization with the Government of Rwanda through the Tony Blair Institute. He launched and built Acumen Fund’s education portfolio and then helped start Sangam Ventures, India’s first dedicated cleantech venture fund. Jonathan began his career at J-PAL, working on an impact evaluation in rural Bihar. He got his MPA/ID from the Harvard Kennedy School.

📢 NEW HENRY ARNHOLD FELLOW📢 Ines Serra Baucells and BIOSORRA make soil enriching biochar from agricultural waste. Biochar is a substance that’s made by burning organic material from agricultural waste using a process called pyrolysis. The resulting biochar looks like charcoal but is a far more efficient way of converting carbon into a stable form — hence way fewer emissions. And there’s an added bonus: biochar is a super effective fertilizer that improves soil quality, much needed in regions that are worn out from overfarming or that have acidic soil. BIOSORRA transforms crop waste into biochar in Kenya. The resulting biochar fertilizer is sold to farmers, enhancing soil health and productivity. The technology seems to have found its moment thanks to the carbon market, as BIOSORRA sells carbon credits from the sequestered carbon that is mixed into the soil. Ines Serra Baucells is an engineer and architect by training with a deep passion for soil. She co-founded BIOSORRA in 2022 after seeing the big potential for biochar to remove CO2 at a relatively low investment cost. Before that, she worked as a strategy consultant at Deloitte and McKinsey, advising energy companies on sustainability. She got her MBA from IESE Business School and is a former professional ski competitor.

📢 NEW RAINER ARNHOLD FELLOW 📢 Irene Etyang and MAMLO FOODS are bringing food processing microfactories to Kenya. Selling raw materials is a tough way for farmers to make income. The higher up the value chain a farmer can sell their product, the more income they can make.  MAMLO FOODS gets farmers on a higher rung of the value chain through a solar-powered, container-based microfactory that can process crops like peanuts, cassava and bananas into higher value products. They organize women farmers into cooperatives, bringing together groups of smallholder farmers. Each cooperative owns a microfactory with a 40-acre processing capacity. MAMLO FOODS also provides training on producing value-added products, food safety standards, and why group selling is more profitable. They then connect farmers to higher-paying, larger buyers, boosting their income and market access. Irene Etyang is a food scientist who founded MAMLO FOODS to increase income of rural women farmers. She grew up in rural Kenya, where her parents were smallholder farmers, and she personally suffered from malnutrition growing up. She's a food innovator and has launched multiple food lines while working closely with a range of Agri-Food SMEs. With five years of experience in product development, Irene has launched multiple food lines and she’s influenced Kenyan tax policy to enhance inter-county trade. 

This graph should obsess anyone funding or working in Africa...

📢 NEW HENRY ARNHOLD FELLOW 📢 Dickson Kaelo and the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association work to boost the community led conservation movement in Kenya. Community-owned conservancies — organizations that manage land for the benefit of the community and the environment — are relatively widespread in Kenya, but their approaches can be piecemeal and they often lack funding to bend the curve of biodiversity decline across the region. The Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association organizes community-owned conservancies into regional associations, all nested within a national membership body, to amplify their collective voice. They strengthen the management of conservancies so they can have a bigger conservation impact. The Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association also advocates for national and county policies, regulations, and funding that support the wildlife conservancies. Additionally, they work to increase revenue for conservancies from tourism, carbon markets, and government funding. Dickson Kaelo is the CEO of the Kenya Wildlife Conservancies Association. He helped create some of Kenya’s first conservancies in the Mara over twenty years ago and, inspired by his father’s work as a veterinary extension officer, Dickson has dedicated his career to promoting the coexistence of people and wildlife. He holds a Master’s in Wildlife Management and has spent years studying how cultural and modern knowledge can secure wildlife habitats.

📢 NEW RAINER FELLOW 📢 There’s ample evidence that faster care leads to better health outcomes in Africa. Emergency Response Africa — led by the remarkable Folake Owodunni — connects people quickly to life-saving care through a network of trained first responders, emergency vehicles, and verified hospitals, all linked together by their software. Emergency Response Africa trains community-based responders to become skilled Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and coordinates a fleet of ambulances and moto-riders for rapid transport. Their dispatch system triages calls, directing the nearest driver to the closest emergency-ready facility. They also track patient outcomes to gather data and improve future responses. Folake Owodunni, ERA’s co-founder and CEO, was inspired to start the organization after a personal emergency with her son in Canada highlighted the gap between emergency care there and in her home country of Nigeria. With two Master’s degrees and 15 years of experience in healthcare, consulting, and marketing, Folake Owodunni has earned multiple awards, including the Aurora Tech Award and Google Black Founders Fund.

📢 NEW HENRY FELLOW📢 Bustar Maitar works in Eastern Indonesia — one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. Its forests are teeming with life but they’re constantly under threat from bad actors like big palm oil companies. It’s also one of the most culturally diverse regions in the world. All that diversity is at risk if those communities don’t have rights over their lands and a means to make a livelihood from it. EcoNusa Foundation protects Eastern Indonesian forests through market linkages for pro-forest products. First, they help local communities map their land boundaries and secure legal tenure. Then they identify companies violating regulations and push for their concessions to be revoked. EcoNusa Foundation helps communities sustainably harvest their crops in line with conservation practices. Through a large buyer cooperative, owned by both communities and EcoNusa, they ensure fair market access and better prices for local products. Bustar Maitar founded EcoNusa Foundation in 2017 to bring together forest conservation and sustainable local economies. He is a seasoned campaigner with over 20 years of experience in environmental protection and social justice in Indonesia. He spent over a decade at Greenpeace, and led a lot of deforestation campaigns. Bustar Maitar is also an open water diving instructor, and balances his serious campaign and livelihood work with time under the water.