Entrepreneurship in Pakistan

Alejandro Litovsky

August 23, 2010

Social entrepreneurs might seem less relevant in humanitarian emergencies, when the focus of development work shifts to short-term, rapid response and direct assistance.

But as international aid struggles to ‘reach the ground’, the business models created by social enterprises might prove to be invaluable intelligence for the Government of Pakistan’s policies and delivery mechanisms, as it works with the international community to manage the humanitarian response and creates the blueprints of a reconstruction effort.

In Pakistan, so far, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that almost 14 million people have been displaced, half of which urgently need emergency assistance. The crisis is said to combine the scale of the Asian tsunami, the destruction of the earthquake in Haiti and the complexity of the Middle East.

An article in The Guardian today highlights and praises the response from the British public. The Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), the UK’s umbrella organisation for British aid agencies, contrasts the high donations by citizens in the UK against the relatively little attention of the international community. Reports from Pakistan, argues The Guardian, suggest that aid is barely getting through to the ground.

So how do social entrepreneurs fit in? Take, for example, the Acumen Fund, which invest so-called ‘patient capital’ into social enterprises in developing countries. These entrepreneurial business models are capable of bringing affordable, life-changing products and services to parts of the world where markets have failed.

In a recent message, Aun Rahman, the Acumen Fund’s Pakistan Country Director, points to five leading social enterprises in Pakistan, which are building on social networks on the ground and creating new ways of providing goods and services to the poorest. These social enterprises are small in comparison to the scale of the challenge, but what matters most are their models, not their size.

By working in close proximity and partnership with communities on the ground, they offer the Government of Pakistan and the international community new ideas to rethink aid effectiveness and reconstruction efforts.