MUBS hosts a Social Business Conference

MUBS hosted a Social Business Conference on July 11, 2013 funded by Africa Development Bank who has partnered with various institutions to popularize social enterprise in Africa. A German firm by Yunus Social Business is at the frontline of socializing social business. Social business is an emerging concept. It goes by various other names like social enterprise and is powered by social entrepreneurs. Business is the key driver of world events. Business results into economic activities that create employment and give incomes to people. Governments can only survive if there are businesses that give them taxes so the whole existence of government depends on  health businesses. Business has been motivated largely by profit. It is profit that leads to survival and growth of the business.  Business and government are therefore interdependent. Governments however have broader aims than business. Government is said to have the twin objectives of economic growth and social justice. Government ensures that an economy is productive and it is producing efficiently. It does this through providing infrastructure and providing a regulatory environment. Government also supports roads, schools, health sector as part of this effort. For the developed countries, they have found a model which enables growth in the economy that removed extreme poverty from their midst. In these countries, the unemployed and the poor get support from government in form of unemployment benefits. For the developing countries, this is not possible because business is not operating at a level where it is possible to provide employment to a large number of people and for government to collect taxes from which it can pay unemployment benefits. Many successful business men in the developed countries developed so much wealth that they did not know what to do with it, they started giving it away in form of philanthropy. This was doing good for society and solving some of society’s problems from the wealth that these individuals had accumulated. These individuals even organizations came in to help governments as a supplementary effort to create growth in these economies. There have been people and while they have acted commercially and aggressively, have turned their profits to support social aims. Rather than be philanthropists they have become social entrepreneurs. Individuals seeking to make a profit but not sing that profit for their own purpose. Social entrepreneurs may build social enterprises. These are organisations that operate in an entrepreneurial manner, innovation, efficiency, risk taking, aggressive competitiveness but the aim is to do good to society. Muhammed Yunus a Nobel peace prize winner founded the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world and a muslim country. The predominant culture in Bangladesh relegates women to domestic chores they therefore did not have a presence in the business. They do not own property, do not have collateral among others. Muhammed Yunus introduced group lending and today the Grameen bank is one of the successful models of social enterprise. In Uganda, social enterprises have existed for a long time however it is not well documented.  In a research done by a student from the University of Edinburgh which MUBS supported, several enterprises were documented. We have also looked at activities of social entrepreneurs in the country. The concept of social business is catching on worldwide. It is some kind of a new thinking which needs to be studied and understood. In the Uganda context, the point is we want to change people’s lives, give them an income it is due to the inability of government to provide the enabling atmosphere, facilities and training, social enterprises have come to substitute this. At a conference we hosted, some of those people running social business gave their testimonies. To be able to run a social enterprise, you must be a good entrepreneur. Not whether you are willing to give up your profits for the benefits of others is a big question