Lifeblood of the continent

Temie Giwa-Tubosun many not have the global name recognition of Gwyneth Paltrow, yet her impact on the lives of millions of women may well turn out to be far more profound.  

She’s the founder of LifeBank, a service that delivers blood to hospitals in Lagos, with plans to expand across the continent.

Giwa-Tubosun dreamt up the idea around the time she gave birth to her first child.  There were complications and she suffered post-partum haemorrhage.  Happily, she emerged safe and sound from a birth suite in a modern American hospital.  Many women in Africa are not so fortunate.  Post-partum haemorrhage without emergency transfusion, can, and tragically often does mean death within 2 hours.   And in Lagos, where there was no proper record of the city’s blood stocks, and no co-ordination between bloodbanks, blood deliveries were getting caught up in traffic; and women were dying.  

Her idea was to create a live digital record of availability and hire an army of dedicated scooter-couriers to get the right type of blood to where it needed to be, on demand and fast.

Now, if you’ve read this far – about Africa and healthcare issues –  and assumed that LifeBank is an NGO, you’d be wrong.  It’s a highly profitable, for-profit company.

And in many ways, it’s a picture of African entrepreneurship in microcosm.   Businesses are springing up, bringing goods and services to burgeoning populations; from fast food to clothing to hair extensions.  Many African economies are growing less because of the value of their export commodities on global markets; rather through consumption:  ever greater numbers of people packed into urban environments, ever greater opportunities to sell them stuff.

LifeBank is one of countless businesses across the continent, run by women, who rely on their superior abilities to communicate, create networks and foster collaboration.  At the risk of gender stereotyping, it seems there are growth generating endeavours where women simply have the edge over men.  It’s ironic therefore, that tradition in many cultural settings around the world has women in the home – caring, cleaning and cooking.  

As New Zealand economist Marilyn Waring points out, domestic work does not, according to accepted definitions,  form part of a country’s GDP figures.  And yet, in terms of time input, it’s invariably the biggest sector in any economy.  In the African context, where it’s the entrepreneurial energy of female networks that is becoming an ever more important driver of economic growth, female domestic work is looking more and more like an inefficient allocation of human capital.  

Africa illustrates these issues starkly.  As female entrepreneurship enriches lives and communities all around the world, domestic servitude isn’t just a question of dignity – it’s an opportunity cost.