Michael Fairbanks to Discuss Emerging Business Strategies in Africa on May 8

Presentation to be held May 8 in Cochran Chapel at 6:30 p.m.

April 30, 2009 Phillips Academy welcomes entrepreneurial philanthropist Michael Fairbanks on Friday, May 8, for his presentation titled “The Seven Types of Wealth in Africa: Are Sentimentality and Aid Working?” The presentation, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 6:30 p.m. in Cochran Chapel, on Chapel Avenue on the Phillips Academy Campus. Fairbanks’s visit is part of Africa Week, which is sponsored by the Office of Community and Multicultural Development and the Academy’s Africa Student Union and aims to educate the campus about the African continent.

Fairbanks is founder of the OTF Group, a Boston-based strategy consulting organization that focuses on developing nations, as well as cofounder of the SEVEN fund, a philanthropic organization that aims to accelerate innovation and expand enterprise-based solutions to global poverty. He has collaborated on entrepreneurial and philanthropic ventures with recent Fuess Award recipient Bill Drayton ’61.

Before becoming a successful entrepreneur, Fairbanks first moved to Africa in 1979 as a Peace Corps teacher in Kiogora village in Kenya. He started with 12 students and grew the class to 500, teaching commerce, math, religion, science, African literature, and Swahili. Staying in a mud hut without power, he learned to cook meals over a fire, kill rats with his hands, and teach new ideas with stories.

Having since led development projects in more than 35 countries, Fairbanks has contributed much of his expertise to Africa. He has served as the economic advisor to the U.S. ambassador in the People’s Republic of Congo, as well as strategic consultant to President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, whom he calls “one of the three greatest presidents in African history,” crediting him for making the country “among the safest and cleanest nation in the world” since its 1994 genocide.

Fairbanks is coauthor of “Plowing the Sea, Nurturing the Hidden Sources of Advantage in Developing Nations,” which the Boston Globe named one of the 10 best books of the year in Politics and Economics. His new book, “In the River They Swim: Essays from Around the World on Enterprise Solutions to Poverty,” was released this spring.

He earned BA degrees in philosophy and chemistry from the University of Scranton, and an MA degree in international relations and African politics from Columbia University. Fairbanks has been a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, a public policy research center; a visiting lecturer at Harvard University; and an adjunct professor at both Georgetown University and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

In addition to Fairbanks’s presentation, Africa Week includes a “Call it Off” day on Wednesday, May 6, when students will refrain from using cell phones to protest the exploitation of Coltan, a mineral used in cell phone chips. On Saturday, May 9, an African Festival will feature samples of African foods, student talent and fashion shows, and a performance of Ugandan dance by the Africa Great Lakes Ensemble, a professional group committed to the conservation, promotion, and sharing and teaching of traditional African cultures and heritage.