Full Circle Digital Magazine February 2014 | Page 15

ENTREPRENEURSHIP • FOODPODS

Foodpods has the potential to be replicated across Africa
by Peter Shrimpton

E

ach time my wife goes grocery shopping she spends about
R500 on food and R20 on petrol for her car, but the less
fortunate spend R30 on food, because they don’t have
much disposable income, and R20 on transport costs. This is
what I refer to as a poverty penalty. One way to address this
problem is to support charitable feeding schemes, but I have
major concerns about this approach. Charitable handouts are
not sustainable. Although well meaning, they create dependency
and distortion which almost always leads to their failure when
donor funding stops. Furthermore, there isn’t nearly enough
donor funding to feed the millions of starving South Africans who
are struggling to survive at the bottom of the pyramid.

a financial return - otherwise known as a blended value return.
Foodpods has the potential to be replicated across Africa.
My mission is to have one Foodpod for every ten houses in
every disadvantaged community from Cape Town to Lagos.
It’s a BIG dream that started in a poor township in Phillipi,
Cape Town, and is steadily spreading one Foodpod at a time.
We have a powerful business concept and we are producing
tangible results on the ground where it matters most. We can
and will create a way for the millions of people living at the bottom
of the pyramid to feed themselves in a financially sustainable (and
profitable) way. All we need now is for other investors to provid