Today we had a very inspiring day with Leah Johnson and Lena Lin, Manager and Consultant respectively at Accenture. Both of them entered the Accenture Development Program (ADP) in April and will be working in Kenya for another two months. Through the ADP the consultants at Accenture get to work with non-profit projects in developing countries during a limited time period.

Both Leah and Lena have wanted to join the ADP program for several years and find it very rewarding to be able to use their skills from Accenture to help improve Kenya's and East Africa's healthcare system.

The program involves a cooperation between Accenture and AMREF. Besides visiting the AMREF headquarters where we had our meeting, we also got to see the 1st hanger at Wilson Airport for the flying doctors/AMREF.

Leah and Lena made us feel very welcome and we were very happy to meet them. Read more about them and the ADP project in our magazine, to be published in October.

Today we had a very interesting meeting with the IT guru of Kenya and East Africa, Erik Hersman. Erik is the founder of Ushahidi and the iHub, working in order to promote the development of the IT sector in Kenya and its surrounding countries.

iHub was started just one year ago and today it has about 4000 members. Some of them attend specific seminars and events coordinated by the iHub, while others rent a working desk in order to work and develop IT applications. Last week, a new project was introduced, called mlabs with the purpose of supporting companies in the area of mobile applications. Nokia is the first global company entering partnership with the mlab. FocusOn is looking forward to following the development of mlab!

Four days of safari in Lake Nakuru and Masai Mara was finished off with a dinner at Kenya's probably most famous restaurant Carnivore. Exclusive meat from ostridge, camel and crocodile was served in turns with turkey, lamb and pork ribs. The vegetarians of our table could enjoy the well made dishes from a separate menu. Definitely worth a visit.

Another few days are awaiting us in Nairobi. Today we will be visiting the iHub (innovation hub), and we are looking forward to an exclusive interview with one of its founders, Erik Hersman. Read all about it in our magazine, to be published in October.

Today we have had our first day of our Safari trip. We checked out from the hotel in Nairobi and climbed in to the Land cruiser for the drive to Lake Nakuru. When we finally got into the park it only took three minutes before we saw our first animal, a lion! In this park lions are unusual to see so we were very lucky. During our three hour drive we saw rhinos, water buck, impala, Thomson gasell, eland, african buffalo, marabou storch, greater and lesser flamingo, pelican, baboon, black faced velvet monkey, jackal, zebra, guinea fowl, yellow beak storch, grey heron, one eagle, one hawk and of course the lion. I most certainly have missed some of the animals, but I hope they don’t feel offended. It was a breathtaking experience that ended with a beautiful sunset.

Tomorrow we will have an early start and head off to Maasai mara at 7 in the morning.

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Tomorrow the FocusOn-group will go on Safari over the weekend, so probably there will be no new posts for some days. Yesterday we made some visits aranged with SIDA. We first visited their office and talked about how they are working in Kenya and what potential and time perspective they have on the development on the country. We also talked about how the new constitution could affect the country and what problems the implementation could have.

After the visit to the office of SIDA we met hifab international, a swedish consulting company that is working with development programs. We met Åsa Forsman who currently is working with a development program for slum areas in Kenya.

Finally we made it to the largest slum area, Kibera, where we got to see a sanitation project in progress!

Today we explored the different parts of nairobi.

Yesterday we went to meet with Lisa Källbäck from the Swedish trade council. We had a really interesting interview with her and were able to discuss some of the business problems and opportunities in Kenya we had encountered during the trip. This knowledge has been gathered by meeting with Swedish company's as well as local entrepreneurs.

It was a great opportunity to revaluate our earlier knowledge and put it in another perspective. Some of the issues were confirmed such as the tensions between the different tribes in Kenya hindering the business development.

Late during the day we had some time to visit a Masai market and a giraffe center. These experiences along with how kind people are here have shown a great side of the beautiful country of Kenya.

We spent the main parts of our Monday learning about Kenyan history and culture. We went to both the national museum and "Bomas of Kenya". At the national museum we got a better picture of why the country has developed to where it is today. At the "Bomas of Kenya" we met different tribes and saw their dances and villages. Even today many decisions and problems in Kenya can partly be explained through a tribe perspective!

In the afternoon we met Jennifer Ngure the owner of Pride of  Nairobi (www.prideofnairobi.com) and her sister Jacky. Our trip back and forth from Kisumu was arranged through Jennifer and it was a positive experience and we can recommend their services. Both of them own their own tour company and have started out from the bottom and they are today successful business women. They told us about their journey and also about advantages and problems as an entrepreneur in Kenya.

The interview will be published in our magazine this autumn.

During our first weekend we made a visit to St Christine education center. The school is a Swedish project, a school for orphans outside Kisumu and a substantial part of the financing comes from "Föreningen Kisumu" (www.kisumu.se). The school offers classes 1-7 today, two meals a day and a good education. There results of recent tests show that they are one of the best schools in the area! The students were at the time busy studying for some new upcoming test and so the school was full of children even though it was Saturday! It really felt we were back at RIOT and exams closing in!

Apart from the education the school also manages a number of projects that hopefully will provide all necessary means to the school within a couple of years. Examples of projects are goat milk production, sunflower oil production and tomatoes. The ideas of the development of the school seem to be endless and the involvement and energy of the project group that manages everything is remarkable!

During Sunday the last members of FocusOn arrived in Kenya and we all met in Nairobi.

Today we went to visit one of Josab's customers, Halima Gabriel, and also Josab's CEO Anders Vidhav. This gave us a good insight of how it is for a company trying to establish in Kenya and also how it is to run a business in Kenya.

Josab's water treatment system is based on Aqualite (see photo), a natural mineral with unique properties for water purification. More info on Aqualite and a very interesting interview with Halima and Anders will be published in our magazine later in October.

Before the Josab visit (4.45 am) we went fishing in Lake Victoria, where we got to see the sunrise from the boat and eat breakfast while we were holding our fishing rod. We didn't get any fish though.

After a very long trip we've finally reached Kisumu and are now enjoying the African sun on the rooftop terrace of our hotel (Duke of the Breeze). The trip, although quite long, went very well. We were met by our contact Jennifer who had arranged transportation for us to Kisumu by bus. The hills were at times very steep and the roads very bumpy but although we were very tired the bumps kept us awake to enjoy the beautiful Kenyan nature.

On the way to Kisumu we had a few hours stop by Lake Naivasha were we were fortunate enough to see a lot of exciting animals, including Hippos, Zebras, Giraffes and Water Buffalos. No one in hour group has ever been on a safari before so this was of course an amazing and thrilling experience.

After a good night sleep here in Kisumu we went on a boat ride on Lake Victoria where our guide told us about the lakes animals and nature, but also about how the increasing amount of pollution is threatening the lives of the population who rely on fishing for their living.

We've also been on a short tour of the Kisumu campus of Nairobi University, a very different sight from what we are used to seeing at our own university. With quite small lecture rooms and an outside lecture hall. We hope to be able to get back there to talk to some students at a later time.

Tomorrow we're very excited to go visit one of Josabs customers. Josab is a Swedish company who produces water purification systems. We'll tell you all about it afterwards.

Photos from Lake Naivasha

That's right! Tomorrow the first group of seven are leaving Stockholm for Kenya. The excitement is high! I for one have some butterflies in my stomach. Some of us start our journey from the central station were we will take the Arlanda Express to the airport. We'll be departing from Arlanda at 16:15 for London Heathrow where we have a layover of a few hours. From there we fly during the night to land bright and early in Nairobi. We'll be picked up at the airport and head straight for Kisumu near Lake Victoria. I've stocked up on memory cards for the camera for a total of 13 gb, hopefully it'll be enough!0 comments

Next week we will start our exciting journey to Kenya!

The project group will arrive in Nairobi tuesday morning, and continue directly to Kisumu and Lake Victoria where we will visit our partner Josab. One day will be spent at the orphan school "Kisumu", an initiative by a Swedish association. In Nairobi we have plans to visit the Swedish Chamber of Commerce (Exportrådet), the Swedish Embassy, a SIDA project, the iHub and an ADP program by Accenture amongst others. We are also looking forward to a safari at Lake Nakuru and Masai Mara with our sponsor Kenzan Tours. Hopefully we will be able to report directly from Kenya!

Work continues as usual. We have some great meetings setup with companies this week, which we hope will be successful!

Trip planning is also moving along. One of the new additions is a visit to an orphanage. This will hopefully be very interesting seeing as we don't really have that in Sweden. At least not to the same extent.

Other preparations are soon starting too. These include checking passport validity, filling up on another batch of vaccine and starting the malaria vaccine. These are smaller, but vital.

The planning for the trip has really taken off during this week. Everybody in the group is excited about the two eventful weeks down there. An itinerary will be posted later on.

We started taking our vaccinations this week. For most of us this has not been a big issue, but for others it's been somewhat of an obstacle.0 comments

The project is continuing to move forward. Our project fair has now been set to take place on the 4 and 5 of October in the KTH library. A detailed schedule for the event will be posted as we get closer to it. We look very much forward to being able to present our project to the students at KTH and our partners during these days. We hope to see as many people there as possible.

Everybody in the group has now booked their flight tickets to Kenya and we're very excited that the departure date is coming closer each day. Most of us will arrive on the 7th of June and the rest will join us in Nairobi a few days later in order to be able to take their last exams before summer. Preparations for the trip are also well underway. During this week we will start taking the required vaccines and the schedule for our visit is being discussed within the group.0 comments (1 awaiting approval)

Today we were invited to The SWEACC Entrepreneurship Seminar: "Being a Swedish Entrepreneur working in East-Africa!". A fantastic seminar with three inspiring speakers:

Micael Edler, who's based in Tanzania and CEO at Bratt International AB, told his inspirational story regarding running a investment company incorporated to invest in the emerging market of East-Africa. Mikael Samuelsson spoke about how to boost local East-African entrepreneurs through a network of business-incubators. And finally, David Lenefors, CEO & Founder at Africana Travel, shared his ideas of running a safari company based in Kenya & Tanzania.

After the seminar we were given the possibility to mingle with the speakers Micael Edler and David Lenefors, the board of Sweacc (including Harald von Matérn, Chairman; Claés Torén, Board member; Emre Gürler, Board member),  the founder of SWEDFUND, Anders Riedenfalk (the former Head of Trade and Commercial Affairs from the Swedish Embassay in Nairobi, Kenya), Danel Kottut (Second Councellor at the Kenyan Embassy) amongst others.

Thank you Sweacc for a very inspiring and motivating meeting!

Mehrnaz Amanat Bari and Mathias Giertz

Today we attended the East African Business Group's (AFBUS) meeting about East Africa. We got the invitation after the embassy meeting earlier this week. During the meeting the East African Entrepreneurial Program (EEP) was discussed and the branding of East Africa. A lot of interesting thoughts were raised and the meeting was very fruitful.

On a side note, we also retook our portrait photographs today and are anxiously awaiting the results.

Yesterday Mehrnaz and Niklas and I (Rickard) were at the Embassy of Kenya. We met with two representatives from the embassy and briefly introduced our project, after which they had some questions for us and we some for them.

They were thrilled that we were making a project about Kenya. They felt that information needs to be spread about Kenya and Africa as a whole, as they think the general view on Africa is just about poverty, war and diseases. That general view is something some of us have experienced first hand when we told our parents and friends that we were going there.

The meeting went very well. We will receive contacts to people with valuable information to the project and also a letter of recommendation from the embassy. We also got invited to two different seminars with embassy representatives and entrepreneurs which someone from the group will attend.

This comes to you a bit late, since it took place last wednesday (February 16th), but it is always great to get news so here it is anyway!

We started in school with our weekly meeting where we received our business cards fresh from the printers and discussed more about how we would approach companies. When we left the meeting it had been decided that during the coming week we would start contacting companies. Some even made arrangements to start calling together the day after.

After the meeting we took the subway to Zinkensdamm and walked a short distance to the pasta restaurant Céline on Hornsgatan. The food was great and the company was even better. After we had eaten, laughed a lot and looked at Mehrnaz's amazing MS Paint-skills we all went home. Everybody except Carl, who was ill, was present. Hopefully he will get to join the group some other time.

Kickoffen drog igång vid 11a tiden då jag och Fredrik oturligt nog missade pendeltåget som skulle ta oss till vår slutdestination, Skogås Centrum.

Väl på plats i Skogås samlades hela gruppen i en badmintonhall där vi delades in i två lag. Först spelades en tuff innebandymatch där Molly stod för ett fenomenalt försvar samtidigt som Niklas spjutsspetskompetens i anfallet visade sig vara för svårt för det andra laget, mitt lag. Efter innebandy spelade vi lite matcher i badminton. Här var Mehrnaz stjärnan.

Efter de sportiga aktiviteterna gick vi alla hem till Mehrnaz där vi pratade igenom projektet och lagade lite kenyansk mat, lasange och en kycklingcurry.