Hosted by Robert Rimm
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This episode brought to you by…
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With a population in excess of 1 billion and a low labor demand, unemployment is as high as 80-96% across sub-Saharan Africa. Throughout the continent, men and women are in need of income that sustainable jobs provide to support their families with food, shelter, and education.
The answer, according to our guest is: High volume handmade production. A type of manufacturing that creates thousands of jobs and connects people to the real and competitive markets across the world, resulting in the alleviation of poverty in Africa.
And that’s exactly what All Across Africa produces – high-quality artisanal products, hand-made in Africa.
Alicia Wallace is the co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of All Across Africa. Known as, AAA the company is a social business working to create thousands of jobs by designing, training and exporting products from rural parts of Africa, thus using business as a change-agent for poverty in the developing world.
Alicia finds solutions to challenges that arise in a startup retail businesses located on multiple continents. She regularly travels the East Africa scaling handmade production and impact, now affecting more than 21,200 people. As a constant learner, Alicia is leading the organization into new markets, product lines, and implementing the corresponding programs in new countries.
Alicia received her B.A. in Economics from Seattle Pacific University. Alicia worked as a firm administrator at a law firm in downtown Seattle, hiring and training paralegal teams, creating and executing on marketing plans, and overall, managing all aspects of the business so the lawyers could do what they do best. Subsequently, she traveled to Sierra Leone and thereafter committed herself to alleviating poverty on the continent. She worked as the Director of Operations and Development at Rwanda Partners, creating programming and products in Rwanda.
Tune into the interview with Alicia and click through the corresponding slideshow to the left… (Photos courtesy of AAA.)
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