Social Entrepreneur 5: Fabio Rosa

In chapter 3 of David Bornstein’s How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (Oxford, 2007), there is the story of Fabio Rosa, a Brazilian agronomic engineer who revolutionized the way Brazilian farmers get access to water with the help of cheap, low-tech electrical systems in rural Palmares, Brazil. (For all posts in our social entrepreneur series, click here.)

Rosa was raised a gaucho and trained as an agronomic engineer. A classmate invited him to southern Brazil, to meet his father, Ney Azevedo, then the governor of the state of Palmares, in Rio Gradne do Sul, a rural farming region of Brazil similar to the Mississippi River delta. Over dinner Rosa and Azevedo talked about how to improve life for the local villagers of Palmares. Azevedo ultimately asked Rosa to become secretary of agriculture for the state.

Rosa accepted and began to talk with the area’s farmers about their needs. The rural villages wanted to boost rice production and farm income, but a quarter of their production cost was for water.

Rosa found a book by a Brazilian who had learned of artesian well irrigation for rice production in Louisiana. But Brazilian electrification was designed and delivered by high-tech standards for large producers, pricing the poor out of the system. Rosa found Ennio Amaral at the Federal Technical School at the nearby city of Pelotes. Amaral had developed a low-tech, inexpensive electrical system for rural areas.

As Rosa puts it:

“The light in my head went on. With cheap electricity, poor farmers could drop wells and irrigate their land. Then they would be free from the tyranny of water.”

Rosa spent a decade developing this low-tech electrical system in Palmares, because for years, the state and federal energy interests prevented him from moving from the testing to the implementation phase. Eventually, Avezedo was able to marshal the political pressure to secure permission to proceed, and the Rio de Janeiro bank responsible for long term national development agreed to venture-fund the project. Rosa’s analysis projected repayment in four years.

Alusio Asti, a banker who helped Rosa with the funding for the project, sums up the project’s impact:

Just to have an ag department in a small municipality in Rio Gradne do Sul was itself innovative, especially an ag department that actually worked with small farmers. If we don’t succeed in this project, the people of Palmares will find their own solution: the worst solution for everybody. They will flee to the cities.

Says Rosa:

We didn’t need contractors to carry out the work. The whole thing could be done by the community with one tech hired by the mayor’s office. It was practically an autonomous system. And the state company knew that if we succeeded in Palmares, it could lead to other things.

Due to continued resistance from big energy interests, Rosa and Azevedo built media ties and local political advocacy groups. Azevedo told the electrical company that, if they blocked the project implementation, they would have to provide affordable energy to the poor. The VC bank told the company their funding would be cut if they stood in the way of affordable electrification and development for rural areas.

As a selling point, Rosa had told villagers that his plan could provide a household with electricity for about the price of a cow, $400, in contrast to government service cost at about $7,000. Incomes jumped from $50.-$80./month to $200.-$300./month. Half of the users had returned from city slums to work the land because of the project.

The energy company continued to resist duplication of the project in neighboring areas. The newly elected state governor, pedro Simon, had vowed to expand rural electrification. The company finally gave in to political pressure from local government and from the development bank in the capitol.

When Ennio Amaral, Rosa’s colleague, died of cancer, locals erected this tribute:

In the fight for an ideal, we face those who are deceptive, envious, and incompetent. The man who is firm pays no mind to such people and wastes no time counting them. For he who marches toward the light need not worry about what occurs in the darkness. To professor Ennio Amaral, who through his generosity, idealism, and perseverance, made it possible for poor people in the fields to gain access to electrical energy benefits – our eternal recognition and gratitude.

In 1992 Rosa established a for-profit company, Pro Luz, to extend PVC technology across Brasil. Says Rosa:

It’s much quicker than spending ten years of my life arguing with the government….Yes, I am angry. Every time I think about it, I get angry, I feel like shouting out at the top of my lungs. But I try to transfer the feeling into a positive force: into solutions.

Two billion or 30% of the world population are currently without electricity and about half of them could afford solar power at commercial prices if they had the opportunity to pay it off in installments.

In 2001 Rosa was one of the first forty social entrepreneurs honored in Geneva by the Schwab Foundation. Later that year Rosa won a $50,000. award from the San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation, one of five winners from among 400 nominees from fifty countries. Rosa has also been named an Ashoka Fellow.