Our Mission

KickStart International is a non-profit social enterprise with a mission to lift millions of people out of poverty quickly, cost-effectively, and sustainably. 

Our Vision

KickStart’s vision of success is to take millions of people out of poverty sustainably, and in doing so, to change the way the world fights poverty. We see the untapped entrepreneurial drive in the world’s poorest people and harness this potential for massive change.

An estimated 20 million small-scale farmers in Africa have access to sufficient renewable water resources to adopt KickStart’s technologies on their farms and turn them into profitable businesses that generate food and income year-round.

How It All Started
The Beginning of The End of Poverty

Hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent providing aid and other forms of assistance to African countries. Though well-intentioned, there has been little sustainable return on these investments. In sub-Saharan Africa, securing enough food and money to meet basic human needs remains a daily, all-consuming struggle for hundreds of millions of people.

KickStart’s founders, Dr. Martin Fisher and Nick Moon, saw this challenge from a unique perspective. Very different paths led each founder to initially work for the same large development agency in Kenya, where they fortuitously met.

Martin excelled in academia, earning two degrees from Cornell University before completing his Ph.D. in engineering at Stanford. It was after his graduation when he first encountered extreme poverty. In all its depth and nuance, poverty struck him as a great engineering challenge facing mankind.

Nick, on the other hand, was born in Mumbai to British parents and exposed to the dynamism of the developing world from a young age. A strong-willed idealist, he sought alternatives to traditional education and left school at the age of 17 to pursue his own entrepreneurial endeavors around the world.

Upon meeting in their first job as development practitioners, Martin and Nick compared observations and shared frustrations over the fleeting impacts of the projects on which they worked. They soon discovered that their vastly different experiences had culminated in a shared recognition of the need to examine the shortcomings of traditional development.

 

How could such well-intentioned and well-implemented projects fail?

Martin and Nick took a look at the work they had done to answer this vital, but controversial question. When the pair felt they had identified some of the root causes of these failures, they took these takeaways to their supervisors and other leaders of the major aid programs in the region. What they found were big bureaucracies closed to new ideas. Critical self-examination was not only discouraged, it was considered dangerous.

Far from heeding this discouragement, Martin and Nick’s desire to put their takeaways into action grew stronger with each indication that there was a sector-wide resistance to new approaches to development.

They remained convinced that there was a better way to address poverty—a model that would bring together the power of technology with the proven sustainability of the marketplace and private sector.

Martin, rooted in his engineering background, believed that the right technology could change the lives of millions of people. Nick’s own entrepreneurial experience and appetite for risk added another layer: individuals must have the opportunity to invest in and purchase these technologies themselves. Both agreed that the number one need of the poor is a way to make more money and that, with income security, individuals would prioritize and address their remaining needs for themselves.

They decided to take on a risk that the private sector was not willing to: designing a product exclusively for some of the poorest people in the world, rural African farmers, that would enable them to make a lot more money. Rather than giving these technologies away, they set out to sell them at an affordable price.

In 1991, Martin and Nick founded ApproTEC, now KickStart International, based on their confidence in good design and the entrepreneurial spirit of individuals. They reframed beneficiaries as customers and the products and programs born out of this pivot have since empowered 1,300,000 people to lift themselves out of poverty on their own terms.

Sadly, Nick Moon lost his fight to leukemia on October 10th, 2018. The KickStart community mourns the passing of our beloved co-Founder and Board Member – please read our letter of remembrance from co-Founder and CEO, Dr. Martin Fisher.

Our People
Leadership and Staff
Peter Juma President & Chief Operating Officer Nairobi, Kenya
Martin Fisher, PhD Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer San Francisco, CA
Tom Opapa Director of Global Institutional Partnerships Nairobi, Kenya
Mercy Ngene Global Supply Chain Manager Nairobi, Kenya
Denivas Onyancha Head of Training and Field Innovations Nairobi, Kenya
Nancy Muindi Head of Marketing Nairobi, Kenya
Philip Weiser Director of Development & Individual Giving Boston, USA
Mwaluko Mpangwa Tanzania Country Manager Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Angela Omondi Human Resources Officer Nairobi, Kenya
Hichem Mihoub Head of Strategic Alliances & Coalitional Development New York City, United States
Washington Dozva Southern Africa Regional Manager Harare, Zimbabwe
Dayo Mosobalaje Co-Regional Partnerships Manager, West Africa Lagos, Nigeria
Festus Ademola Sub-Regional Partnerships Manager – West Africa Lagos, Nigeria
Ted Chauluka Malawi Country Manager Lilongwe, Malawi
Katherine Georges Senior Manager, Grants and Institutional Partnerships New York City, United States
Pascal Maitha East Africa Regional Manager Nairobi, Kenya
Silvanos Zengueia Mozambique Country Manager Maputo, Mozambique
Timothy Wabukoti Country Manager, Uganda Kampala, Uganda
Michael Mills Business Development Manager San Francisco, California, USA
Faustin Migisha Rwanda Partnerships and Development Officer Kigali, Rwanda
Ernest Mitei Kenya Country Manager Nairobi, Kenya
Paul Munyala Partnerships and Development Officer Nyanza, Western, and North & Central Rift Regions, Kenya
Batsirai Katsidzira Partnerships and Development Officer Harare, Zimbabwe
Chunda Chunda Partnerships and Development Officer Northern Province, Zambia
Memory Mtambo Partnerships and Development Officer Eastern Province, Zambia
Cynthia Musonye Solar Engineer Product Intelligence and Design Nairobi, Kenya
Albert Lukhale Design Engineer Product Intelligence and Design Nairobi, Kenya
Abubakar Shikanda Product Technician Product Intelligence and Design Nairobi, Kenya
Titus Wafula Pump Tester Product Intelligence and Design Nairobi, Kenya
Board of Directors
Sander Pruijs Chairman of the Board President, Manufacturers Bank Los Angeles, California
Dr. Charles Owubah CEO, Action Against Hunger New York, NY
Jane Okun Bomba President, Saddle Ridge Consulting Denver, CO
Christopher Young VP Entertainment Creation Products, Autodesk Montreal, CA
Tembwe Mutungu Co-founder FirstWave Group Johannesburg, South Africa
David Young Senior Partner and Managing Director - Social Impact, The Boston Consulting Group Boston, MA
Stephen van Helden Principal, Novo Holdings San Francisco, California
Bob Meaney Business Consultant Riverside, CT
Dr. Martin Fisher Co-Founder and CEO, KickStart International San Francisco, CA

Contact Us
International / USA
1849 Geary Blvd # 15908
San Francisco, CA 94115-0908
+ 1 415 346 4820
info@kickstart.org
Kenya
P.O. Box 64142
Nairobi 00620
Kenya
+254 20 374 0176
+254 20 374 0176
kickstart@kickstart.org
Zambia
Plot No. 35864, PHI
Lusaka, Zambia
+260 211 295 690
+260 211 295 690
kickstart.zm@kickstart.org
Nigeria
Infinite Grace Place, #4,
Oyetubo Street off Obafemi Awolowo Way Ikeja
Lagos, Nigeria
+234 803 3996797 / +234 806 5938427
ghanasales@kickstart.org
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