Building a link with students in Burundi
Building a link with students in Burundi

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By Clytie Bunyan

Published: March 30, 2008

It's been more than a year since Tom Phillips went to Africa to teach entrepreneurship at Hope Africa University in Burundi. Phillips stepped out of his comfort zone, his world of handling institutional and individual investments, for a week as a business professor.

Last week, I got the chance to talk to him about the trip. I was curious how he presented entrepreneurship, as he knew it, to people who were just coming out of a 16-year civil war.

Dealing with market swings and asset allocation is second nature to him, but teaching students in east-central Africa about entrepreneurship was quite challenging, said Phillips, president of T.S. Phillips Investments Inc. in Oklahoma City.

He wondered what a businessman from Oklahoma would have in common with the students and whether his lectures would be relevant to their lives.

"For example, it's hard for most of them to grasp the concept of investing when they use every dollar they have for basic subsistence. A person invests with extra dollars, but they didn't have extra dollars,” Phillips said.

So he used basic human qualities to show how entrepreneurship can be cultivated and how entrepreneurs could succeed.

"I had to try to come up with what we have in common with an entrepreneur in Africa — you've got to work hard, be a risk-taker, you've got to be flexible and open-minded. You must have those to be a successful entrepreneur anywhere,” he said.

About 60 to 80 students heard his lectures at the Christian liberal arts university, which also educates non-Christians.

When he wasn't in the classroom, Phillips was assisting other teachers and visiting with the administration. As a board member of Friends of Hope Africa University — a grassroots fundraising arm of the university — he was also there to get an update about the progress and plans for the school.

The university, founded more than five years ago by members of the Free Methodist Church in Nairobi, Kenya, started with 37 students. Enrollment now is about 1,700, Phillips said, so physical expansion is ongoing.

Before Phillips left for Burundi, he'd been warned repeatedly about dangers there, so he wasn't planning to be a tourist. But he still helped with errands around the capital city of Bujumbura, despite a conscious effort to remain inconspicuous.

The U.S. State Department and others said Burundi was not the best place to visit. Forbes magazine listed it as one of the top 10 most dangerous places in the world and a friend suggested he should hire a bodyguard.

He didn't. But he listened when someone who frequently travels to Africa told him he shouldn't "look like an American.”

I was really curious about how he pulled off that one. Phillips is tall, handsome and white (Yes, I know he'd still stand out if he were short and ugly).

"The advice was don't wear jeans, no ball cap, polo shirts, things like that. Look more European,” he said.

Though all sensible advice, Phillips said he never felt threatened or in danger in any way, but he did feel uncomfortable a few times: once when his companion Desire (pronounced Desiray) had to go to what Desire described as "the Muslim hood” to get spark plugs for his car and another occasion when he took Phillips sightseeing and ended up at the Congo border. The State Department had warned he should never leave the city limits of Bujumbura.

But perhaps his greatest danger, though fully vaccinated and medicated, was in dodging mosquitoes that carry yellow fever by day and the malaria mosquitoes at night.

Still, his contribution to the students was worth all his and his family's initial concern, he said.

Phillips said he'll likely return to Burundi in two years.

Related Topics: Political Policy, Politics, Business, Diplomacy, International Relations, Startups