Giving Compass' Take:

• This piece from the Creating Prosperity Series by The Christensen Institute, profiles EarthEnable, a private social enterprise that is building affordable, hard, earthen floors for families that currently live on dirt floors.

• How can donors focus on elevating social enterprises that focus on economic development? 

• Read about how to build a social impact business. 

More than half of Africa’s 1.2 billion people live in rural areas where problems often arise due to the poor housing conditions in which many people live. In Rwanda, for instance, more than 75% of the two and a half million homes have dirt floors. This means that when it rains, puddles of muddy water can easily become breeding grounds for mosquitoes. In addition, dirt floors, as the name implies, are dirty and can contaminate people’s belongings.

The alternative solution, investing in concrete floors, is too expensive for most people in Rwanda and across sub-Saharan Africa, where the per capita income is approximately $705, and $1,461, respectively. In Rwanda, for example, it would cost the average person several months’ worth of wages to install concrete flooring. Fortunately, one nonprofit has identified this as an opportunity to create a new market for affordable flooring.

For roughly $3 a square meter, EarthEnable provides affordable hard and earthen floors made from rocks, sand, clay, and water—all locally sourced materials—and sealed with a proprietary oil that hardens to form a plastic-like resin. An EarthEnable floor is 75% cheaper than concrete, and is also having an impact on the health of its customers as 54% of families are reporting positive health differences in the first month after installation. But its impact goes beyond that—the organization is also providing much-needed jobs to locals in the community, and generating tax-revenue for the government through each sale.

In this installment of our Innovators Creating Prosperity series, we chatted with EarthEnable co-founder Gayatri Datar about the origins of her organization and its impact on prosperity in Rwanda.

Read the full article about innovators creating prosperity by Efosa Ojomo at Christensen Institute.