The posts in this category are thoughts and reflections from a sustainable development course delivered to MBA and other graduate business students at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. I traveled with the group to video the trip (although I’m not at all a videographer, which might explain why nothing to date has become of the footage).

A main story vein is connected to the sustainable development, creative capitalism, and aid-for-Africa discussions occurring in business, social responsibility, TED/Gates Foundation, and other such circles. So-called emerging economies are—thanks to the way the current economic crises has redefined risk—rising to a more prominent place in our investment considerations.

The course’s international travel component is very different from the approach other universities take with international travel courses in two important ways:

1. The travel component is not the focal point of the course: sustainable development in emerging markets is. On-the-ground experiences of the cultural and business landscape are simply a necessity for effective learning outcomes.
2. Unlike most University travel courses (where students do things like visit expats in a boardroom then climb on a tour bus for sightseeing), Daniels’ visits are tied to actual projects the students deliver for the partnering enterprise. Like sustainable development itself, there are multiple value-added outcomes with such an innovative approach.

Jay’s running late, so we wait. And I think of Amanda Pollock. She’s with the other group of students who just left Ahafo and heading to Akyem—where our group just was.

Amanda’s rare. She’s one of the strategic brains behind the class but also the person who makes it go. Relationship purveyor. Hotel booker. Curriculum advisor. Fixer.

She’s also well travelled in Africa. She studied it in grad school and married a South African. She’s been all over the continent.

This is my first trip to Africa, but I’ve been to other international locales that are similarly challenging to get around and do things. Its a shared perspective that I think is bringing Amanda and I closer on this trip. Places like Ghana can seem capricious. Seemingly random problems with seemingly easy solutions that you are totally unqualified to help solve, even if you’re convinced you are. Patience is vital. Adaptability primal.

Amanda introduced me to a term: T.A.B.: That’s Africa Baby. I smile about that as I wait for Jay. (Amanda kinda makes you smile like that.)

Jay arrives. It seems that there was a multi vehicle auto accident involving a large goods carrier truck. It happened outside of the fence line, but right in front of the expat village. There might have been a death. Certainly there are serious injuries. Newmont isn’t obligated to help (although their health care and emergency response infrastructure has significantly more resources that the surrounding municipalities). But there were Newmont employees involved. So Randy dispatched some vehicles.

As is the custom in places like Ghana, where police are rare and ineffective and laws are vague points of reference, some of the Ghanaians were taking matters into their own hands. Exacting a bit of justice. The at-fault driver had abandoned his car and fled into the woods. It was a mob scene, and escalating.

Jay tells us about this quickly as if to get it out of the way. I don’t think he noticed the looks on our faces, the degree to which our jaws had dropped.

“Anyway, I think we have the Newmont folks in a safe place. Sorry I’m late. I thought I’d begin the presentation with some photos of the mine site. Is that okay?”

I instinctively look for Amanda. That’s not okay, Jay. But that’s Africa, baby.

If you want some gold today, you don’t settle in a quaint mountain town in the Rockies filled with scrappy boot strappers singing Colorado My Home Sweet Home in hopes of discovering a nice little vein you can claim.

Too many people have done that already.

To get some gold today, you gotta find it and figure out how to do operations in the furthest flung corners of the earth. In the Andes on the Chilean-Argentinean border. In the Kyrgyz Republic just north of the China border. Or maybe North of Cajamarca, Peru.

You blast and scrape gaping pits out of the ground. It leaves a bit of a mark: If your pit is the largest, it’s square footage will be four times the size of Manhattan’s.

After clear cutting and scarring roads through the terrain to get them there, you use those truly uncanny haul trucks that you see in environmental scare documentaries to move the raw earth you dig up. The shoulder of a six-foot man comes to its wheel hub. Your mine pit miniaturizes them like a model scene on the set of a Terminator movie.

You chunk, grind and mash your raw earth into a fine mud using machinery of the kind that could fill an entire chapter in a Robert Kennedy Jr. book.

Then you dump a bunch of cyanide over the mud to get the gold out. And the used cyanide has to go somewhere. Preferably not in the clean water lake behind the dam you’ve created for your grinding and mashing and mud-making operations. So you build another dam and try to convince everyone that pouring cyanide and sulfur dioxide in there —open to the atmosphere—actually makes it inert. That it’ll be okay for generations that come after the mine closes*.

If your mine is really kickin’, you’ll get seven ounces of gold for around every 30 tons of earth you process. More than likely you’ll get one or two ounces. Maybe.

So what on earth was the Daniels College of Business thinking? A world-ranked business school that’s built a reputation on ethics is going to deliver a class that teaches sustainable development by working in partnership with Newmont Mining. Really.

Then again, like other b-schools it could have looked at Honda Hybrid market development. WalMart eco-friendly fleet renovations. Replacing standard light bulbs with fluorescents in Sears stores. Where’s the fun in that? Or, more to the point, where’s the learning in that?

This class will work hands-on and on location in the mud, dust, extravagance, and chemicals that is the gold mining business. With a company that’s had their share of troubles. Not the least of which includes a few employees actually jailed in Indonesia under charges of polluting an area bay.

So what will Newmont teach us? Should we even bother? Can gold mining even be green? I suppose this could all be a PR stunt on Newmont’s part. Maybe partnering in such ways with third party organizations will bring them good press (if I was their PR consultant, that’s exactly what I’d advise they do).

Agree with former CEO Wayne Murdy’s accolades? Think all that glitter is gilded? Think Newmont—and the gold industry in general—is the evil corporate empire writ large?

————
* (This is a communications issue, by the way. This is exactly how to make it inert. Get geeky about cyanide and check out this article.)

There was also Live Aid. A purging of self-indulgent guilt from an especially gilded time. We did good, didn’t we? We bought concert tickets around the world. Watched the making of the video. Subscribed to MTV.

Despite the altruism, there are some that would like to forget Live Aid as well. To some, it put irrevocable contexts around African nations that have mitigated their growth and defined narrow (patronizing?) solutions that these countries are struggling to overcome still.

Africans are victims in need of aid. They’re mired in corruption, disease, and war.

We still need rock stars and movie stars to help guide our conscience. Give (what you can, or billions). Save (adopt). Help (conspiRED).

So can the core attributes of business—bringing innovation to market, empowering people to take risks and receive rewards—contribute? Can business be an agent alongside NGOs, nonprofits, health care, and the legal system to enact social change?

People like Dambisa Moyo are challenging the stereotypes. Organizations like TED have a digital dog-ear dedicated to Africa. And mainstream media dedicate a resource here and there to the issue.

The most obvious places where this type of work is actually executed is occurring in small, niche corners of business like micro finance, mobile phones to rural areas, and battling malaria and AIDS.

But Newmont would have you think that a behemoth open pit mine can play a similar role.

After all, Newmont’s social license to operate in Ghana (more on that in a following post), and thus their ability to return profits to their shareholders, depends on being invited into places like Ghana. Which requires them to be good citizens. And a big part of that is to return sustainable value to Africans.

Exploitive? Innovative?

[EDIT: This issue is nothing new for places like Ghana. Here’s a history from TED.]

We have new relationships, and that changes things. Discussions have shifted from theories about relocation operations to relocating people. People we now know.

Their lives will be turned upside down if the mine opens. For good (residents have high hopes for jobs and some have even higher hopes for big returns on their land), for bad (students reported hearing from mothers that a mine will bring people from totally different cultures to their tight-knit towns), and indifferent (a cook in the Newmont encampment told me that she’d be OK with a mine opening because they’ll finally put a bus route through her town).

A student in a rare moment of doubt tells me “Hard to believe all this is for gold. I mean, its not like it’s a critical resource for human survival.” I immediately thought of gaudy jewelry. Glitter.

Before you posit that gold is a luxury not worthy of the impact it takes to produce it, consider gold’s many uses. And gold (and its value) lasts. It might very well be…well…sustainable.

As one expert puts it: “gold is also nearly indestructible; it does not disappear through corrosion as iron does, does not vanish into smoke in a fire, and is not dissolved or ruined by water, including salt water.”

And as a Newmont exec put it: “Gold is the only thing of value that, for the most part, is still around. Very little gold disappears.” It’s reused and recycled.

I also considered that my knee jerk reaction to gold was ethnocentric. Certainly for many peoples around the world, it’s as central to their culture as food. Marriage ceremonies. Religion.

Plenty of controversy surrounding gold. But one thing’s not controversial: it sure ain’t going anywhere.

Seems to me the real question is, how will we decide to go about getting it?

The task is ungraspable. Items on an endless to-do list: Energy needs. Relocating multiple villages, maybe 10,000 people. Roads and access concerns. NGO buy-in. Still not sure if local Chiefs will give their approval (despite not having de facto governance, politicians and enterprises must have their buy-in). Locations of sustainable farm training facilities. Evaluation of available and competent labor. Evaluation of available and competent ex-pat labor.

Oh — and is there enough gold in the ore samples to be profitable.

What also struck me was the water needs. One Newmont engineer told me he’s struggling with a solution to re-routing rivers and streams for the water supply. You need a lot of water to mine gold. A fresh and plentiful water supply for two lakes: a clean one for the water needs of the processing operations, and another to mix with the used cyanide and sulfur dioxide in the destruction process.

It was time for a beer in Newmont’s temporary encampment. A small little oasis, oddly. Reliable electricity, running water. Air conditioning. A small bar. A far cry from the mud huts and lean-to shanties we toured all day. If this is what Newmont can build temporarily, their fully operational mine must be a wonder. (We’ll see that next week.)

The beer was good. Scott McLagan, the lead professor and the Director of the executive programs at Daniels, had just debriefed the student teams. They were wandering a bit—trying to find focus for their projects. A balance of academic requirements and delivering something of value for Newmont. Measuring sustainable development efforts and the development of a Ghanaian foundation.

Not exactly a multiple choice exam.

“There’s no book for this stuff,” Scott told me. “Newmont is doing completely new things in Africa. Sustainability on this scale, and this integrated, is totally new.”

The African earth isn’t the only ground Newmont’s breaking. They’re working with a model of sustainability similar to what Daniels teaches. A nice alignment with the Newmont approach of juggling multiple systems. But charts and theories are eaten alive by the doing.

“Learning happens at the extremes,” Scott continued. “Think about it: Newmont’s business model is as complex and capital intensive as they come. Most of their workforce is overseas in multiple and remote locations. They arrive in the sticks of Ghana like an alien race. They promise new wealth creation, but a huge environmental impact.

“And they’ll have to move people who have lived here for generations. How do you value sustenance farming land? By the market value? That’d be next to nothing. And what happens when a financial wind fall comes to someone who’s never known financial management?”

I point out that that doesn’t even touch the environmental stuff. Like diverting streams.

“Or government stuff,” he says, practically brushing off green as if it’s the easiest part. “Newmont wants to be invited back. Where do they draw the line between good citizenship—building a public bathroom or a school is a rounding error in their corporate budget. But is that their job? Their duty to the shareholders?”

I look over my beer and around the bar. No students. They’re at work in their teams to tackle just these issues. Trying to find focus to their deliverables.

It’s very real to them. They’re on a deadline. A bit extreme.

There appears to be very few international travel classes like this in higher ed. Amanda Pollock, Daniels executive program staff member and the co-brainchild behind the program, is the person who actually makes it all happen. Sold it to Daniels management. Promotes the program. Helps create the curriculum and on-the-ground integration. Books the buses. Brings the gifts to our hosts.

She’s worked in other Universities coordinating travel abroad programs. And she agrees.

“Most travel abroad programs are tourist courses. They’re ineffective in delivering any kind of sense of culture, and what its like to do business abroad.

“The goal of this class is create value on multiple levels: a more valuable learning experience for students. Valuable deliverables for partnering enterprises. Valuable research to bring back to Daniels faculty. And sustainable development practices that add value to Africans.”

Ever been on a University international travel course? What’s been your experience?

And a community center in the middle of it. The gathering place for middle management to vent frustrations of Denver senior leadership, share stories of near mishaps, talk about home.

It was here, drinking beer and eating bar-b-queue, when a concept that’s been bouncing around in my head finally settled.

Months later back in Denver, I met with a friend who’s an executive coach. We were talking about marketing, branding, reputation management and how the best executed plans have little to do with good marketing, and everything to do with how well the marketing consultant understands the culture of business.

She said: “As a CEO once told me, culture eats strategy for lunch.”

There are no power point slides here in the community center-cum-bar. No memos. Top to bottom, with a bit of alcohol loosening the corporate line, Newmont employees talk about their larger purpose convincingly. They truly believe that the gold they’re mining is turning a nice profit, yes. But it’s lifting people out of poverty. It’s making a difference in people’s lives. And improving Ghana for the long term.

As he ordered another beer, the guy in charge of training told me:

“Our job is to work ourselves out of job. Ghanaians can do this. We’re teaching them to fish.”

It’s hard to find organizations with this kind of consistent messaging. It’s hard to pull off. Newmont is either really good at message control, or authentic.

Today we visited the Elima Slave castle. Stood in the dungeons. Walked through the gate that led to the ships. This place was only the beginning of the atrocities. It’s futile to describe the emotions. Multilayered, complex, sickening.

A thought struck me on the bus back to the hotel. It isn’t exaggerating to suggest that we find ourselves facing a new world. A world with unexampled challenges, a totally opaque future. But with the same undying hope that we just can’t seem to shake.

As an agent of defining this new world, capitalism is facing the same question that faced settlers of that other new world that was built on the backs of exploited people.

Today, we ask ourselves to learn. We ask ourselves, “now that we can do anything, how will we choose to do it?”

He and I are having an early breakfast in the empty mess hall. He’s patient with my questions.

Of course it’s challenging to work with local NGO’s the way you’re describing but you in the west will never understand the myriad of cultural threads that tangle their agendas… No, I don’t miss the straightforward office work in Accra but there are days when it all seems futile but I’ll never give up because I love my country with a vengeance and the people even more… Ghana can gain more from learning from companies like Newmont so we can do it on our own and that’s far better than the fleeting jobs and income international companies provide… Newmont is saying the right things and they’re acting on it so yes there is trust being built but Ghana has a long history of exploitation from gold mining companies… Yes, I know some good places to hear music in Accra here’s my cell phone number call me when you get back there.

“If Newmont’s approach to sustainability works, and more corporations adopt their practices, would it make you more at ease with western companies doing business in Ghana?”

Big smile.

“Did you know the Africa Cup kicks off in a week and Accra will host several matches? Ghana will be a showcase for African progress. It’s our chance to lead.”

I don’t watch soccer…err, football. I guess I better start.