This article originally appeared in the June’25 magazine issue of Electronic Specifier Design – see ES’s Magazine Archives for more featured publications.
By Karen Mascarenhas, KMPR
This takes me to Sarah Annable Gardner, CEO of Action Through Enterprise (ATE). My objective in interviewing her to is to secure interest within the electronics industry and marry this to what she is trying to achieve – bringing forward success stories (perhaps not on the scale of that achieved by Bill Gates but, you never know…)
Sarah, I am delighted to be able to conduct my first interview with a CEO outside the confines of the electronics industry – someone I have only spoken to a few times but who has made such an impression on me. The work you are spearheading is vitally important, and its success is so critically linked to low-cost electronics tech. I am intrigued to know the history behind your extraordinary venture.
It began in 2012, when I decided I needed an ‘adventure’ – I put my job as a primary school teacher on hold and went as a VSO volunteer to a remote corner of Ghana, the Lawra District in the Upper West part of the country which had a 100% poverty incidence. I saw hunger and deprivation all around. Despite not understanding the problems, I thought I had the answers. The people of Lawra quickly put me right. One headteacher told me that hungry children can’t learn, regardless of how much I tried to “improve teaching standards”.
Some women with HIV didn’t appreciate my well-meaning lessons about condom use, but needed sewing machines so they could support their families. People taught me that the greatest strength I could offer was the ability to listen!
Once I listened, I acted. I persuaded my fantastic family to back me, and we launched Action Through Enterprise with the modest ambition to feed a school, back a few businesses, and help a handful of disabled children and their mums.
Today, I’m proud to say that we’ve given over three thousand children the chance to learn by providing school meals, educational materials, and sanitary pads. Via our Enterprise programme, we backed over 150 small businesses with grants and training – with most tripling their profits. We have given over 700 disabled children and their carer’s support, learning, advocacy, laughter, and love via our inclusion programme. Recently we hit the historic milestone of getting 100 disabled children into school.
Perhaps, I’m most proud of how ATE has grown from my personal passion to something real and sustainable, with 50 staff in Ghana. With the community at its heart, we work through village hubs to deliver our projects and have recently replicated the model in neighbouring Nandom – the furthest district from Ghana’s capital, Accra.
Technology is increasingly key in our mission to tackle poverty and create opportunities. Our districts are cut off from the rest of Ghana in so many basic ways – especially technology. Most people have never seen a computer before and children learn IT from a blackboard! So, we’ve just launched Technology and Learning Zones in Lawra and Nandom Inclusion Centres, with managers who will also conduct outreach with rural schools, so no-one is left behind. It’s a game changer!
Having written for companies in the electronics, medical, aerospace & defence sectors, for decades, I have come to realise that technology can be used for innovative applications and equally, at times, to bring about vast damage. Drones being used for delivering life-saving blood to remote regions of Rwanda’s maternity units save many lives but drones delivering ordinance bring utter carnage to war zones. What specifically do you need from the tech companies of today to help with your life changing educational and training facilities?
That’s an exciting question. We are ambitious for the people of the Upper West, and we will aim to harness every opportunity technology can offer to bring the change they need.
There is huge scope just within education. How can we get tech and connectivity to our most remote schools, where they don’t even have electricity? Can we use remote learning? Can technology help disabled children learn, communicate, and play a full role in society? So, our two Inclusion Centres will offer free access to computers, providing IT skills and connectivity alongside library facilities.
Other key areas are commerce and farming, where we already provided some equipment and training – enabling farmers to grow food all year round and break the constant cycle of hunger that communities face. We are so keen to explore ways technology can assist with the catastrophic climate change.
We would love someone to contact us, having read this article, to help us with enhanced solutions through technology – companies like Raspberry Pi. We can offer something in return to our partners/collaborators: the opportunity for tech companies to conduct pilot projects with innovative technology in our new district where baseline data can be gathered – enabling monitoring and evaluation of changes from the start. This could help our own projects and then create successful models to be implemented worldwide.
The challenges that you have set yourself and your team are high. With help from others (Sir John Sawers, Lord Austin, and Lord Boateng) the work that you undertake obviously has wide political support. Does this then lead to real financial backing? Especially, now the UK PM is slashing UK Foreign Aid from the International Development budget to a meagre 0.3%!
We’re delighted to receive incredible support across the political spectrum – it’s been a big part of how we operate that we can engage with anyone about our work, even the people who aren’t usually interested in international development or Africa!
Sir John, with his insight into geopolitics, is strong on this – that building resilient, thriving, and hopeful communities in remote and potentially vulnerable places like Lawra and Nandom actually makes everyone safer, reducing the chances of mass economic migration. Over the years, we’ve built wonderful relationships within my own community (Wiltshire, UK), with corporates, trusts, and, more recently, with politicians who combine to help bring funds in. I’m grateful to our devoted core of long-standing donors but we need to unlock long term investments from tech companies, too.
We envisage a truly symbiotic process of benefits – both for ourselves and our partner companies. The readership will know how much untapped potential there exists in Africa, and we’re keen to explore all options.
Can you see this model that you and your team have created expand from Ghana to other countries? Would you expect certain aspect of your work to implement its positive impact globally, perhaps, given reasonable resources?
Our model is both replicable and bespoke, which seems unique. Working through local hubs, with dedicated local managers who know their community inside out, everything is done in lockstep with the community which means money is not wasted on projects that no-one wants. Expansion to Nandom, rolling out over the next three years, is carefully thought through, and we have plans for a third district to launch in 2027.
So far, so good because there are many language and cultural similarities between Lawra and Nandom but I believe it could work beyond Ghana.
Trusted advisors like Sir John Sawers believe our innovative model could have real impact elsewhere – helping us get the support we would need for this.
I am impressed with your vision in terms of time and total commitment as ATE now employs 50 staff and is lifting entire communities of over 50,000 people out of poverty. Where did you find time to write your book ‘To Lawra with Love’? A poignant work full of honesty, warmth, revelation, humour, pathos, and ultimately of hope – highlighting what can be achieved when two villages come together, one in Ghana and one in the UK.
I’m so pleased you enjoyed the book, as I loved writing it. It’s warts-and-all, but with my friend Michele Carlisle. The love affair between my two villages, Ramsbury and Lawra, is one of the many beautiful things that has emanated from my ‘Ghana adventure’ – not least my amazing daughter Aviella.
I hope it can be an inspiring read for people to do something interesting, challenging, and ultimately so satisfying for themselves!
Mostly done during lockdown, I had time to think about everything and what I’d learnt. It was an opportunity to get something good out of a challenging situation which has been the story of Action Through Enterprise all along.
