Partnering with Humility and Audacity.

Ethiopia’s chicken industry was almost non-existent when Dave Ellis and his co-founders Joe Shields and Trent Koutsoubos embarked, in 2010, on a bold adventure to start Flow Equity. Today the company distributes more than 25 million chickens a year in Ethiopia, and has begun expanding into Rwanda and Uganda.

“You know you're really there in the households, when your car breaks down on the side of the road and the house you go into for help has 5 of your chickens — that happened to me last month,” Dave told me. Since founding Flow Equity, Dave, Joe and Trent have championed sustainable sector growth to increase smallholder farmers’ incomes, employing 1,600 people and distributing chickens to 5 million smallholder farmers each year.

A chicken farmer and Uzima Chicken customer in Rwanda (Photo: Jean Bizimana)

A number of factors have contributed to the company’s success, but one stands out: Dave Ellis understands how to build partnerships to achieve audacious goals. Over the past eleven years, his chicken companies have partnered with governments, investors, grantmakers, and community leaders to reimagine a broken agricultural system and successfully rebuild it in ways that put the farmers at the center.

As a foreigner coming to Ethiopia from the U.S., Dave was aware that he had to work hard to earn trust. “If you enter as a guest, you might eventually be treated as a local,” Dave said to me. To this end, he’s learned to speak Amharic and spent more than seven years living in Ethiopia. From the outset, it was clear to Dave that the company would succeed only if it partnered with the government. “For the last 30-40 years,” he said, “almost all agricultural inputs sold to farmers were supplied through the government extension system.” Not surprisingly, such government initiatives are seen as the protectors of farmers, and the private sector is held with deep suspicion.

Developing a working partnership with the local government started with aligning objectives. The government already had been trying — unsuccessfully — to serve smallholder farmers, yet it brought trusted relationships and reach. Dave’s company lacked scale, but was able to listen deeply and serve farmers as customers. To engage effectively with the local government, Dave assigned a third of field staff to keep “a smooth relationship and open communication, making sure we are staying as aligned as possible.” Being clear that his mission was to help smallholder farmers rather than simply maximize profit opened possibilities as well. As the business expert Stephen Covey has written, progress happens at “the speed of trust.” 

Uzima Chicken employees preparing chicks in Rwanda (Photo: Jean Bizimana)

Through Flow Equity, Dave introduced EthioChicken in Ethiopia and Uzima Chicken in Rwanda and Uganda. These models empower agents who purchase 1,000 baby chicks at a time from the company. Those agents then sell the chickens in batches of 3-5 to local farmers who sell the chickens’ eggs in local markets and also feed their children. The company’s approach decentralizes power. Rather than control every part of the value chain, Dave explains, the company “created 8,000 partners (or agents) throughout the country: 8,000 small businesses so that we’re all partnering together.” The secret, Dave says, lies in giving people as much freedom as possible, creating a culture of autonomy, and decentralization. “As companies scale they are tempted consolidate control and decision-making, we have to resist that urge and keep decision-making as close to the customer and to the real work as possible. That kind of culture helps people take responsibility and ownership and develop and grow.”

That kind of culture also works. Farmers have seen their incomes rise 20% and most agents have worked themselves out of poverty. Childhood malnutrition has fallen. EthioChicken alone roughly injects a quarter billion dollars into the nation by building domestic markets. So why did Dave and his co-founder Joe decide to start a second and third chicken company in Uganda and Rwanda, respectively? “Our purpose is to make smallholder farmers healthier and wealthier. Smallholder farmers are not confined to Ethiopia’s borders. There are a half billion smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa. So we went to Rwanda to see if our model could be replicated.”

An Uzima Chicken agent and farmer prepare chicks in Rwanda (Photo: Jean Bizimana)

Apparently, it can. “This year in Rwanda, we’ll sell almost 4 million chickens in a country of 12.6 million people.” Dave also understands that new kinds of partnership are required in each environment. In Rwanda, in addition to partnering with the government, the company has built a network of village ambassadors, “model farmers recommended by local women’s cooperatives, people trusted and vetted by their communities. In Rwanda we have over 1,000 ambassadors; in Uganda, 800, and we’re expecting to grow to over 5,000 in the next few years.”

Operations in Rwanda and Uganda have reinforced the importance of building grassroots partnerships as critical to serving smallholder farmers. Building such partnerships again is rooted in the slow, hard work of earning trust. Including women is fundamental to success. Dave explains, “chickens don’t go very far from home, so inevitably it is the women who look after the chickens and harvest the eggs. We and our partners believe that this [focus on women] is increasing the decision-making power of rural women by giving them more disposable income through the sales of the chicken’s eggs.” That’s hard to measure, but it matters.

A farmer feeds chicks in Rwanda (Photo: Jean Bizimana)

We as a world are now interdependent and our individual and shared dignity is paramount to building the kinds of companies that matter not just for shareholders but for employees, for communities, and for the earth itself. In other words, reimagining a new economy starts with each of us — with what we buy and consume and the many ways we partner to do more than we could ever do alone. Dave Ellis is a new leader who envisions a new economy in which the role of business evolves “to create sustainable values for all stakeholders... I think business will have to adapt and will have to develop more harmonious relationships. If they don’t, someone else will. So as consumer consciousness evolves, companies will evolve with us.” Partnering effectively is key to that evolution.

Dave Ellis, Co-founder of Flow Equity (Photo: Aishwarya Arumbakkam)

This is part eight in Jacqueline Novogratz's monthly series on Moral Leadership, featuring a new generation of leaders for a new economy. The photos in this piece were created by Aishwarya Arumbakkam and Jean Bizimana, grantees of the Magnum Foundation, as part of a partnership to invite readers into the stories that are shaping our shared future.

About Acumen 

Acumen is changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in companies, leaders and ideas. We invest patient capital in businesses whose products and services are enabling the poor to transform their lives. 

About Magnum Foundation

The Magnum Foundation is a nonprofit organization that expands creativity and diversity in documentary photography, activating new ideas through the innovative use of images. Through grant making and fellowships, the Magnum Foundation supports a global network of social justice and human rights-focused photographers, and experiments with new models for storytelling.