Satyam Ramnauth & Mary Porter Peschka

Satyam Ramnauth: I come from a very small island called Mauritius. We’ve been lucky in terms of leadership and we’ve been able to create a level of development which is often talked about in Africa. And I think taking that experience is what has motivated me to stay in Africa and work in Africa.

Mary Peschka: So I have a personal connection to Mauritius. My father was in a car accident there when he was a young U.S. naval officer and when he was sent back to the U.S. to convalesce my mother was his nurse – so they fell in love and got married and the rest was history, so I’ve always felt that I need to go to Mauritius to the very beginning.

So you’re in Madagascar now?

Satyam: Yes, I am in Madagascar. Sadly, in the 70’s, they took a bit of a political turn, and that political turn, history has shown, hasn’t been for the better. And today, Madagascar faces very deep poverty, fragmented institutions, a political environment that doesn’t make development easy, a small private sector but very resilient in the face of what they have lived over the last 50 years.

Mary: So 10 years from now, when you think about Bovima and Madagascar, what do you think is going to remain with you? What are you going to carry with you?

Satyam: Not long ago I was in Canada, and I saw a restaurant advertising Zebu beef on the menu and I did ask, and they said yes they do get it sometimes. What I would like to see in 10 years’ time is not only Bovima, but is also the concept that the Madagascar brand – which is known in vanilla, which is known in chocolate, which is lesser-known in coffee. Madagascar brand of quality, Madagascar brand of exclusiveness, would also reach the Zebu beef, and creating a dynamic in the agri-business, of which Bovima will be part.

Mary: You know I can relate to that, because a week ago I was at an Afghan restaurant here in D.C. and the waiter was very impressed that I knew the green raisin, the dried green raisin was the Shindohani raisin and that’s because when I joined IFC, my first project was the Afghanistan Horticulture Export Development project, where I worked on the Shindohani raisin and pomegranates.

It’s interesting to think about how far we’ve come in terms of development thinking. I reflect back on my very first job at the U.S. Agency for International Development and having a couple of colleagues counsel me that I should go back to school and get a different degree because private sector development wasn’t real development. And then, maybe a decade after that having people tell me private sector development in the more challenging markets of places like Afghanistan was a premature effort for us to be making and here we are now, and I think we now have consensus across the different players that we’re not going to achieve for example the Sustainable Development Goals if we don’t have robust private sector development across a wide array of countries, from the poorest of the poor to the fragile and conflicted. It’s kind of cool in one’s career to see the story unfold that fully.