1. Give three compelling examples of how cultural issues affect your project.

As much as our drive is ‘Impact’, there social issues that might affect the Sierra Leone Sickle cell disease diagnostic device project if not navigated with much respect and understanding they deserve. 

One of these would be the direct impact our project will have within the medical circles that are currently in existence right now. The economy in the country is mainly informal and there are members in the community that hold traditional medicinal practices with high regard for reasons that vary from religion to socioeconomic status. Taking that into account, if our project gets to be successfully implemented and expanded to areas outside of Makeni, there are people who are likely to lose a lot of customers due to our project. This fact taken into account, there is bound to be some resistance from the elders within various tribes as they will envision this come to play.

Secondly, the project might face one of its big hurdles when it comes to getting people in the country educated about the nature and motive behind the initiative. Looking back at the history of Sierra Leone, the country has had bad experiences with outside countries trying to influence their politics and economy only for their gain. That fact gives room for suspicion and questioning of our true objective which might not seem convincing to the majority. Human resistance will be a hurdle as we try to make a positive impact. Hence, the spreading of the word of the device and people accepting it might be a tard situation that needs careful handling.

Last, but not least, Sierra Leone’s economy is informal as mentioned before and this informal sector is mostly filled with women. One challenge that this poses for our initiative is that these people will think they don’t have the time to visit the medical institute where sickle cell diagnostics will be administered. Besides the time factor, about 40% of the population lives in urban areas and the rest in rural areas. This presents a barrier of distance and accessibility to the remote that are far away from medical institutes.

These are some of the many social hindrances to the Sickle Cell disease initiative. For some insight about Sierra Leone at a glance, this a good piece to look at, https://www.everyculture.com/Sa-Th/Sierra-Leone.html.

2. Have you experienced or observed any of these social situations at home?

For me, home is back home in Zimbabwe. I personally experienced and observed some of these happen. One that stands out the most began around 2014 when China and Zimbabwe had an alliance that resulted in Chinese people coming in to build roads and certain infrastructure within the country. Although their actions would benefit the citizens as well, people got about their intentions. With such a history of being a colony and being controlled from outside, it’s a norm for the nation to be not accepting of help that comes in ways that are not clearly stated and proved.

Another social situation that is blurry but exists is very much involved in politics. In Zimbabwe, there are two main big tribes, namely the Shona and the Ndebele. Although ideas and projects are good, there are always those in politics that will always have something to say for their own politicals reasons. For example, when a road development project was initiated, it began in the main capital, which is mostly Shona populated and the Ndebele people felt neglected by that initiative and as a result of a few protests and some other factors, the program stopped after the completion of the road to the former president’s hometown. Although the idea was good, the choice of the starting point was politically influenced and resulted in somewhat resistance between the tribes. The social scene being the coexistence of more than one tribe in one country.

3. Give two examples of cultural practices that can be leveraged to addressed community/market problems.

One way to leverage cultural practices is to form alliances with people of Sierra Leone. Due to unfortunate complications of the white savior complexes, making connections with preexisting local communities dedicated to deal with sickle cell is one way to get accepted into the community. It’s easier to have the people who have grown up together in the same struggles to come together and be able to share the relevance of this project than to have foreigners come in and take the complete lead without the host country’s assistance. We can educate a select few talented members of the community and have them understand the idea behind this education. They will then go into various districts and educate the community on some of the real issues their community is facing and that way, they would be advertising and spreading the word of our product.

Another one that might be a bit tricky to navigate will be one that actually incorporates the traditional healers that I have mention earlier on as a way into marketing and also giving people the correct help they need. In this strategy, it would involve teaching the traditional healers about the diseases and make their workplaces points of sickle cell diagnosis. This is even more effective because 1) they don’t lose a lot of customers but instead, they get more 2) they are usually found in all places including remote places and having them as primary medical care providers for sickle cell would decrease the distances that people (who live in rural areas) have to walk to get help 3) Because they are already highly regarded in the community, they will be more effective in spreading and teaching people o better ways to live with sickle cell disease or traits.