Emiliano Mroue
Emiliano Mroue is a social entrepreneur and founder of WARC, an organization that provides smallholder farmers with integrated services and environmentally sustainable practices to help them grow more food, earn higher income, and regenerate agricultural land and soil. He is passionate about technology, food security, and conscious economic growth, and has been instrumental in disseminating regenerative agriculture practices in the Sahel region, connecting the poorest Latin American barrios to the digital world, and re-using waste to decarbonize the aviation industry.
What we learnt
What we learnt
Emiliano Mroue, a social entrepreneur from Argentina, discussed his journey from a corporate job in Europe to starting his own social enterprises in West Africa and Latin America. He shared about his two social enterprises, WARC Africa and Fibrazo, which aim to increase smallholder farmers' income and provide internet connectivity for the rural poor, respectively. Emiliano emphasized the importance of reducing human suffering and supporting nature to create impact.
We also talked about the collaborators involved in development projects and the different responsibilities they hold, such as fundraising, promoting, policy-making, finding opportunities, and tracking progress. He emphasized the importance of involving local communities and collaborating with different stakeholders to create a multiplier effect and make a larger impact. Emiliano highlighted the distinction between tracking progress and reporting, stating that tracking is necessary for effective reporting. He also noted that civic societies, social enterprises, and investors have different approaches to raising awareness.
Moreover, we discussed the interrelationship between various entities in development projects, such as the government, social enterprises, donors, investors, universities, local communities, the UN, and NGOs. Emiliano explained how the government can influence other organizations through policies and incentives, and how social enterprises are influenced by investors. We also talked about the challenges of coordinating stakeholders with different agendas and decision-making processes, and the importance of optimizing who does what with a focus on execution and responsibility assignment. Emiliano stressed the need to eliminate corruption and hidden agendas to ensure everyone is authentic in pursuing their goals.
Lastly, Emiliano emphasized the critical role of the private sector in creating innovation and knowledge execution, which depends on existing structures and knowledge. Overall, our conversation highlighted the need for collaboration and aligning goals between stakeholders to create meaningful impact in development projects.
If you had a magic wand…
It's tough to say because I think success is basically a matter of many small things working together. So, if I have to choose only one thing, the most important thing is to ensure that everyone is authentic in pursuing their goals. In other words, to eliminate corruption and hidden agendas, so that if we say we are going to work for A, we are all aligned in working for A and that's the only thing that matters. I believe that authenticity in objectives will make societies a lot more coherent.
Key quotes
‘However, I think that more than anything, the communities need to determine their priorities and what they want for themselves. They are fully empowered entities and outsiders sometimes forget that. We think we know it all and impose solutions that might not align with the community’s goals. Therefore, interactions are very important.’’
‘The higher we are, the more we look beyond ourselves and our families, and the more we look at our communities, provinces, countries, and the world, the higher the level of authenticity we will achieve. It's not a coincidence that the ones who look more into the world are the ones that have fewer basic needs. If your family is hungry, that's the only thing you will care about, and that's logical. This is also true at a societal level.’
‘I think it's a matter of optimizing who does what, taking into consideration our general goal, which I think is the easy part. I don't think that's the toughest part. I think it's a lot more complicated on the coordination and execution than on agreeing that we need to produce more food, eat better, more sustainably protect the soil. We all agree on those elements. But, going to the ground and actually doing it is the tough thing.’