Brigham Young University student Grady Call thought the motto “The world is our campus” was a little cheesy when he first arrived to campus. But when he competed in the Computers for Change Case Competition hosted by the BYU Marriott School of Business’s Whitmore Global Business Center (GBC), he realized the phrase held some truth for him. “Here we are learning about Africa from Provo,” says Call, who’s studying international relations and economics. “It’s been a really cool feeling to be able to work on things that can have a real difference there.”
Call, a native of Logandale, Nevada, competed alongside Morgan Topham and Deven Gogarty—friends of his from the Ballard Center for Social Impact. The trio formed one of 28 teams working on a solution to a real-life problem: how to build a nonprofit that can accept an annual donation of 10,000 laptops, transport them to a country in Africa the team chose, and then distribute them to BYU–Pathway Worldwide students.
By distributing the laptops—provided from the surplus of a company with ties to the GBC—the proposed nonprofit would provide BYU–Pathway students in Africa with better access to technology for both classwork and remote job opportunities. “I think the benefit that technology can add in a person’s life is significant,” says Topham, a recent marketing graduate from Alpine, Utah. “Knowing that the laptops were available and realizing there is an actual need, we just jumped in.”
From the outset, the team focused on more than just the prompt’s constraints as they created their solution. “We tried to solve the challenges as best we could, rather than just present a pretty solution on paper that would fall flat,” Call says.
Gogarty, a finance student from Fort Collins, Colorado, describes the problem as “really, really, complex." The team not only needed to determine the logistics of shipping and distributing the laptops but also create a sustainable business plan that could create jobs in Nigeria, the country they chose as their focus for the competition. “When we were creating our business idea, we were impressed by the education, experience, drive, and acumen to run these businesses that people in Nigeria have,” he says.
“But there were also a lot of limitations,” explains Gogarty, such as the country’s rolling blackouts to conserve power and a high crime rate. To craft a solution, the team spent weeks interviewing people with established supply chains in Africa as well as native Nigerians. “We knew that as three students here in Provo, we just don’t know enough to solve problems in Africa,” Call says. “One of our biggest strategies has been to involve people in Nigeria who actually have lived experience and who understand the systems in place there.”
Through informational interviews and research, possible solutions became clearer to the team. Using the donated laptops to create tech centers, similar to computer labs, would allow a nonprofit to expand access and not rely on individuals’ access to power. Partnerships with local NGOs that already ship products (and investments in shipping insurance) could mitigate risks from crime. And renting out the tech centers’ spaces to international hiring companies would generate not only profit to make the center sustainable but also job opportunities for local Nigerians, including the large population of BYU–Pathway students in the country.
After about a month of prep work, the team presented their plan—a hypothetical company called TechConnect—to the judges and won first place in the case competition. Call says that while winning was exciting, it was only a milestone toward their goal of making their plan a reality. More satisfying, he explains, have been the responses from the individuals whose communities they aim to benefit. “It has been so refreshing to see people hear our idea and get excited the way we’re excited,” Call says. “That increased validation makes us so excited to continue working on it.”
Topham says that the Computers for Change Case Competition was a good reminder of what they’re capable of. “When you get a couple of people to take time to put their heads together, you can come up with solutions,” Topham says. “You can make an impact from wherever you are.”