Alef MEULENBERG

Alef is transforming marginalized township communities by providing local individuals with multiple pathways and opportunities to improve their socio-economic outcomes.

Alef is transforming marginalized township communities across South Africa into investible, self-sufficient, and thriving places of opportunity. People living in townships in South Africa face limited choices in terms of basic needs like food, healthcare, and childcare, as well as the economic opportunities afforded them. Most commute out of their communities to find work. For healthcare, they must wait in long lines at government clinics. Opportunities for skills development or training brought in by government and civil society organizations are often pre-defined and take-it-or-leave-it. In this context, Alef is empowering people with the dignity of choice and the opportunities to improve their socio-economic outcomes and those of their communities. His organization, Rhiza Babuyile, creates multiple pathways for people to enhance their skills and abilities to unlock economic opportunity, bridges the gap between talent in the townships and formal markets, and enables investible opportunities within these communities, leading to inclusive and self-sustaining economic growth that empowers marginalized people in townships to not rely on external aid to thrive.

A crucial element of Alef’s strategy is deploying market-creating innovations to establish new affordable markets for essential services. Examples include early childhood development impact bonds that equip principals of early childhood development (ECD) centers with the financing and entrepreneurial tools to improve and grow their services and empower nurses to operate their own primary care clinics that provide low-cost services to marginalized communities. Alef also provides opportunities for youth and adults to develop entrepreneurial or career skills in other sectors of interest to them or need to their communities.

His vision is to ignite a mindset shift in how society tackles inequality, demonstrating the power of community-driven solutions to unlock the potential of Africa’s most marginalized populations. Rather than relying on ongoing external funding and aid, his model focuses on empowering communities to generate their own livelihoods and services through market creation and participation in the economy. By incubating enterprises, job opportunities and affordable services, this approach puts communities on a long-term trajectory to meet their own needs and aspirations with dignity. In addition, Alef is changing the perception of what an entrepreneur looks like and that low-income township communities cannot be investible communities with viable business opportunities.

As communities grow stronger and more self-reliant, they are able to gradually take over the implementation of programs themselves, with Rhiza’s role shifting from direct provider to enabler and supporter. To date, Alef’s initiatives have impacted over 150,000 individuals annually through programs in education, skills development, and entrepreneurship across South Africa. He is demonstrating that with the right approach, it is possible to address multiple facets of inequality in an integrated and sustainable manner. His success is sparking interest from major NGOs and funders, who increasingly see the power of harnessing social enterprises and market-based mechanisms to drive lasting change. With plans to scale his model across Africa, Alef is helping reimagine a new paradigm for sustainably advancing equality and shared prosperity.

Three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s townships remain trapped in a cycle of poverty and inequality, with whole communities systematically excluded from accessing the basic building blocks of social and economic wellbeing. The legacy of racial segregation has entrenched barriers that limit opportunities for township residents, particularly black Africans, to break out of generational poverty. Despite constitutional rights to quality basic services, the reality for millions is a daily struggle to access education, healthcare, and jobs - with little hope of improving their economic circumstances.

The government’s efforts to redress inequality through free provision of essential services have fallen woefully short. Rapid urbanization and the ballooning of informal settlements have overwhelmed and already strained the public system, rendering it incapable of delivering quality, dignified services to those who need them most. Large racial and class disparities in access to services like healthcare remain entrenched. For example, 15% of black South Africans live more than 5 kilometers from the nearest public health facility, compared to just 4% of white South Africans.

Even where clinics exist, the barriers of distance and travel costs force the poorest to settle for facilities with inferior standards of care. Studies show that the further people live from primary healthcare sites, the less likely they are to receive critical services like skilled birth attendance or childhood immunizations. Lack of physical access directly translates into poorer health outcomes, with ripple effects on educational attainment and productivity.

Severe understaffing and lack of resources further undermine the public health system’s ability to meet the needs of underserved communities. On average, there is only one doctor for every 3,198 patients, and the sector faces a minimum funding shortfall of R11 billion ($700 million). Basic infrastructure like ambulances is sorely lacking, with only 1,971 state-run vehicles compared to the 5,700 required to meet demand. Response times stretch to 30-60 minutes, far exceeding international standards. For township residents, this can mean the difference between life and death.

The education system is similarly failing to give township children a fair start. Early childhood development (ECD) programs are vital for laying the foundations of future learning and social mobility, yet this sector is beset by challenges. Centers struggle with lack of funding, limited support for operators, and onerous registration processes that keep many in a state of informality. Failures by municipalities to implement their mandates, like providing subsidized land and services, further hamper ECD provision. The result is that the most disadvantaged children enter school already behind.

With unemployment sitting at 32.9%, and even higher for youth, the cycle of exclusion and deprivation continues into adulthood. Many young people feel deeply alienated from the economy, with few pathways to gain relevant skills and work experience. This marginalization breeds hopelessness and high-risk behaviors, further entrenching poverty. Current government and civil society efforts to provide job training have failed to reach the scale and depth required for meaningful impact.

Ultimately, South Africa’s piecemeal attempts to combat inequality have failed to create systemic change. Most existing initiatives are either too small-scale, not inclusive enough, or narrowly focused on either livelihoods or services without addressing the intersecting nature of deprivation. Many also lack financial sustainability, forever reliant on dwindling external funding. Gaps in the social fabric remain unaddressed, with whole segments of society trapped in a state of structural exclusion from the country’s progress. Closing these gaps will require a fundamentally different approach - one that empowers communities to lead their own development in an integrated and self-sustaining way.

Alef Meulenberg has pioneered a systemic approach to drive holistic socioeconomic transformation and empower South Africa’s disadvantaged communities. His strategy focuses on creating opportunities for people to explore professional pathways, connecting them to market opportunities in and outside of the townships, and expanding (or creating new) market opportunities in townships to address local needs.

The starting point in Rhiza’s work is skills development, but unlike other skills development programs in townships, Alef creates opportunities for people to explore professional pathways, giving them choices and what he calls a “time of romance” with a sector. Rhiza offers skills development courses in high-demand industries like technology, agriculture, entrepreneurship, and fashion and design, and then offers connections to opportunities to further develop those skills. The agricultural project trains women and the youth to run resourceful gardens by giving them access to land and capacitating them to become agricultural traders, selling their produce to leading supermarkets and formulating functional businesses. For entrepreneurship training, Rhiza has established business hubs with incubation programs and to assist unemployed individuals from the township to grow their businesses, while providing entrepreneurs an open workspace with access to computers and internet. The systems management programs offer unemployed youth aged 18 – 35 a comprehensive and grounded learning experience in various fields such as ICT (Information and Communication Technology), technical support, IT systems development and IT systems support qualifications, training students from a high school learning standard to take on the knowledge and learning of higher education.

With the majority of youth unable to access tertiary institutions, Rhiza creates a space for skills development and an opportunity for unemployed youth to not only have access to job opportunities and skills, but to formalize existing township initiatives into viable businesses. By exposing youth to the multiple opportunities available and enabling them to have access and practical experience in various industries, it empowers them to become masters of their own career choices and make informed decisions about the careers they want to pursue, shifting them from being limited by their socio-economic circumstances and lack of information when choosing a career path. Some of the beneficiaries of the skills programs have gone on to pursue and be successful in fields outside of those offered by Rhiza, using the skills and education that they have gained through these programs.

Once the trainees graduate from the programs, they are then linked to work opportunities through Rhiza’s network of employer partners and its own social enterprises (Township Fleva, Rhiza Enterprises, Munching Mongoose) or supported to start their own businesses. This ensures that individuals from marginalized communities have access to relevant markets, technology, and growth support to turn new and existing township ventures into viable and thriving businesses. The skills development programs have seen the establishment of successful businesses run by the youth, with 15 IT graduates starting their own businesses, 5 fashion and design graduates starting their own brands, the establishment of Mexikasi (a restaurant that brings Mexican food and culture to townships) and a local coffee producer who went from selling on the highway to supplying three of the largest supermarkets in South Africa.

A central thrust of Alef’s strategy is deploying market-creating innovations to make essential services affordable and accessible for low-income families. He recognized that for communities to break out of poverty, they need access to the basic building blocks of wellbeing from an early age. Recognizing the severe shortfalls in early childhood development, Alef created an ECD impact bond to provide loans and training to the principals of ECD centers. The ECD impact bond pairs loan capital with intensive training for principals in both early childhood pedagogy and entrepreneurship. Participating centers gain access to educational resources, infrastructure upgrades and an accelerator program to boost their teaching quality and financial sustainability. The financing and capacity-building enables these centers to become financially sustainable while enhancing their educational outcomes, with repayment linked to social impact. Another key innovation is Rhiza’s nursepreneur clinic model, which empowers nurses to own and operate their own primary healthcare facilities. By reducing costs through a simplified model, the nursepreneur network offers quality care for just R200 ($13) per visit, opening access for thousands of patients. The nursepreneur model combines nurse ownership of clinics with innovations like access to telehealth and medication discounts, as well as business management support from Rhiza. At the same time, his model goes beyond simply providing services to actively cultivating community agency and self-reliance,

By simultaneously expanding economic opportunity and improving the provision of essential services, Alef’s model sets in motion a virtuous cycle of development. As youth and adults earn incomes through jobs and enterprises, they are better able to afford services like education and healthcare. Increased utilization of these services in turn improves outcomes in health, learning and productivity. The impact ripples out through the multiplier effect of rising living standards and community wellbeing. Over time, Alef envisions townships growing more prosperous and self-reliant to the point where they can sustainably manage social programs themselves, with Rhiza’s role evolving from direct provider to enabler and capacity-builder.

To date, Alef’s initiatives have directly impacted over 150,000 individuals across eight provinces in South Africa annually through programs in education, skills development, entrepreneurship, and healthcare. Rhiza has established 21 primary care clinics providing affordable services, with four more in development in Rwanda. It has supported over 1000 early learning centers to enhance their quality and outcomes. On the livelihoods front, Rhiza’s programs have equipped 9000 youth with market-relevant skills, supported over 2000 entrepreneurs and helped create 6000 new jobs in townships. Within five years of graduating from the program, 90% of the youth have been able to find employment opportunities, moving them from a position of being unemployed and unqualified for opportunities to either starting their own enterprises or becoming employed using their relevant skills. Alef has also greatly increased the incomes of nurses and ECD practitioners. On average, a nurse in south Africa earns R16000 (approximately 883 USD), and through Rhiza nurses earn as much as R35000 (approximately 1933 USD). ECD practitioners have moved from earning an average of R6000 monthly (approximately 329 USD) to R10000 (approximately 549 USD). With improved early learning centers, the quality of learning for children in these centers has also greatly improved, allowing them to move from a 68% school readiness level to 95%. These enterprises are not only transforming individual lives but also strengthening the fabric of their communities.

Alef has ambitious plans to scale the Rhiza Babuyile’s reach in the coming years. In the next 3 to 5 years, he aims to triple the number of primary care clinics to over 60, while expanding the model to Kenya and Uganda. In early childhood development, the goal is to grow the ECD impact bond to support 5000 centers serving 350,000 children. Rhiza’s skills programs are also set for major expansion, with several new training institutes in the pipeline. Underpinning this growth is Alef’s focus on building multiple earned income streams, from revenue sharing with clinics and ECD centers to the profit margins of Rhiza’s social enterprises. This hybrid financing helps ensure the long-term sustainability of the model.

Alef’s work is attracting growing attention from major development institutions, NGOs, and impact investors as an innovative and scalable approach to driving systemic change. Organizations’ like Save the Children are partnering with Rhiza to replicate core elements of the model, such as ECD and clinic programs, in contexts like refugee settlements in Rwanda. Alef is providing strategic guidance and technical assistance to help partners adapt the Rhiza Cycle to their communities. Through a partnership with the Development Bank of South Africa, Rhiza is training local organizations to implement their programs, supporting them for four years and thereafter allowing them to run the programs on their ow in the fifth year. By disseminating the approach through diverse partnerships, Alef aims to position the Rhiza Cycle as a template that can be customized to address socioeconomic disparities in different countries and regions.

At a fundamental level, Alef’s strategy represents a paradigm shift in how to tackle the entrenched legacy of inequality and exclusion in post-apartheid South Africa. Rather than relying on indefinite external aid, the Rhiza Cycle focuses on igniting the inherent potential of township communities to lead their own development. By empowering residents to participate in the economy and access vital services through market mechanisms, it puts them on a path to self-determination and dignity. In Alef’s vision, townships become dynamic hubs of grassroots enterprise and social innovation, with community members as the protagonists of progress.

Ultimately, Alef aims to demonstrate a new paradigm for sustainably closing socioeconomic gaps and advancing inclusive growth, first in South Africa and eventually across the continent. In the long-term, he envisions the principles of community-driven, market-based development becoming the norm in how governments, civil society, and the private sector approach poverty alleviation. By proving the effectiveness of models like the Rhiza Cycle on a significant scale, Alef seeks to transform prevailing mindsets and spur society-wide collaboration to unlock the full potential of Africa’s most marginalized populations. His work offers a hopeful roadmap for a future in which all communities can access the foundations of wellbeing and build thriving local economies on their own terms.

Alef Meulenberg’s path as a social entrepreneur began taking shape from an early age growing up in the Netherlands, sparked by early experiences that opened his eyes to inequality and instilled a deep sense of empathy. A pivotal moment occurred in high school, when Alef made friends with an immigrant student from Ghana. Their friendship exposed him to the vastly different realities and limited opportunities faced by people in other parts of the world, igniting a curiosity about other cultures and a determination to work for greater justice. This global perspective was underpinned by values of service and discipline that Alef absorbed growing up. His grandfather, despite coming from poverty as one of 12 children and being captured in World War II, made it his life’s mission to send all seven of his own children to university. Witnessing this legacy imparted a strong appreciation for the power of education to transform lives. Alef also regularly accompanied his mother in helping people with disabilities to manage their finances, an experience that taught him to put the needs of others first.

After finishing his first university degree at 18, Alef pursued a career as a high school teacher, driven by a budding passion for expanding access to education. He took a position at a school serving children of immigrant families, many of whom grappled with behavioral issues and identity crises as they tried to find their place between cultures. Engaging with these students daily, Alef came to understand more viscerally the social and psychological impacts of marginalization and the importance of education as a tool for empowerment. He promised himself that one day he would establish a school where quality learning opportunities were scarce.

This commitment would find its first expression just a few years later when, at the age of 21, Alef had the opportunity to help build a school in the remote community in the heart of the Amazon rainforest. The project also involved supporting a malaria clinic, giving Alef first-hand insight into the challenges of delivering basic services in an underserved context. Collaborating with the local community to construct educational infrastructure against a backdrop of poverty and illness proved to be a formative experience, one that accelerated Alef’s thinking about the systemic roots of inequality. He emerged with a crystallized understanding that the circumstances of one’s birth should not determine the trajectory of one’s life, and that addressing deprivation would require holistic, community-driven solutions. In 2011, Alef moved to South Africa and worked with the Rivers Foundation to refurbish township schools and train teachers, and he began thinking of how we could make this work more sustainable, and this led to the start of Rhiza in South Africa. Alef started training preschool teachers to improv the quality of education they offer, providing them with access to land and micro-finance to grow their ECD centers. In 2015, he partnered with Phillips and a Dutch organization (who are technical partners of Rhiza) and launched the first mobile clinics in Thembisa, Diepkloof, Alexandra and Diepsloot.

Alef’s approach to social change is profoundly shaped by the values of empathy, discipline and servant leadership that were instilled in him from an early age. Witnessing his grandfather’s tireless focus on education despite growing up in poverty impressed upon Alef the importance of personal agency in overcoming disadvantage. Accompanying his mother to assist people with disabilities taught him to prioritize the needs of the marginalized and vulnerable. And his experience as a semi-professional athlete ingrained a deep appreciation for the power of discipline, accountability, and teamwork in achieving ambitious goals. These threads of lived experience have woven together to form the fabric of Alef’s identity as a changemaker – one characterized by moral courage, a commitment to justice, and a belief in the potential of every individual to thrive when afforded the right opportunities. They are the wellspring of both the empathy and the strategic acumen that he brings to his work of empowering underserved communities to transform their own lives and futures.