VidaGa ´ s: delivering better health to Northern Mozambique with LPG Courtenay Sprague and Stu Woolman Graduate School of Business Administration, University of the Witwatersrand, Parktown, South Africa Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to document the manner in which a pro-poor company can deliver ongoing health benefits and improve environmental sustainability in a manner that addresses child and maternal mortality (in line with millennium development goals 4, 5 and 7). Design/methodology/approach – Field research in Mozambique including 12 in-depth interviews with key personnel from December 2006 to January 2007. Findings – First, clear threats to the success of VidaGa ´s’ pro-poor business model encompass insufficient liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) supply and storage facilities; poor industrial and commercial infrastructure in Northern Mozambique; inadequate training of retailers in LPG use; and inadequate consumer knowledge of the benefits of LPG. Second, key innovations employed by VidaGa ´s to overcome these obstacles consist of the introduction of a novel cold chain to safeguard medicines; a complex supply chain to ensure timely delivery; and the exploitation of local knowledge and expertise to expand the uptake of LPG by Mozambicans. Practical implications – The case study focuses on a business problem with significant development implications. The challenge is to ensure a reliable supply of LPG in Northern Mozambique. To meet this challenge, VidaGa ´s must achieve its stated goal of becoming a revenue-generating entity within three years. In order to create a viable market for LPG, VidaGa ´s must not only increase the uptake of LPG by poor consumers, it must expand LPG market access to commercial consumers, while raising additional capital. Originality/value – The paper contributes to the literature on social entrepreneurship and demonstrates how to link for-profit business imperatives with development goals. Keywords Mozambique, Liquefied petroleum gas, Energy sources, Healthcare Paper type Case study 1. Introduction While the literature on “social economy” is dominated by case studies and theories about best practice, Pope contends that it is quite difficult to find any “robust evidence of their value and contribution” to the discipline of development studies and the communities that development studies is designed to serve (Pope, 2007; Downing, 2005; Haugh, 2005; Jones and Keogh, 2006; Kerlin, 2006; Martin and Osberg, 2007). This case study serves as a partial response to this line of criticism. It does so by documenting the innovations employed by a specific private-public sector partnership in Mozambique and connecting those innovations to the social enterprise literature. A second concern motivates this research. The existing literature on business and development, social entrepreneurship, and the myriad ways in which standard or novel business models can transform the material conditions of the poor remains rather slender, despite a number of initiatives and related research. In 1997, Prahalad and Hart The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at www.emeraldinsight.com/1750-6204.htm VidaGa ´s: delivering better health 41 Journal of Enterprising Communities: People and Places in the Global Economy Vol. 5 No. 1, 2011 pp. 41-57 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1750-6204 DOI 10.1108/17506201111119590