Developing the Africa Food Future Initiative

by Hamish Wilson/

Developing the Africa Food Future Initiative

  • Client: World Wildlife Fund
  • Location: Zambezi Conservation Area, Southern Kenya – Northern Tanzania

Food security, habitat conservation and livelihoods strengthening

The ability to achieve widespread food and nutrition security for people who need to use natural resources more intensively to farm whilst conserving natural habitats remains one of the greatest challenges of our time. WWF’s aims to build community livelihood and landscape resilience in priority landscapes, by encouraging food production systems that balance agricultural development and the conservation of Africa’s natural capital for generations to come.

Our work : The development of Africa’s Food Future Initiative

Key to this ambition, Wasafiri was commissioned by WWF’s Global Food Practice in concert with Country Directors to co-create their “Africa’s Food Future Initiative”, anchored in two priority landscapes across Africa (the plains of Southern Kenya-Northern Tanzania and the Zambezi Conservation Area stretching between 5 countries). For each of these areas, our work was to conduct a robust landscape and value chain analysis, examine drivers, trends and scenarios underpinning the food system, and through leading a set of workshops develop a problem definition, vision and theory of change, underpinned by a results chain, detailed workplan and budget.

The outcome : A strategic investment and impact agenda

Our work, conducted over nine months across WWFs two priority regions in Africa, led to a clear understanding of the complexities of each landscape, generated stronger sponsorship by key WWF stakeholders and the commitment to a strategy articulating how a collaborative systems based approach can achieve change in such a complex topic.

“Thank you very much for all the work that Wasafiri has put into our new Africa’s Food Futures Initiative design. We have enjoyed working with Wasafiri immensely and have learned a great deal from the process. We were all impressed by your professionalism, knowledge and communication throughout.”





Dr Krista Singleton-Cambage

Deputy Leader, Global Food Practice, WWF International

Examples of our work

Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

New approaches for preventing violent extremism in East Africa

Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

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Enhancing access to employment for people with disabilities

by Hamish Wilson/

Enhancing access to employment for people with disabilities

  • Client: The UK Work & Health Unit
  • Location: UK

The challenge : Taking a whole-systems approach to enabling disabled people to find employment

According to the charity Scope, there are over ten million unemployed people living with some form of disability. Many of these struggle to find decent work and earn a living wage.

In response, the UK Work and Health Unit has been established as a cross-departmental unit charged with enabling one million disabled people to access work. This is ambitious, important, and at times controversial work.

As with all complex problems, the Unit cannot solve this on their own. Finding productive employment for one million people living with disability is a challenge that demands collective action between myriad groups, organisations and interests across sectors; employers, civil society, insurers, healthcare providers, families, education institutions and of course, individuals.

As such, the Unit finds itself having to take a whole-systems approach, one that equips them with new forms of collaboration with new networks of partners; one that allows them to see and confront ever-emerging and ever-evolving issues; one that enables them to test and learn as they forge new entry points and experiments, one that allows them to maintain a shared momentum and optimism in the face of difficult, messy and uncertain work.

Finding productive employment for one million people living with disability is a challenge that demands collective action between myriad groups, organisations and interests across sectors.

Our work : Catalysing new thinking and strengthening relationships through Systemcraft

Wasafiri’s Systemcraft framework has been forged from our work on the front lines of complex problems as diverse as conflict to climate change. We designed it to to help stakeholders come together in generative dialogue to co-design practical interventions that tackle the underlying issues.

The Unit commissioned Wasafiri to develop their internal capacity to apply systems thinking approaches to their task. Drawing on Systemcraft, the team workshopped a number of live issues in a design process overseen by Wasafiri facilitators. A range of alternative approaches and new courses of action emerged from the process, serving as the basis for potential future prototypes for the team. In the words of one participant:

“I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this training session (…) it will not only better inform how to tackle complex problems, but also how to build better working relationships, team building and wider problems within DWP. I would go as far to say this is the best course I have experienced during my time with the Department (and there have been many!). Well done!”

Examples of our work

Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

New approaches for preventing violent extremism in East Africa

Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

Systemcraft Labs: innovating new approaches for complex problems

Strengthening resilience in borderlands communities in the Horn of Africa

by Hamish Wilson/

Strengthening resilience in borderlands communities in the Horn of Africa

  • Client: Pact Kenya
  • Location: Kenya’s borders with Somalia, Ethiopia and Uganda

The challenge : Strengthening resilience in Kenya’s complex borderlands regions

State borders and the borderlands that surround them are vulnerable to a multitude of stresses – from armed conflict, drought, political transition to mass displacement. Such areas can exist in a near-permantent state of unpredictable tensions, amidst a struggle of interests, actors, dynamics and networks. For the people who live there, the threats to life and livelihoods are many.

Complex environments such as these also make life extremely difficult for policymakers and implementers. Identifing promising interventions and entry points is hard. Even more challenging is to understand the wider impacts of such initiatives beyond the narrow confines of their core aims.

The development organisation Pact implement a number of cross-border programmes in Kenya designed to strengthen peace and stability: PEACEIII funded by USAID, as well as the EU-funded SEEK and RASMI. Beyond the impenetrable acronyms and lengthy logframes, anecdotal evidence had emerged of wider benefits for the communities they support. The critical question arising is whether these stories of improved resilience could be supported by clear evidence. And if the evidence existed, what were the implications for cross-border programming?

The development organisation Pact implement a number of cross-border programmes in Kenya designed to strengthen peace and stability.

Our work : Examining the nexus between peacebuilding and resilience

Wasafiri has been working to understand and tackle conflict ecosystems in East Africa for over a decade. We were commissioned by Pact to look into the stories of change emerging from their programming with three particular objectives;

1. To advance a theoretical framework through which resilience in cross-border or borderlands settings can be examined.

2. To identify those outcomes of Pact’s cross-border work which have strengthened various forms of community resilience in Kenya’s border zones.

3. To assess how integrated and adaptive programming can strengthen the resilience of borderlands communities.

In response, we employed a variety of participatory, ethnographic, and system-based approaches across three very different contexts; Kenya’s Turkana county and Uganda’s Karamoja region, the border between Lamu county and Somalia’s Ras Kamboni district, and Moyale, which straddles the Kenya-Ethiopia border.

The outcome : The case for integrated, adaptive initiatives to strengthen local resilience

Our work revealed the highly political nature of living and working in the borderlands, in that communities exist within a messy system of competing political, economic and social dynamics that constantly threaten to disrupt progress towards greater stability.

By extension, we found that resilience toward conflict and insecurity, economic or environmental shocks could not be understood in isolation – to do so is to impose false and dangerous dichotomies – and nor should they be approached in programmatic silos.

We found six key factors supporting (or undermining) resilience for borderlands communities; cross-border trade; border security; natural resource management; centre-periphery politics; cross-border social networks; and the presence of border-adjacent infrastructure and state services. We also found that these factors coalesced in crucial feedback loops which could strengthen various forms of resilience.

This led us to conclude that there was truth to the stories we had heard; that there are strong, well-evidenced arguments for better, more integrated programming, founded upon peacebuilding, and which stand to improve life for people living in East Africa’s borderlands.

Examples of our work

Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

New approaches for preventing violent extremism in East Africa

Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

Systemcraft Labs: innovating new approaches for complex problems

Equipping Google’s Leaders To Navigate An Increasingly Complex World

by Ian Randall/

Equipping Google’s Leaders To Navigate An Increasingly Complex World

  • Client: Google
  • Location: UK

The challenge : Adapting to an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world

Throughout its meteoric rise, Google has been heralded for its pioneering spirit and relentless innovation. Now one of the world’s most valuable companies, its influence has radically shifted how we connect, navigate, communicate, consume and understand our planet.

Amidst a rapidly increasing global trend of growing connection, turbulence and complexity, in no small measure due to Google’s work, the organisation seized upon the need to adapt. In 2016, Google launched a business-wide initiative to equip its most senior leaders with the skills required to navigate an increasingly uncertain world.

In 2016, Google launched a business-wide initiative to equip its most senior leaders with the skills required to navigate an increasingly uncertain world.

Our work : Developing the capacity of Google’s leaders to work with complexity

Google commissioned leadership development and complexity experts Cultivating Leadership to design and implement a global programme seeking to amplify the skills of selected high-performing leaders across the business. Each participant undergoes an intensive 6-month immersion into the nature of complexity and is introduced to concepts, tools and approaches designed around new business challenges.

Wasafiri’s co-founder and Director, Hamish Wilson, was approached by Google to contribute to the programme with a series of annual seminars designed to introduce insights into the realities of grappling with complex problems such as recovering from Myanmar’s cyclone, stabilising Somalia, countering violent extremism in Kenya, and others.

Helping establish ‘complexity-aware’ leadership mindsets

Hamish’s seminars, drawing from Wasafiri’s wider work on complex problems and Systemcraft framework, have been recognised as helping Google’s leaders more skilfully navigate an increasingly complex world; by seeing systems, taking multiple perspectives, managing polarities and experimenting with new models and prototypes. We at Wasafiri are proud of our contribution, however tiny, to helping the organisation grow, adapt and continue its pioneering work.

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New approaches for preventing violent extremism in East Africa

Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

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Supporting stabilization and state-building in Somalia

by Hamish Wilson/

Supporting stabilization and state-building in Somalia

  • Client: Stability Fund
  • Location: Somalia

The challenge : Strengthening stabilisation, state-building and peace-building efforts

The Somalia Stability Fund (SSF) is an £85m multi-donor fund working towards a peaceful, secure, and stable Somalia. It is designed to offer multi-year funding that can respond to local needs and opportunities for improving the capacity of the state and strengthening peace-building efforts and stabilising areas affected by conflict and insecurity.

To this highly ambitious end, understanding the environment, recognising and adapting to an ever-evolving context, learning about where impact is being achieved and how best to engage in a volatile region with myriad stakeholders and interests is vital, but highly complex work.

Our work :Monitoring, evaluation and research support

Wasafiri was brought on as a partner embedded within the fund over a three-year period to provide integrated monitoring, research and strategic advisory services. Operating in partnership with a local research organisation, our work comprised comprehensive programmatic reviews across 19 districts in Southern Somalia and Puntland, forensic case studies examining a wide range of Fund investments and extensive support to refine the Fund’s strategic results framework.

The outcome : Targeted, relevant and impactful investments

The Fund relied upon our research and analysis to refine its annual targets, formulate its investment programme and report on progress to its partners and donors. This has in turn translated into demonstrable evidence of a sustained and measurable contribution to improving the stability areas of affected by conflict, increasing citizen participation in political processes and growing the legitimacy and capacity of local and regional government institutions.

View additional case studies

Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

New approaches for preventing violent extremism in East Africa

Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

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Strengthening performance and accountability in African agriculture

by Hamish Wilson/

Strengthening performance and accountability in African agriculture

  • Client: The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
  • Location: Africa

The challenge : Building a performance-based culture for agricultural transformation in Africa

In 2014, Africa’s Heads of State set out a bold vision: to eliminate hunger and transform agriculture for jobs and poverty reduction by 2025. Signed in the capital of Equatorial Guinea, this remarkable commitment has come to be known as the Malabo Declaration.

In a determination to measure progress toward this vision, African Union institutions and partners worked hard to establish clear goals and measurable targets. In all, 47 measures were agreed examining levels of investment, indicators for nutrition, the role of women, use of fertilisers and many more.

To gauge progress, the Declaration committed to a ‘Biennial Review’. This in itself was a bold commitment to accountability; requiring a yearly progress check for all 47 countries. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first of these reports, presented in January 2018, pointed to the majority of countries failing to remain on track.

Despite the call to action, the report failed to spark the impact it was conceived for. The lack of action revealed the gap between its findings and the means to review performance at regional and country level, and to translate them into concrete recommendations for policy, partnerships, programmes and resourcing. Bridging this gap is key to translating a bold vision into reality for poor people across Africa.

In 2014, Africa’s Heads of State set out a bold vision: to eliminate hunger and transform agriculture for jobs and poverty reduction by 2025.

Our work : Strengthening the performance of AU institutions though a collective approach to the Biennial Review

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation seized upon the opportunity to reinforce the findings of the Biennial Review. They commissioned Wasafiri to build stronger partnerships around the Review, to improve communications and coordination, advocacy and policy engagement at continental, regional and country levels. Our work includes;

  • Convening a core group of Heads of State and Governments to champion the process
  • Bringing stakeholders together to establish shared agendas and strategy
  • Overseeing the coordination of effort and implementation of workplans
  • Coordinating communications efforts and managing multiple funding streams

The outcome : Good progress on improving accountability and commitment

The stakes remain high for those who have signed up to Malabo; agendas and political priorities have shifted, and wariness of being held to account risks undermining good intentions. As such, establishing meaningful commitment to the Biennial Review has always experienced one step back for every two steps forward.

Nevertheless, useful progress has been made and positive tipping points are less distant; our partnership work has brought more organizations into the process, our communications efforts have forged the basis for a shared understanding of the opportunity, and our convening work is laying the foundation for a more collective effort toward tackling hunger in the years ahead.

View additional case studies

Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

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Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

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Helping strengthen community security in Kenya

by Ian Randall/

Helping strengthen community security in Kenya

  • Client: DFID
  • Location: Kenya

The challenge : Strengthening UK support for community security in Kenya

Sadly, many people in Kenya are forced to live with insecurity; violent criminality, politically motivated tensions, conflict between clans and tribes, violence against women and girls and more. Responding to such issues is tough. But understanding what drives them, and more importantly, mitigates them, is even more complex.

We have seen first-hand how quickly dynamics evolve and vary immensely across the country. Our experience tells us that they are the product of both emerging trends and patterns as well as entrenched systems and modes of behavior. Any efforts to tackle such problems must be multifaceted, adaptive and responsive, operating across multiple levels.

In a drive to reform Kenya’s police services, confront ongoing intercommunal violence and tackle violence against women and girls, the UK Government launched its Improving Community Security (ICS) programme in 2015. Over a three-year period, this ambitious programme has sought to address these issues both at the national level and across eight of Kenya’s most troubled counties.

Many people in Kenya are forced to live with insecurity; violent criminality, politically motivated tensions, conflict between clans and tribes, violence against women and girls and more. Understanding what drives such issues, and more importantly, mitigates them, is complex.

Our work : A comprehensive review of DFIDs national Community Security programme

In March 2018, Wasafiri was commissioned to conduct a comprehensive and independent review of the programme – to learn from what has and hasn’t worked, to inform its forthcoming successor programme, and others like it.

Our team of researchers, experienced in unearthing rich perspectives and experiences around sensitive issues, endured hundreds of kilometers of rough and dusty roads, speaking with over 160 people from communities and institutions involved with the programme. This tough work was complemented by extensive consultations with officials from national Ministries and Departments responsible for policing, peacebuilding and gender and equality.

The outcome : New insights and lessons for strengthening community security in Kenya

The review unearthed a comprehensive set of findings from all corners of the programme, yielding substantive recommendations for ensuring its £20m successor builds on the many strengths, and addresses the gaps, of ICS.

More broadly, DFID and its partners working on complex issues around community security in Kenya and beyond now have an important, new resource with which to better design and implement interventions ultimately aimed at helping improve the lives of those forced to live with the burden of insecurity.

View additional case studies

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Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

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Engaging communities and preventing conflict in Northern Kenya

by Hamish Wilson/

Engaging communities and preventing conflict in Northern Kenya

  • Client: Tullow Oil
  • Location: Turkana County, Kenya

The challenge : Competition and violence over the spoils of newly discovered oil

In March 2012, vast reserves of oil were found in Kenya’s Turkana county. The discovery offered newfound wealth for one of Kenya’s poorest and most remote regions, yet its promise also brought a multitude of disruptions and threats; to a sensitive environment, to centuries-old ways of life and the delicate balance of powers between leaders and their constituents.

Oil extraction is controversial. For some the social and environmental impacts make it untenable whilst for others the economic opportunities offered can transform the lives of whole communities. By 2013, the Kenyan Government had awarded the concession to a consortium led by Tullow Oil. By the end of the year, tensions had spilled over into violent conflict over jobs, land and contracts. Tullow realised that their social license to operate was under threat, and that new approaches were required to negotiate fairer distribution of the future benefits of oil.

Oil extraction is controversial. For some the social and environmental impacts make it untenable whilst for others the economic opportunities offered can transform the lives of whole communities.

Our work : Embedded participatory analysis, engagement and action

Following a succession of violent incidents, Tullow requested support from Wasafiri to better understand the drivers and causes, and to identify potential courses of action. Our analysis led to a request to work specifically with local mobile pastoralist communities, subsequently evolving into a four-year participatory process to help pastoralist leaders develop mechanisms to engage more effectively with Tullow and others.

The outcome : Community-owned mechanisms for engagement over key issues such as pasture and land

The discovery of oil triggered a clash of civilisations; Tullow is a publicly-owned commercial exploration and extraction company. They are built around engineering and risk management processes, and work to a Board-driven agenda and the pace of financial years.

By contrast, pastoralist populations operate in loose family groups, without formal shared representation, relying instead on generations-old traditional practices to right wrongs, reach settlement and apportion power. They work to the rhythm of the sessions, the timing of the rains and the pace of generations.

Working with ‘tribes’ as diverse as these, while helping both navigate the multitude of national, county governments interests was, to say the least, a delicate, painstaking undertaking, requiring an approach able to work within and across the entire ‘system’ of relationships and incentives.

The outcome remains embryonic but significant; locally owned mechanisms for pastoralists and Tullow to work more effectively; in resolving disputes, in negotiating contracts and allocating resources. The foundations have been laid for a more equitable share of the spoils.

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Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

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Multi-stakeholder Collaboration for African Agriculture

by Ian Randall/

Multi-stakeholder Collaboration for African Agriculture

  • Client: DFID, USAID, GIZ and CIDA
  • Location: Africa

The challenge : How might support for African agriculture be better aligned and more effective?

African countries must produce more food to nourish their growing populations and build their economies. The African Union Commission (AUC) and NEPAD established the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) to support countries achieve their agricultural development ambitions. Established in 2003, the CAADP espouses bold aims; a transformation of Africa’s agriculture, and to end hunger in Africa by 2025. Just one of many practical requirements is to update of all agricultural investment plans across Africa in line with these ambitions, as committed to by all of Africa’s Heads of State in 2014.

Key development partners have rallied to the African agriculture agenda and are supporting CAADP (USAID, the Gates Foundation, the German Government’s BMZ, and the European Union). But without the means to facilitate collaboration between Development Partners, it is nigh on impossible to find common ground around key areas such as the coordination of funding oe development of common policy agendas. As a consequence, the AUC and NEPAD are simply unable to accommodate bilateral dealings with 20+ development partners.

Established in 2003, the CAADP espouses bold aims; a transformation of Africa’s agriculture, and to end hunger in Africa by 2025.

Our work : Coordinating development partners to better support African agriculture

The Development Partners Coordination Group (DPCG) is the forum that aims to align and coordinate development assistance in support of the African Union led CAADP. Development partners fund or to provide technical assistance to many of the activities.

USAID began chairing the DPCG in early 2017 and sought Wasafiri’s support to run the secretariat as an essential convening forum and collaboration mechanism. In addition to the administration of the secretariat, we contribute thought leadership to define its agenda and develop common positions of the DPCG around key policy issues. This work allows for a common channel of communication and collaboration with the AUC and NEPAD, in support of country level activities.

The outcome : Ubuntu! Better together!

The momentum of the DPCG has risen steadily since early 2017. So has the quality and quantity of engagement within the DPCG from Development Partners. DFID, BMZ, FAO, WFP and the African Development Bank have stepped up their engagement. Improved coordination through several workstreams are influencing decisions by development partners: for instance, GIZ changed the countries it supports for national agricultural investment plans based on information through a workstream.

The African Union Commission has a growing sense that mutual accountability exists with development partners. This is important as partnership is more important than ever. A new peer review performance system has been established for African leaders to review their national results together on a biennial basis. This arose from an intensive collaboration in 2017 between AUC/NEPAD and development partners. Support for this ‘Biennial Review’ is strong from development partners. A common policy position developed by Wasafiri was widely used. For instance, the Gates Foundation used it to capture the interest of the IFAD President to champion the Biennial Review. Wasafiri is currently supporting the African Union Commission to establish a group of leaders to champion the performance of African agriculture triggered and aided by the Biennial Review process — exciting stuff!

“Wasafiri supported USAID’s successful term as Chair of the CAADP Development Partners Coordination Group from 2017-2019. Wasafiri have proved time and again to be a capable partner and we look forward to collaborating with them again in the future.”





Chris Shepherd-Pratt

Head of Policy, Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, USAID

View additional case studies

Generation Africa: Grow Entrepreneurs.Transform Food.

New approaches for preventing violent extremism in East Africa

Millions of smallholders reached through private investment

Systemcraft Labs: innovating new approaches for complex problems